Pesticide registration at USDA

The regulatory landscape before EPA

The “justification” for the transferin the early 1970s of pesticide registration from the United States Department of Agriculture, an old line established federal agency which, until the rise of agribusiness and the agrochemical industry after World War II, had a long history of supporting and respecting independent high quality scientific research, to a fledgling Environmental Protection Agency with no scientific traditions or regulatory expertise, and motivated more by ideology than Data, can be found in the testimony of Harry Hays, Director of Pesticide Registration at the United States Department of Agriculture taken from the DDT trial in Madison, Wisconsin during the spring of 1969.

“If the data appear to us . . . to be adequate . . . the product is registered. We look at the data furnished by the manufacturer, but we don’t look at it analytically . . . . We don’t check it by the laboratory method.”

At long last the people were told that the Department of Agriculture relies entirely upon data furnished by the pesticide manufacturers.

The incredible lack of concern for the safety of the American people became apparent on further cross-examination when Director Hays admitted that if a pesticide was checked at all, it was checked by an entomologist only for its effectiveness against the target insect and not for its effect on beneficial insects or other fish and wildlife. “We don’t assume that the intended use will cause any damage,” he explained.

Moreover, Director Hays further admitted that although he had personal knowledge of published scientific studies showing damage to fish and wildlife from DDT, the Division of Pesticide Registration is not doing anything about possible environmental hazards from the pesticide.

Previously, Director Hays had proudly testified on behalf of the Industry Task Force for DDT of the National Agricultural Chemicals Association that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is solely responsible for the registration of pesticides and for determining whether they may be shipped in interstate commerce. He also testified that these determinations are not subject to revision except on appeal by the pesticide manufacturer. Director Hays then reluctantly admitted that the public had no access to USDA records of pesticide registration.

Thus, only in an adversary judicial proceeding was it finally demonstrated that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is really serving the agrichemical industry, while remaining at the same time essentially immune from responsibility to the American people.

This is the transcript of testimony that provided the evidence which eventually led the Congress to move pesticide registration to the fledgling Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) f

[unpublished page proofs from the first edition of Environmental Rights & Remedies, volume 1.]

A view of the same testimony through the eyes of the journalists Harmon Henkin and James Staples can be found in Chapter 10 of their book, The Environment, The Establishment and The Law, published shortly after the trial of DDT in Madison, Wisconsin concluded.