A2O-Uncaster Farming, Saturday, May 16, 1998
VERNON ACHENBACH JR.
Lancaster Fanning Staff
CAMP HILL (Cumberland
Co.) As part of its public edu
cation effort to beneficially influ
ence state and federal legislation,
and thereby the lives of its mem
bership, the Pennsylvania Farm
Bureau on Monday held a special
meeting with representatives of the
farm and general media.
In recent years, as part of its
annual legislative effort to repre
sent its farmer members and serve
better as a proponent for agricul
ture, the Pennsylvania Farm
Bureau has held an annual press
day.
During the press day, reporters
with the general and farm press,
especially those working for publi
cations directly associated with
farming, are invited to sit down
with the elected leadership of the
PFB, its communications mana
gers and the issue specialists, and
discuss issues of concern to the
PFB and the news media.
The event includes a back
ground briefing of PFB positions
on issues, additional comments
and explanations by leadership,
questions from the media rep
resentatives, and explanations for
those positions and questions.
Not only is the event a forum to
present PFB policy positions on
issues, but it serves as an opportun
ity for media to access the main
leadership body of the PFB at
once, in order to have questions
answered fully.
The process is somewhat infor
mal, but its main objective is to
forward PFB policy and reasoning,
and establish and maintain rcla-
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Pennsylvania Farm Bureau Discusses Topical
tionships with the media.
Richard Prether, manager of
communications, served to pro
vide introductions of the commu
nications and communications
support people.
PFB President Guy Donaldson
discussed the issues and answered
questions, mostly on his own, but
deferring occasionally to staff with
mote specific issue knowledge.
Also present were legislative
issue specialists, introduced by A 1
Myers, head of the PFB group, and
John Bell, counsel for the P£B.
In past years, the state Legisla
ture has mote typically been tied
up with the state budget and some
contentious issues during the last
few weeks before the summer
recess.
With the end of the state finan
cial year being the end of June,
budget issues generally tie up
Senate and House debate and busi
ness for much of May and June.
This year, the state Legislature
in April approved essentially a
Gov. Tom Ridge-proposed
budget, making it one of the ear
liest ever budgets. (The governor
usually proposes a budget in
January.)
While there are many issues of
concern continuing to attract the
attention of legislators, the Pen
nsylvania Farm Bureau on Mon
day focussed on three: water qual
ity; local tax reform; and
implementation of the federal
Food Quality Protection Act
(FQPA).
Donaldson said the implemen
tation of the FQPA was being done
in such a way as to threaten the
availability of food for the current
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world population, much less the
anticipated 10 billion people
expected through the first quarter
of the next century.
“Your just begining to hear the
begining of this issues,” Donald
son said.
The PFB provided reporters
with a list of the common names of
two families of widely used and
accepted pesticides that it consid
ers threatened under the Clinton
Administration’ Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) interpre
tations of the FQPA.
Background was provided.
The Delaney Clause was repe
aled in August 1996 with the pas
sage of the Food Quality Protec
tion Act (FQPA).
The Delaney Clause called for
zero tolerance of pesticide residues
in foods.
In brief, when the Delaney
Clause was adopted, testing for
residues was not as exact or precise
a science as it is today.
It was demonstrated that
improved testing techniques have
allowed the ability to test for
minute amounts of potential pesti
cide residues (pesticide residues
may not necessarily be the pesti
cide, but chemicals that occur dur
ing or after the breakdown of the
pesticide).
These minute amounts are very
many times more tiny than the
amount of pesticide residue that
would have passed with testing
technologies in effect when the
Delaney Clause was created.
In other words, technology
made the Delaney Clause obsolete,
because being able to detect
minute amounts of a chemical
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residue does nothing to change the
toxicity or biological effect of the
residues.
It was argued that the same
levels, or less, of pesticide that
would have beat undetectable dur
ing the valid years of the Delaney
Clause, have not changed in the
amount of health threat, merely in
the fact that those small amounts
can now be detected.
According to PFB, “All chemi
cals must meet the new safety pro
visions of FQPA to be registered
for production use.
“Presently, many farm chemi
cals are being re-registered while
new products are seeking registra
tion for the first time.
“FQPA establishes national uni
formity for safe residue levels and
allows consideration of pesticide
benefits to nutrition and the food
supply.
“FQPA, also, encourages and
streamlines the registration for
new, safer crop protection chemi
cals. This provision will make it
profitable to produce crop protec
tion chemicals for small acreage,
high-value, minor crops.”
While all of this is considered
good for agriculture, the Clinton
EPA’s interpretation of some other
aspect of the Act threatens the
availability of certain key produc
tion chemicals.
According to PFB, “FQPA sets
an extra margin of safety for
residues on foods consumed in
high amounts by infants and child
ren. (FQPA) requires considera
tion of chemical exposure from
sources other than food, such as
drinking water and home pesticide
use.
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Issues
“It requires consideration of
common mechanisms of toxicity
from similar chemicals.**
According to the PFB, while
that extra margin of safety was a
concern when the bill was prop
osed for passage, the EPA made
assurances that the standard would
not be used to unnecessarily
restrict or cancel safe crop protec
tion products.
But according to the PFB, the
EPA is now acting in ways that
indicate it may well not follow
through with those interpretative
assurances.
“‘Reasonable certainty of no
harm’ is being interpreted by EPA
as essentially the same as zero
risk," according to the PFB
statement
“The extra margin of safety for
infants and children triggered
denials for the registration of two
crop protection products used on
cotton.
“Cotton is not a crop food.
Chemicals used on cotton do not
present a real exposure problem to
infants, children or the general
public.”
The fear is that this will be car
ried over to deny registration for
crop products.
“Some environmentalists and
various individuals in government
want to cancel two groups of
chemicals that are extremely
important to agriculture.
“These crop protection chemi
cals are organophosphates and
carbamates.”
Donaldson was emphatic in his
presentation to the media rep
rensentatives that this is a serious
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