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EPA Announces Comprehensive Plans for Protecting Food Safety, Regulating Pesticides under the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act
[EPA press release - March 18, 1997]The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today issued a comprehensive, detailed plan for implementing the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA). The new law includes sweeping new food safety protections and requires major changes in how pesticides are regulated, with the goal of improving environmental and public health protection, especially for children.
"The Food Quality Protection Act is one of the most significant pieces of legislation enacted in the past two decades," said EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner. "We are committed to providing greater assurance that infants and children are protected from pesticide risks, expanding the public right-to-know about pesticides, and using the best available science in reaching our regulatory decisions as we carry out this important new law."
The FQPA Implementation Plan is based on five guiding principles that will govern the Agency's actions: sound science, a protective, health-based approach to food safety, promotion of safer, effective pest control methods; an open, fair and consistent process that involves consultation with stakeholders and an informed public; and public accountability of EPA's actions and resources to achieve the goals of the law.
The major provisions of the new law include:
Establishing a single, health-based standard for all pesticide residues in food, whether raw or processed;
Providing for a more thorough assessment of potential risks, with special protections for potentially sensitive populations, such as infants and children;
Requiring EPA to reassess roughly 9,000 existing tolerances (maximum legally permissible residue levels in food) to ensure they meet the new standard;
Requiring EPA to develop consumer information, to be displayed in grocery stores, on the risks and benefits of pesticides used in or on food, as well as recommendations to consumers for reducing dietary exposure to pesticides while maintaining a healthy diet; and
Ensuring that all pesticides will be periodically re-evaluated to make sure they meet current testing and safety standards.
Among the major reforms of FQPA are requirements that EPA routinely address a number of new considerations in establishing tolerances for pesticide residues in food. Many of these new provisions raise complex scientific issues and call for new policies and evaluation methods. EPA has already brought a number of these issues before expert scientific review panels and will continue to consult with these expert bodies as implementation proceeds. Specifically, FQPA requires EPA to:
use an extra safety factor in conducting risk assessments to assure the protection of infants and children;
assess total pesticide exposure from all non-occupational sources including through the diet, in drinking water, and as a result of household pesticide use;
assess effects of exposure to multiple pesticides with a common mechanism of toxicity;
assess effects of in utero exposure; and
assess potential effects on the endocrine system.
"The FQPA calls for a comprehensive overhaul of pesticide policies and we are working with leading scientists and other interested groups to update and reinvent our procedures and scientific approaches as called for by this law," said Dr. Lynn Goldman, EPA Assistant Administrator for Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances. "In the meantime, we must continue to make decisions and move ahead. We have adopted interim measures to ensure that decisions meet the new requirements of law, including decisions on new pesticide registrations and the establishment of new tolerances for residues in food."
Soon after FQPA was enacted, EPA convened a broadly representative, high level Food Safety Advisory Committee to advise the Agency on strategic implementation issue. The Committee met in public sessions four times and concluded its work in December. EPA also established a new Endocrine Disruptors Screening and Testing Advisory Committee which met in December and February. This group is working to develop a chemical screening and testing program to assess potential estrogenic and other hormonal effects as required by FQPA and the Safe Drinking Water Amendments of 1996. EPA is also continuing to consult with the ongoing Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee, including the formation of a working group to address such major new efforts on the development of consumer right-to-know information on pesticides for display in retail stores.
Since the FQPA was passed in August 1996, relying on the interim strategy released earlier this year, the Agency has registered six new conventional pesticides active ingredients (two of which are reduced risk products), 10 new biological pesticides and one new anti-microbial pesticide. EPA has also granted 52 emergency exemptions requested by the states facing critical pest control needs to deal with pest outbreaks that could not be controlled by currently registered products.