EPA poised to challenge ‘politics driven’ farm chemical regulations

Henry Miller | March 3, 2017 | Hill

[Editor’s note: Henry Miller is a physician and molecular biologist, and was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology.] 

Scott Pruitt…has promised to end the pernicious practice known as “sue and settle” that occurs when a federal agency invites a lawsuit from an ideologically sympathetic activist group — sometimes one to which it has given grants — and then quickly settles on terms that both the agency and activists like.  Sue and settle is a strategy that circumvents both congressional intent and the rulemaking process. The EPA has used it repeatedly.

There’s another category of regulatory reform that needs attention — regulations in the works driven by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are not based on science.

A case in point is the EPA’s proposed ban of chlorpyrifos, a popular insecticide that farmers have been using for decades. An EPA ban would fly in the face of the judgments of more than 100 countries — including Canada, the U.K., Japan and Australia.

So why is the EPA an outlier? …The Natural Resources Defense Council, Pesticide Action Network and other anti-pesticide groups have waged war on chlorpyrifos for 20 years. Finally, they persuaded the notoriously NGO-friendly, San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to order EPA to move forward on consideration of a ban.

The Trump administration should block this unwarranted ban and thereby send a message to all the entrenched regulators in Washington that the days of policies based on NGO-driven, bad science are over........ To Read More....

My Take - When I read this kind of article it gives me hope, but we still have to come back to "the basics", and in this case it's the fact there will be no way to enforce this if the people working there are nothing but a bunch of undergroud greenie fellow travelers - and the bulk of them are.   They'll just hunker down and wait and then start the whole process over again.   

There is one solution and one solution only. Drive a stake into the heart of this agency which is sucking the life blood out of the nation. Now's the time!