Pesticide Registrations and Actions

Other Actions

  • The EPA released fumigant risk mitigation options both electronically and in person in Ft. Myers on the 6th of June.  Comments about these options are being taken until July 2, and the EPA has specific questions for people wishing to provide input.  Please contact the PIO if you have questions regarding this or any other regulatory action. 
  •  Minor crop producers and consumers will be the primary beneficiaries of a recent EPA proposal to revise its pesticide tolerance crop grouping regulations, which allow the establishment of tolerances for multiple, related crops based upon data from a representative set of crops.  The proposed mushroomsrevision, published in a May 23, 2007, Federal Register notice, would create a new crop group for edible fungi (mushrooms), expand existing crop groups by adding new commodities, establish new crop subgroups, and revise the representative crops in some groups.  These proposed changes reflect the global competition for new or ethnic commodities.  EPA expects these revisions to promote greater use of crop groupings for tolerance-setting purposes and, in particular, to assist in retaining or making available pesticides for minor crop uses.  This is the first in a series of regulatory crop group updates.  (EPA OPP Update, 5/30/07). 
  •  The methyl bromide inventory held by U.S. companies at the end of 2006 continues to shrink, according to data released by the EPA.  The data show a steady decline in the inventory since 2003, when the Agency began collecting such information.  The data that EPA is releasing includes, in aggregate form, the inventory held by approximately 35 companies in the United States at the end of 2006.  The methyl bromide inventory shows a steady decline - approximately 16,422 metric tons in 2003, 12,994 metric tons in 2004, 9,974 metric tons in 2005, and 7,671 metric tons in 2006 - and demonstrates that the United States continues to manage its domestic inventory appropriately.  (EPA OPP Update, 5/16/07). 
  •  In early June, the Florida Farm Bureau Federation circulated a message indicating that a half-dozen Florida representatives in the U.S. House were supporting a bill that would strike the word “navigable” from the Clean Water Act.  Without this word, intermittent streams, small ponds, and even groundwater could theoretically fall under the Act.  At this same time, the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers announced that for such waters to be protected there must be a “significant nexus” shown between the intermittent stream and a traditional waterway.  Determinations will be made on a case-by-case basis in the future.  (FFBF, 6/2/07 & Gainesville Sun, 6/6/07). 
  •  After 18 months of discussion, mostly contentious, the European Union issued new rules for organic labeling.  In addition to specific labels for products with at least 70 or 95 percent organic materials, a 0.9 percent limit has been placed on accidental or unavoidable “contamination” from transgenic plants.  (International Herald-Tribune, 6/12/07).

 

 

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