Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Carson made pesticide pollution a political issue, and appealed to the
public interest as justification for doing so. Individuals have a right to
protection from poisons introduced by others into the environment. She
made normative claims: Only those able to understand the ecological
hazards of pesticides should be allowed to purchase and use them.
Regulatory institutions should be independent of political influence and
provide safeguards for the public. Government should fully support the
development of safe, ecologically informed alternatives. These were the
chief elements of her public testimony before Congress in 1962, and
were reflected in the famed Environmental Defense Fund lawsuits.
Silent
Spring
started the public debate that resulted in the creation of the US
Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA).
11
The USEPA was created with a whole cluster of environmental laws,
but two of them stand out for the purposes of this story.
12
Congress
passed the Federal Environmental Pesticides Control Act in 1972, which
transferred responsibility for pesticide registration and regulation to the
USEPA, in large part to address charges that the US Department of
Agriculture suffered from a pro-pesticide bias.
13
Congress assigned the
USEPA responsibility for pesticide evaluation and registration, but regu-
latory enforcement of pesticide use was still in the hands of the states,
with the USEPA supervising. In the same year, Congress passed the
Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments, better known as the
Clean Water Act. This set the ambitious goal that all surface waters be
“fishable and swimmable” by achieving “zero pollution discharge” from
point sources. This act gave the USEPA responsibility for setting
standards for toxins in surface water, and allowed citizens to bring
lawsuits to compel enforcement.
14
In 1974, Congress passed the Safe
Water Drinking Act to protect public health by regulating the nation's
public drinking water supply. American cities and industry have made
impressive progress in controlling point-source, or end-of-pipe, water
pollution. Agricultural nutrients are now clearly the greatest source of
non-point-source water pollution.
The United States has never had an explicit, systematic environmental
policy for agriculture, despite its large and widespread impacts.
15
Congress has never shown much interest in regulating the environmental
consequences of agriculture, in large part because it has found the per-
sistent cultural myths about family farmers, and the national virtues they
