Accomplishments under the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA)

With the 1996 enactment of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), Congress presented EPA with the enormous challenge of implementing the most comprehensive and historic overhaul of the Nation's pesticide and food safety laws in decades. The centerpiece of FQPA was the requirement to complete within a decade the massive review and reassessment of the tolerances (maximum permitted residues) for all food use pesticides. On the tenth anniversary of FQPA enactment, we have completed over 99% of the required tolerance reassessments, and we celebrate the cumulative public health progress achieved by the thousands of individual protective actions taken under this law. This degree of success for such an ambitious, controversial and complex undertaking is unprecedented.

When it passed, House Commerce Committee Chairman Bliley noted the bill was a "landmark bipartisan agreement that will bring Federal regulation of the Nation's food producers into the 21st century." Recognizing the formidable charge Congress was placing on the Agency, Agriculture Committee Chairman Roberts stated that "the ultimate success of this reform will rest with the professionalism and the common sense of EPA."

Over this 10-year period, EPA and its public and private sector partners have met FQPA's challenge and achieved significant enhancements in public health and environmental protection for the American people. This tremendous accomplishment required persistence and commitment to the strategic FQPA principles of sound, science-based decisions, open government, timely action, and sensible public policy.

By successfully implementing the Food Quality Protection Act, EPA is ensuring that all pesticides used on food in the United States meet FQPA's more stringent safety standard. To carry out the pesticide regulatory program under FQPA, EPA has used groundbreaking science and provided extensive opportunities for public involvement, while maintaining a commitment to timeliness. As a result, the Agency and its partners have upgraded the protective framework of integrated programs and actions ensuring that safe and effective pesticides are available to support production of one of the most abundant, affordable, and healthy food supplies in the world and to safely meet America's other pest control needs.

• Overview
• Notable Achievements
  • Expanded Scope of Protection
  • Timely Reassessments
  • Advancing Science
  • Opening up the Process
  • Establishing Partnerships
  • Meeting Needs for Safe, Effective Pest Control Products
  • Addressing Major Policy Changes
  • Providing Tailored Attention to Unique Classes of Pesticides

  Notable Achievements

  Expanded Scope of Protection

  FQPA dramatically changed the safety standards EPA uses in evaluating potential pesticide risks, especially to infants and children. Since FQPA was enacted, effective protection of children, already a priority, received additional emphasis through the addition of an extra tenfold Children's Safety Factor. This additional factor is now standard in dietary risk assessments, unless reliable data support a different factor.

  Other new protective measures require EPA to assess the aggregate impact of exposure to pesticides in the food we eat and water we drink, along with exposures resulting from residential pesticide uses and other non-occupational sources of exposure. Finally, FQPA mandated that EPA's safety assessments consider the cumulative effects on health from exposures to multiple different pesticides that cause the same biological effects in humans.

  Timely Reassessments Despite Massive Number of Actions

  • Completed 9,637, or over 99% of the 9,721 tolerance reassessment decisions required by FQPA, please see figure 1
  • Recommended the revocation of 3,200 tolerances
  • Recommended the modification of 1,200 tolerances
  • Confirmed the safety of 5,237 tolerances
  • Reregistration actions or eligibility decisions for 559, or almost 99 percent of the 566 reregistration eligibility decisions due by August 3, 2006.
  • These actions include the cancellation of nearly 4,400 individual pesticide end-use product registrations out of a current universe of 17,592.
  • EPA plans to complete reregistration eligibility decisions for the remaining 47 non-food use pesticide reregistration cases by October 3, 2008, as required by the 2004 amendments to FIFRA contained in the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act (PRIA).

  Advancing Science

  • Organophosphate insecticides
  • Carbamate insecticides
  • Triazine herbicides
  • Chloracetanilide herbicides

  Opening up the Process

  • The Food Safety Advisory Committee
  • The Tolerance Reassessment Advisory Committee (TRAC)
  • The Committee to Advise on Reassessment and Transition (CARAT)
  • The Endocrine Disruptors Screening and Testing Advisory Committee (EDSTAC)

  Establishing Partnerships with All Stakeholders

  • Serves as a liaison to EPA and the agricultural community
  • Supports minor use registrations through the Inter-Regional Research Project No. 4
  • Conducts training for pesticide applicators through its cooperative extension service
  • Sharing the science of mosquito and other vector control with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Assisting the Food and Drug Administration to improve detection of pesticide residues in food at far lower levels than previously possible
  • The Food Safety Advisory Committee (FSAC) was established immediately after FQPA passage (through December 1996); it developed interim decision policies, which are still being employed.
  • The Tolerance Reassessment Advisory Committee (TRAC) followed FSAC and gave useful advice on the development and communication of critical science policies that EPA used in its FQPA risk assessments, and has piloted the public participation process used in reregistration.
  • The Agency created the Committee to Advise on Reassessment and Transition (CARAT) as follow-on to TRAC's efforts, with a particular focus on strategic approaches for pest management planning and tolerance reassessment.
  • The Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee, a permanent, broadly representative advisory committee, meets with EPA on a regular basis to discuss issues associated with FQPA implementation.

  Meeting Agriculture's Need for Safe, Effective Pest Control Products

  • Reduce pesticide risks to human health
  • Reduce pesticide risks to non-target organisms
  • Reduce the potential for contamination of valued, environmental resources
  • Broaden adoption of IPM or make it more effective

  Addressing Major Public Policy Challenges

  • Prohibit new research for pesticides involving intentional exposure of children and pregnant and nursing women
  • Extend ethical protections in the Common Rule to other human research involving intentional exposure of non-pregnant, non-nursing adults
  • Require submission to EPA of protocols and related information to ensure any future studies meet the highest ethical safeguards
  • Require the establishment of an independent Human Studies Review Board (HSRB) to obtain expert peer review of both proposals for new research and completed third-party intentional dosing

  Providing Tailored Attention to Unique Classes of Pesticides

  Antimicrobials and biopesticides present different and special challenges from the typical agricultural pesticide. In recognition of these differences FQPA directed EPA to regulate these products in a manner consistent with their unique characteristics. Although not formally required by FQPA, EPA undertook a major organizational overhaul to deal with these challenges. The new structure dedicated separate divisions to the regulation of antimicrobials and biopesticides. The creation of the Antimicrobials Division and the Biopesticides and Pollution Prevention Division ensured that these unique materials would be evaluated by highly educated specialists who would make sure that these products receive timely and appropriate scientific and regulatory reviews.

  Conclusion

  A Bright Future – After a decade of groundbreaking accomplishments, FQPA provisions, principles, and innovative scientific approaches have become an integral part of the Agency's work. This bedrock foundation will sustain effective pesticide regulation and helps ensure that the American people will continue to enjoy one of the most plentiful, wholesome, and reliable food supplies in the world. With the tools of FQPA, the national pesticide program is equipped to meet the challenges of protecting public health and the environment for decades to come.

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