Center for Food Safety wants neonicotinoids to be registered under FIFRA registration requirements.

Jacqui Fatka, Policy editor

December 23, 2021

3 Min Read
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The Center for Food Safety and Pesticide Action Network of North America sued the Environmental Protection Agency over the agency’s failure to regulate pesticide-coated seeds, which they claim harm bees and other pollinators. These crop seeds are coated with systemic insecticides known as neonicotinoids, the most widely used insecticides, and the organizations claim they cause devastating environmental effects.

CFS filed a rulemaking petition back in 2017 that would close the loophole, but EPA has still never addressed it.

“Nearly five years ago, we provided EPA the legal blueprint to solve this problem and the legal impetus to do it, yet they have still sat on their hands,” says George Kimbrell, CFS legal director and counsel in the case. “While EPA fiddles, grave harm to bees and other pollinators continues. That delay must end.”  

Crops grown from coated seeds, such as corn, soybean, and sunflower seeds, cover over 150 million acres of U.S. farmland each year. Neonicotinoids are taken up into the plant’s circulatory system as the plant grows, permeating leaf, pollen, nectar and other plant tissues. Neonicotinoids affect the central nervous system of insects, causing paralysis and death. Sublethal impacts include impaired navigation and learning. The organizations claim as a result, beneficial insects, valuable pollinators, and birds—including threatened and endangered species protected under the Endangered Species Act—are killed or injured.

Over the past decade the increasing use of seeds coated with neonicotinoid insecticides has coincided with mass die-offs of honey bees and wild native bees, their petition explains. “If left unchecked, these losses could precipitate an economic and ecological disaster impacting the petitioners and the United States as a whole at a time when the nation can ill afford it,” the 2017 petition notes.

Honey bees not only produce nutritious honey, but are also of enormous economic importance to American agriculture as pollinators. “About ninety percent of all flowering plants require pollinators to reproduce and nearly a third of pollination is performed by bees in American agriculture. Honey bee pollination adds tens of billions of dollars annually in crop value. Healthy populations of all pollinators are essential for the future of American agriculture,” the petition continues.

“Science has shown that coating seeds with pesticides is not only ineffective, but can cause real harm to pollinators, workers and farmers,” says PAN senior scientist Margaret Reeves, a plaintiff in the case. “The vast majority of acres planted in crops such as corn, soybean, and cotton are planted with pesticide-treated seeds, yet farmers know less about pesticides applied to their seeds than pesticides applied in other ways. EPA must regulate this use and mitigate this danger.”

The 2017 petition asked EPA to close a regulatory loophole that allows seeds coated with systemic pesticides (coated seeds) to evade the registration and labeling requirements of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. EPA currently exempts coated seeds from FIFRA’s registration requirements and has failed to assess the risks of these unregulated seeds—while never providing the public with any justification for this exemption, they claim.

CFS, through its Pollinators & Pesticides program, has long advocated for thorough, science-based safety testing and proper regulation of new pesticide product uses prior to any marketing and cultivation of crops, in a manner that minimizes lethal and sublethal effects on non-target species. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Pesticide Action Network of North America and Center for Food Safety, represented by counsel from the Center for Food Safety.

Jacqui Fatka, long-time policy editor at Farm Futures, will bring her valuable agricultural policy insight to the stage of the Business Summit in Iowa City, IA Jan. 20-21, 2021. Featuring industry experts and in-depth training sessions, it’s an opportunity to gain clear insights for a profitable future. Use code BOGO22 to receive discounted rate for a guest. Learn more and register now! 

About the Author(s)

Jacqui Fatka

Policy editor, Farm Futures

Jacqui Fatka grew up on a diversified livestock and grain farm in southwest Iowa and graduated from Iowa State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communications, with a minor in agriculture education, in 2003. She’s been writing for agricultural audiences ever since. In college, she interned with Wallaces Farmer and cultivated her love of ag policy during an internship with the Iowa Pork Producers Association, working in Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Capitol Hill press office. In 2003, she started full time for Farm Progress companies’ state and regional publications as the e-content editor, and became Farm Futures’ policy editor in 2004. A few years later, she began covering grain and biofuels markets for the weekly newspaper Feedstuffs. As the current policy editor for Farm Progress, she covers the ongoing developments in ag policy, trade, regulations and court rulings. Fatka also serves as the interim executive secretary-treasurer for the North American Agricultural Journalists. She lives on a small acreage in central Ohio with her husband and three children.

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