To get agriculture's support for FQPA, the agency promised that risk assessments for food exposure would be based on the best available information and, if such data was absent or incomplete, EPA would get it before making new regulatory decisions. The agency assured us that risk assessments would be based on actual, not theoretical health risks. EPA promised to accelerate the registration of new crop protection products. Also, they pledged that the implementation process would be open, transparent and follow established administrative procedures for federal rules and regulations. It's not happening, folks.
Organophosphates are in the agency's sights now.
If the agency continues on the course it has set, farmers will see their control costs skyrocket, product quality deteriorate and crop volumes decline. We will lose out in international and domestic markets to foreign growers who are not subject to EPA's dictates. Or, as a number of U.S. farmers are already doing, we will move our production out of the country. The impact of EPA's ag chemical elimination campaign goes well beyond our driveways. The poor will suffer most.