Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
agency claims that its legal authority is limited to imposing such restric-
tions only on the developers and sellers of pesticidal crop seed, and
requiring that they include the restrictions in their contracts of sale to
their farming customers (“grower agreements”). This indirect arrange-
ment for transferring EPA restrictions downstream to crop growers and
sellers has proven ineffective, with surveys showing that many farmers
disregard the restrictions and that the companies selling GM seed lack
motivation to police their customers. Congress has not acted to provide
EPA with the additional authority it would need to directly regulate
downstream activities.
Many have accused the agency of misusing its regulatory author-
ity and facilitating the introduction of pesticidal GM crops. Accord-
ing to Friends of the Earth, EPA accepts substandard testing data
from product developers, disregards conflicting studies from indepen-
dent researchers, ignores allergenic and other risks to health, and raised
the maximum permissible levels of herbicide residues on food crops
to provide incentives for the marketing of new herbicide-tolerant GM
crops.
27
According to Gregory Mandel, “EPA is not evaluating the
potential impact of transgenic pharmaceutical producing, industrial com-
pound producing, herbicide-tolerant, drought-resistant, salinity-tolerant,
virus-resistant, temperature-tolerant, or disease-resistant plants on the
environment.”
28
These charges have prompted the agency to sponsor research on
methods for assessing the potential allergenicity of GM crop proteins
and human allergenic susceptibility, the impacts of such crops on nontar-
get species, the evolution of more resistant insect pests, and the develop-
ment of crop planting and management strategies to slow such evolution
in target pest populations.
29
27
Press Release, Friends of the Earth, GM Crop Safety Tests Flawed (Nov. 16, 2004).
(on file with author).
28
G. Mandel,
Gaps, Inexperience, Inconsistencies, and Overlaps: Crisis in the Regulation
of Genetically Modified Foods and Animals
, 45 WMLR 2167, 2231.
29
Environmental Protection Agency, Ecological Exposure Research, http://www.epa.
gov/eerd (last visited June 18, 2008).
