Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Whether playing sports, writing, reading, mastering a musical instrument or just about any other endeavor, everyone from the elementary spelling champion to a professional athlete at the pinnacle of his sport understands that “practice makes perfect.”

Well, it seems that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) feels a little out of practice these days based on the recent decision to re-register atrazine again in 2010.

After a 15-year study, the EPA just re-registered atrazine in 2006 based on overwhelming evidence of safety from nearly 6,000 studies -- the most stringent, up-to-date safety requirements in the world. Despite the exhaustive regulatory and scientific review process supporting its use, the agency is looking into atrazine again as part of a Scientific Advisory Panel review this year.

“This product has been registered for over 50 years and has gone through a series of re-reviews that are very thorough. The label is the law that is dictated by a very rigorous scientific process,” said Adam Sharp, Ohio Farm Bureau Federation senior director of legislative policy. “When the EPA looks at risks, they do a very thorough job of testing it.

“They look at drinking water, food, farmer risk, and they look at the ecological risk. Atrazine passed that test in 2006. The science actually just proved itself, and I’m confident that the science will prove itself again.”

The EPA is required to do a re-review every 15 years, but recent media events by activist organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, Land Stewardship Project and Pesticide Action Network North America suggest a coordinated campaign to call atrazine’s safety into question and politicize what should be a scientific process. As a result, more tax dollars will go to re-reviewing the safety of atrazine well ahead of the required schedule.

This process is costly, and it backs up the EPA’s work on other efforts.

“This unnecessary new review appears to be driven largely by a political agenda and not science,” Sharp said. “The EPA has to review hundreds of products each year. By pulling this product back in, it will delay their work on other products. It looks like the EPA will take a good part of this year to review atrazine and the science. I don’t know what the timeline is after that.”

The re-review also leaves farmers again wondering if this valuable tool for weed control, particularly in no-till corn, will continue to be available.

“Atrazine is a tool that allows farmers to adopt no-till. No-till allows them to leave their land better than they got it with fewer emissions and less runoff, and atrazine is a critical piece of no-till corn,” said Dwayne Siekman, executive director of the Ohio Corn Growers Association (OCGA). “We have the utmost confidence in its efficiency and safety, and at $28 per acre in cost savings, its loss would result in a huge hit to farmers and Ohio’s economy.”

According to the OCGA, the latest push to re-review atrazine, again, is a part of a larger agenda. Activists continue to target atrazine because it is one of the most tested and most widely used herbicides. If they can set the precedent of getting atrazine banned, they can get just about anything banned. 

It is unsettling how quickly the EPA sided with the urging of activists and jumped on the opportunity to re-review the corn herbicide. Corn growers, and a long list of agricultural advocates, are asking that the EPA once again use sound science (and not political science) to conduct the review process.

With their push for regulating greenhouse gases, dust, ditches and numerous other aspects of agricultural production, does the EPA really need more practice? It seems that the EPA already has plenty of experience. And, considering over-burdened taxpayers in a struggling economy are funding the effort, it would seem that in this case, a little more practice does not make perfect. 

Matt Reese writes for Ohio’s Country Journal and lives in Baltimore, Ohio. For questions or comments, please contact him at mkcreese@yahoo.com

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