August 8, 2002

The Environmental Protection Agency says accusations by the Natural Resources Defense Council about the agency's pesticide compliance record are "misinformation rather than facts." Last Friday, EPA announced that it had met a significant milestone for food safety by reassessing more than 6,400 allowable pesticide residues on food (called tolerances) to ensure that they satisfy the tougher food safety standard contained in the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. EPA says reaching this goal was accomplished through "an exhaustive scientific and regulatory effort involving key stakeholders throughout the process."

Unfortunately, EPA adds, the NRDC, after working closely with EPA on this issue, "has recently disseminated misinformation rather than facts." NRDC is alleging that the agency falsely claimed to have met the statutory deadline for pesticide tolerance reassessment.

"EPA has indeed met the congressionally-mandated deadlines in the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 to reassess two-thirds of the existing pesticide tolerances on food to ensure they meet the tougher health standards required by law," EPA replies. "This has been accomplished through a multi-year process that has included numerous rounds of scientific and public review."

In an "especially inappropriate and inaccurate charge," in EPA's words, NRDC characterized EPA's approach to tolerance reassessment as involving "Enron like accounting."

EPA replies, "This kind of blatantly charged language is wholly without merit and profoundly unfair to the dedicated EPA staff and the many stakeholders who have invested valuable time and energy into making tolerance reassessment a success. EPA stands by the integrity of this program. The methods used to determine when a tolerance has completed the reassessment process are accurate, time-tested and open for full scrutiny throughout."

To the NRDC claim that the agency has failed to review the high priority pesticides, EPA says since 1996 it has worked under a systematic approach that prioritizes for reassessment and risk mitigation specific pesticides that may pose the greatest risks to public health.

In a consent agreement signed in 2001, NRDC agreed with EPA to an aggressive schedule to reassess certain pesticides of particular concern. To date, EPA says, it has successfully met all the deadlines for expeditious review of the priority pesticides in that agreement and is on schedule to meet the remaining deadlines for the additional pesticides.