The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld, in part, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) denial of objections filed to its final rule revoking all residues of the pesticide carbofuran permitted on or in raw and processed foods. Nat’l Corn Growers Ass’n v. EPA, No. 09-1284 (D.C. Cir., decided July 23, 2010). EPA revoked the carbofuran “tolerances” after notice-and-comment rulemaking because it determined that aggregate dietary exposure to residues of carbofuran is “not safe” and because exposure to the chemical in drinking water exceeded “the level of concern with respect to both children and adults.” This action effectively banned its use on both domestic and imported food for human consumption. The U.S. company that makes the pesticide and several trade organizations filed objections to the revocation and a hearing request, which EPA denied. While the objectors had participated in the rulemaking proceeding, they attempted to either introduce new evidence during the…
Tag Archives pesticide
La Vida Locavore blogger Jill Richardson claims in a July 6 AlterNet article that a recent webinar touting a “perspective on pesticide residues” was benignly marketed to federal and state health officials by a “self-described non-profit organization,” the Alliance for Food and Farming. While the Alliance’s website does not identify its supporters, Richardson asserts that the organization is an industry “front group” representing California-based farm and pesticide interests, one of which apparently argued in the film Food, Inc. that “foods containing clones should not be labeled.” “[F]ront groups are a common vehicle industry uses to delude, confuse, and sometimes overtly defraud the public,” Richardson says. She cites author Anna Lappé’s book Diet for a Hot Planet highlighting a 1969 tobacco industry internal memo that discusses “establishing a controversy,” and Lappé opines that “The food industry long ago saw the benefits of fomenting confusion; confusion defuses public outcry about our toxic…
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has delivered testimony before the U.S. Senate’s Special Committee on Aging that highlights examples of deceptive or questionable marketing practices involving certain dietary supplements. GAO also reported that some herbal dietary supplements contained contaminants, including trace amounts of lead. According to GAO Managing Director of Forensic Audits and Special Investigations Gregory Kutz, investigators posing as elderly customers asked sales staff at 22 retail establishments a series of questions regarding herbal dietary supplements in addition to reviewing 30 retail websites’ “written marketing language” about the supplements. In several cases that both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission deemed “improper and likely in violation of statutes and regulations,” “written sales materials for products sold through online retailers claimed that herbal dietary supplements could treat, prevent or cure conditions such as diabetes, cancer, or cardiovascular disease.” Improper medical advice was also dispensed by…
A California trial court has reportedly begun hearing evidence to determine if a 2007 $2.3 million jury award to Nicaraguan banana plantation workers who claimed they were sterilized by exposure to pesticides was based on fraud. Defendant Dole Food Co. convinced the court in 2009 to dismiss two similar pending cases on the basis of testimony, by witnesses whose identities were kept secret due to purported threats of violence in Nicaragua, that the plaintiffs’ lawyers recruited bogus plaintiffs, coached them and used spurious lab tests to support their claims of sterility. An appeals court ordered the plaintiffs who had won awards in the earlier case to prove that their allegations were not fraudulent. According to a news source, Dole presented evidence showing that the plaintiffs could not recall details about plantations where they had purportedly been employed, could not answer questions about the chemical’s smell or were apparently sterile before they…
With a new working definition of “nanomaterials,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is apparently poised to launch new regulatory policies including those addressing the registration of pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide & Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). The definition, revealed during a PowerPoint® presentation at an April 29, 2010, Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee meeting, is as follows: “An ingredient that contains particles that have been intentionally produced to have at least one dimension that measures between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers.” The pesticide registration policy, expected to be published in the Federal Register in June, would allow EPA to use section 6(a)(2) of FIFRA, which “requires pesticide product registrants to submit adverse effects information about their products,” to gather information about the use of nanoscale materials in pesticides. Registrants would be required to report the inclusion of nanoscale materials in a pesticide product already registered or pending registration. Under another new policy,…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Office of Inspector General (IG) has released a report, which finds that the federal government’s “national residue program is not accomplishing its mission of monitoring the food supply for harmful residues” of veterinary drugs, pesticides and heavy metals. According to the report, federal agencies have failed to establish thresholds for “dangerous substances” such as copper or dioxin, an omission that “has resulted in meat with these substances being distributed in commerce.” The IG also found that USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which is responsible for the national residue program, “does not attempt to recall meat, even when its tests have confirmed the presence of veterinary drugs.” Among other matters, the report calls for (i) better coordination among FSIS, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration; (ii) an expansion of the substances these agencies test for; (iii) improvements to the…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Bee Research Laboratory has released the preliminary results of a survey estimating that honeybee colony losses nationwide “were approximately 29 percent from all causes from September 2008 to April 2009,” touching off speculation about the fate of the ubiquitous pollinator. Federal investigators reported that only 15 percent of all colonies lost during the 2008/09 winter apparently died of colony collapse disorder (CCD), leading USDA to emphasize “the urgent need for research” on general honeybee health. “It’s just gotten so much worse in the past four years,” USDA Research Leader Jeff Pettis was quoted as saying. “We’re just not keeping bees alive that long.” According to media sources, apiary experts have blamed the honeybee die-off on a combination of viruses, bacteria and pesticide residues. In particular, beekeepers have cited a March 19, 2010, study published in PLoS One that reportedly identified at least one systemic pesticide…
A European Court of Justice adviser has determined that Monsanto Co. cannot seek royalties from a company that imported from Argentina soy meal containing residues of Monsanto’s patented gene. Case C-428/08, Monsanto Tech. LLC v. Cefetra BV (Op. of Advocate Gen. Mengozzi, delivered March 9, 2010). Monsanto has no patent on its Roundup Ready® soybeans in Argentina. In 2005 and 2006, the company had shipments of soy meal from Argentina impounded in Amsterdam harbor, and testing showed that it contained some of the seed traits that Monsanto has patented in the European Union (EU). The company then sued the importers for infringement, and a Dutch court hearing the dispute sought guidance from the EU tribunal. Disagreeing with Monsanto, which argued that its EU patent covers the DNA sequence, the adviser opined that under Directive 98/44, “a DNA sequence must be regarded as protected, even as a self-standing product, only where it…
Researchers studying 31 different types of food purchased from supermarkets in Dallas, Texas, have apparently found a range of persistent organic pollutants, including organochlorine pesticides, at varying levels, although none exceeded Environmental Protection Agency reference doses or EU maximum residue levels for pesticide residues in food. Arnold Schecter, et al., “Perfluorinated Compounds, Polychlorinated Biphenyl, and Orgnaochlorine Pesticide Contamination in Composite Food Samples from Dallas, Texas,” Environmental Health Perspectives, February 10, 2010. Noting that a number of the pollutants tested have been banned for some time in the United States, the researchers nonetheless found them in meat products, fish, dairy, vegetable-based foods, and eggs. While uncertain whether some of the chemicals may have migrated from food packaging, the researchers conclude that “US food is contaminated with a wide range of chemicals, including pesticides, PFCs, and PCBs and that expanding the current monitoring beyond pesticides to include emerging pollutants is warranted.” The…
In response to requests by chemical industry interests, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has extended the deadline for comments on its proposal to apply a 10-fold (10X) safety factor to its pesticide risk assessments in relation to the exposure of agricultural workers and their children in agricultural fields. CropLife America and the American Chemistry Council made the request, noting that the proposal is related to several others, such as new labeling rules to control drift, that have not yet been finalized. Comments must now be received by April 12, 2010. The industry groups also pointed to studies the agency does not appear to have considered in drafting its policy paper, “Revised Risk Assessment Methods for Workers, Children of Workers in Agricultural Fields, and Pesticides with No Food Uses,” and expressed concerns that some supporting materials have not been made public. They urge EPA to consider a National Academy of Sciences…
