Menu

When the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) was passed in 1996, Farm Bureau applauded it as a workable solution to ensure food safety while replacing the Delaney Clause, which allowed for zero-tolerance of chemical residues on food.

Now, Farm Bureau and other industry associations are working diligently to make sure FQPA doesn’t turn into another unworkable, unrealistic and economically devastating regulation.

"FQPA was supposed to assure that there was a reasonable certainty of no harm associated with eating food products. And we were OK with that until we saw how the U.S. EPA was starting to interpret some data," according to Constance Jackson, OFBF vice president of agricultural ecology. "We’re seeing the U.S. EPA use assumptions that aren’t accurate and looking at beyond worst-case scenarios. … We’ve been trying for several years to get Congressional oversight of how EPA is interpreting the law. This hearing was the first real opportunity we’ve had to get comments into the official public record."

U.S. Rep. Paul Gillmor, R-Old Fort, called for the late March hearing of the Environment and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee that he chairs. Testifying before the committee were OFBF President Terry McClure and OFBF State Trustee Jeff Zellers.

"The Farm Bureau and its members dedicated time and effort to communicating the benefit of the passage of the Food Quality Protection Act," testified McClure. "Implementation of FQPA by the Environmental Protection Agency however may result in unnecessary restrictions or cancellation of many of the critical crop protection products used in agriculture."

Whereas the Delaney Clause applied only to residues on food, FQPA also takes into account exposures by other means – water, residential and business – and cumulative exposures of products within the same "family" of chemicals, Jackson explained.

One issue of contention is that EPA is using a 99.9 percentile safety factor. "We feel that’s extreme. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) uses a 95 percentile safety factor and the World Health Organization uses 97," Jackson said. "Even if EPA would drop its standard to a 99.7 percentile safety factor, we’d be happy."

Another issue is that EPA is starting to establish limits without proper procedures in place and is trying to meet an Aug. 3, 2002, deadline for having cumulative risk assessments complete. "Even at this late date, there is no indication what the bottom line of this risk assessment will be since none of the critical policy decisions have been made," Zellers testified. "When I make decisions on my farm, I figure out how I am going to do something before I do it … not after."

There are several other issues addressed in testimony:

• Excessive safety factors beyond what is standard can be implemented by EPA indiscriminately.
• Only 0.7 percent of imported products are inspected and if zero residue is found, imports are assumed to contain no residues. For domestically produced products, if zero residues are found, EPA assumes half the permitted level of residues are present. "Zero doesn’t equal zero," Jackson said.
• There is no analysis of risk to consumers if crop protection products are not used and disease is allowed to infect crops.
• EPA action could cause cancellation of crop protection products for which there are no alternatives.
• USDA is supposed to be an equal partner in the FQPA process, but because of staffing and financial concerns, "They just haven’t been able to keep up," Jackson said. USDA has 12 staff people handling FQPA review, EPA has more than 800.

"We ask EPA to employ common sense in its approach to FQPA," McClure testified. "A reasonable approach to the implementation of the Food Quality Protection Act, based on real data and not theoretical risk, should result in a workable outcome with few adverse impacts."