Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 2482 - Federal Insecticide, Fungicide & Rodenticide Act Amendments of 1986

(House Rules)
(Reps. Bedell (D) Iowa and Roberts (R) Kansas)

The Administration opposes enactment of H.R. 2482 unless amended to:

— eliminate the acceleration of, and the unnecessarily costly changes to the reregistration program, or increase the fee authorization to cover the costs. The current program is working—by the end of this fiscal year over 140 registration standards will have been established, 80 percent of which are for high volume (or exposure) food use. The fees authorized to fund the accelerated program would cover only a fraction of the costs, making it impossible for EPA to meet the provision's tight and legally enforceable deadlines;

— eliminate the provisions in current law and H.R. 2482 which indemnify pesticide owners and manufacturers.for economic losses suffered when EPA cancels a pesticide. The potential cost of this provision is enormous; it requires EPA to reimburse profitable private industries, and there is no comparable provision in other environmental law;

— eliminate groundwater provisions. EPA already has the authority to regulate chemicals that pose groundwater problems in three other environmental laws. Additional legislation will only increase confusion for EPA and the States;

— eliminate the rigid, mandatory and legally enforceable nature of deadlines for making decisions on inert ingredients in pesticides. The Agency should be allowed discretion on how to deal with inerts;

— eliminate any procedural changes to FIFRA concerning the export of pesticides and the provisions concerning international assistance. International consensus has been reached by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on an export notification system, and it would be premature to change it now; and

— eliminate the requirement for EPA to revoke tolerances for pesticides that have been cancelled because of potential human health risk even where there is no concern about dietary risk. This could raise GATT questions by restricting imports of food posing no health risk.