United States Office of Enforcement 

Washington, DC 20460 

EPA 305-F-00-005 

Environmental Protection & Compliance Assurance October 2000 

Agency www.epa.gov 

Agrichemicals 

Food Quality Protection Act – 

Children and Consumers

Ag Center 

Helping Agriculture Comply with 

Environmental Requirements 

F O C U S O N 

Children and Consumers 

The Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) of 1996 amended the Federal Insecticide, 

Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act 

(FFDCA). These amendments fundamentally changed the way EPA regulates pesticides. 

FQPA : 

• mandates a single, health-based standard for all pesticides in all foods 

• provides special protections for infants and children 

• expedites approval of safer pesticides 

• creates incentives for the development and maintenance of effective crop protection 

tools for American farmers 

• requires periodic re-evaluation of pesticide registrations and tolerances to ensure that 

the scientific data supporting pesticide registrations will remain up to date in the 

future. 

This fact sheet will help you understand the law regarding special provisions for infants and 

children, and consumer right-to-know provisions. 

Issue: Special Provisions for 

Infants and Children 

Previous law and practice 

EPA is currently addressing some of 

the high priority issues identified in the 

1993 National Academy of Sciences 

report on "Pesticides in the Diets of 

Infants and Children." The Agency 

routinely assesses risks by age group, 

ethnicity, and region when setting 

tolerances. There was no explicit 

mandate to do so under previous law, 

and the data available to EPA have 

been criticized as outdated and 

inadequate. 
EPA uses available, 

reliable data when 

considering the need 

to retain, modify, or 

remove the 10-fold 

additional safety 

factor. 

FQPA 

FQPA explicitly requires EPA to 

address risks to infants and children 

before a tolerance can be established. 

The law also provides for an additional 

safety factor to ensure that tolerances 

are safe for infants and children. 

What does this mean? 

In keeping with FQPA, each tolerance 

decision issued after August 3, 1996, 

contains a specific finding that the 

tolerance levels are appropriately 

protective of children. FQPA requires 

EPA to apply an additional safety 

factor of 10 during its risk assessment 

to account for the potential for preand post-natal toxicity, as well as for 

the completeness of the toxicology and 

exposure database, unless the Agency 

determines that another factor is 

adequately protective. 

Recognizing the importance of the 10-

fold safety factor, EPA began 

developing policy and implementation 

procedures soon after passage of FQPA 

to ensure consistent and defensible 

decisions. Within 3 months, EPA 

sought advice regarding the Agency’s 

approach to this issue. In January 1997, 

EPA issued guidance that describes 

generally the types of information 

needed to determine whether infants 

and children are especially sensitive to 

a chemical and whether an additional 

safety factor is needed for their 

protection. 

More recently, an EPA task force has 

considered policy issues related to the 

FQPA safety factor, and EPA 

submitted a revised draft policy and 

operational practices for making 

decisions on the safety factor for 

scientific peer review in May 1999. 

These documents were released in July 

1999 for public review and comment. 

EPA has also updated pesticide toxicity 

testing guidelines to enable the 

Agency to better assess risks to infants 

and children. In July 1998, EPA 

published updated guidelines for 

animal studies on prenatal 

development and reproduction, and 

new guidelines on effects to the 

immune system for use by registrants in 

conducting such studies. These new 

guidelines incorporate 

recommendations from external 

scientific peer review. 

EPA has initiated a “National Agenda 

to Protect Children’s Health from 

Environmental Threats.” EPA is 

implementing several pesticide-related 

recommendations published by the 

Children’s Health Protection Advisory 

Committee: 

•Reevaluate the atrazine pesticide 

tolerances 

Ag Center Fact Sheet Series Page 2 

Agrichemicals/Food Quality Protection Act - Children and Consumers 
Agrichemicals

Food Quality Protection Act Children and Consumers 

While EPA had 

general information 

materials that 

describe how to 

reduce pesticide 

exposure, developing 

materials to reach 

consumers at the 

supermarket level 

The Ag Center 

welcomes comments 

on this document 

and its other services. 

•Reevaluate pesticide tolerances 

for methyl parathion, dimethoate, 

and chlorpyrifos 

•Reevaluate the Worker 

Protection Standard. 

Issue: Consumer "Right to Know" 

Provisions 

Previous law and practice 

There is no comparable law or practice 

at the Federal level. 

FQPA 

The law required EPA to publish a 

short pamphlet containing 

consumer-friendly information on the 

risks and benefits of pesticides. It 

includes any tolerances that EPA has 

established based on benefits 

considerations, and recommendations 

for reducing exposure to pesticide 

residues and maintaining a healthy 

diet. 

In addition, petitions for tolerances 

must include informative summaries 

that can be published and made 

publicly available. The law also 

recognizes a State's right to require 

warnings or labeling of food that has 

been treated with pesticides. 

What does this mean? 

EPA coordinated with the U.S. 

Departments of Agriculture (USDA) 

and Health and Human Services 

(HHS) to accomplish this. 

With advice from the Pesticide 

Program Dialogue Committee and 

consumers, and consultation with 

USDA and FDA, EPA developed a 

brochure, Pesticides and Food, to inform 

consumers about pesticide use on food, 

government programs that protect 

them from pesticide risks, and ways 

they can reduce their exposure to 

pesticides. The brochure also explains 

how the Food Quality Protection Act 

(FQPA) increases protection of infants 

and children from exposure to 

pesticides. 

The pamphlet is available at 

www.epa.gov/ pesticides/food/. This 

information has been distributed as 

required by FQPA to large retail 

grocers for public display. 

EPA has distributed more than 4 

million copies -- to 30,000 grocery 

stores, and to public health officials, 

libraries, and the medical community. 

EPA also designed a companion 

Pesticides and Food web site, which is 

referenced in the printed brochure and 

gives consumers more detailed 

information. 

(www.epa.gov/pesticides/food) 

For more information 

You can get online information about 

FQPA at 

http://www.epa.gov/oppfead1/fqpa 

and about food safety at 

http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/tfsy.ht 

ml 

For more facts about compliance, call 

the Ag Center’s toll-free number, 

Ag Center Fact Sheet Series Page 3 

Agrichemicals/Food Quality Protection Act - Children and Consumers 
Agrichemicals

Food Quality Protection Act Children and Consumers 

1-888-663-2155. Materials can be sent 

to you by fax or by mail, or you can talk 

to an Ag Center representative. For a 

list of all publications available from 

the Ag Center, request document 

number 10001, “Ag Center 

National Agriculture Compliance

Assistance Center

901 N. 5th Street

Kansas City, KS 66101

Toll-free: 1-888-663-2155 

Internet: www.epa.gov/agriculture 

Fax: 913-551-7270 

United States Environmental 

Protection Agency 

Washington, DC 20460 

Publications.” 

Ag Center Fact Sheet Series Page 4 

Agrichemicals/Food Quality Protection Act - Children and Consumers