US Rep Pombo (R-Stockton) pushing pesticides

[pracko at earthlink.net]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: US Rep Pombo (R-Stockton) pushing pesticides
Date: Sat, 13 May 2000 12:08:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Faramarz Nabavi <socalgreens at yahoo.com>


Please pass this information along to people focused
on protections against pesticides, and especially to
interested people in the congressional district
between Sacramento, Stockton, and Tracy, CA
(http://www.house.gov/pombo/district/district.htm). 

--------------------------------

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/051300-01.htm

Going Backwards:
Pesticide Coalition Tries to Blunt Regulation  
by George Lardner Jr. and Joby Warrick  
  
When Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.) introduced the
Regulatory Fairness and Openness Act of 1999, he said
it was needed to improve the process of regulating
potentially dangerous pesticides. Pombo's colleagues
have since rallied to his cause, with a majority of
the House and 38 senators signing on to the
legislation. 
But, unknown outside the small circle of those
involved in the drafting process, much of the text of
the bill was written not on Capitol Hill but in
Arlington, by a consulting firm working for a
coalition of pesticide manufacturers, agricultural
organizations and food processors. Many of those at
the firm previously worked on pesticide regulation at
the Environmental Protection Agency.

The legislation would make it more difficult for
federal regulators to restrict existing pesticides
while giving manufacturers broad leeway to introduce
new ones.

Pombo and his allies say his measure deals only with
"process" and does not change any of the laudable
goals or "basic structure" of a sweeping food safety
law passed unanimously by Congress four years ago.
Critics say it would effectively undo the protections
put in place in 1996. No immediate hearings are
planned.

The large number of congressional sponsors of the bill
is in part a measure of the intensity of the lobbying
campaign by supporters. Chemical and agribusiness
trade groups have mounted an aggressive campaign on
Capitol Hill, sponsoring "lobbying days" that bring
farmers to Washington to meet with their
representatives.

Articles and editorials in the farming trade press
predicted that continuing with the current law would
produce economic disaster for growers and mean less
fresh fruit and vegetables for children, who would
suffer more illnesses and deaths as a result. One
November article in the magazine The Packer even
likened EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner to infamous
mass murderer John Wayne Gacy.

The 1996 law set a new, stringent safety standard for
using pesticides, requiring "a reasonable certainty of
no harm" for raw and processed food. It focused on
making sure that food was safe for children, requiring
that permissible exposures to pesticides be reduced
tenfold to protect infants and children unless the EPA
was presented with "reliable data" showing that so
great a reduction was unnecessary.

The extra protections for children were urged by a
1993 report of the National Academy of Sciences, which
concluded that developing brains and bodies are
especially vulnerable to damage from the neurotoxins
present in many pesticides. While the EPA had
occasionally established additional safety margins for
children, the academy's scientists said the threat to
children's health was grave enough to warrant applying
the protections in every case, unless there was solid
evidence showing that extra safeguards weren't needed.

The Pombo bill essentially would reverse the burden of
proof, requiring the EPA to provide detailed
justification before it sought to apply any additional
safety margins for children. The agency would face new
obligations to explain itself whenever it used
computer models or statistical assumptions "in the
absence of data that could be obtained."

At the same time, manufacturers that want to register
new types of pesticides would still be allowed to use
assumptions or calculations rather than conducting
studies, making it easier for them to sell new
compounds at the same time it would be harder for EPA
to restrict old ones, opponents say.

An outspoken defender of private property rights who
once said the "eco-federal coalition owes more to
communism than to any other philosophy," Pombo says
his proposed rules are needed to keep the EPA from
making worst-case assumptions and rushing to judgments
without "doing the science."

But others instrumental in the passage of the 1996 law
disagree. "The Pombo bill would be a major step
backward," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.). "It
would guarantee that the law we passed would never be
implemented." Rather, he said, the EPA should be
moving "faster and more forcefully to deal with
pesticides that are a threat to human health. I
certainly don't think we should put barriers in their
way."

The Pombo bill is almost a word-for-word duplicate of
a typewritten draft dated March 22, 1999, and marked
in hand-writing "IWG," for Implementation Working
Group, the coalition of pesticide manufacturers,
agricultural interests and food processors. It was
composed on IWG's behalf at Jellinek, Schwartz &
Connolly Inc. by JSC vice president Edward C. Gray, a
former EPA attorney and head of EPA's pesticides
branch. He identified it when supplied with a copy as
"a draft I helped prepare for IWG."

The document was obtained by the Environmental Working
Group which provided it to The Washington Post. The
head of the Environmental Working Group, Kenneth Cook,
asserted that Pombo "broke House ethics rules" if he
"took money from the pesticide industry; asked it to
write a sweeping pro-pesticides bill for him; then
represented it as his work product."

Pombo, who has received about $23,000 from IWG members
for his 1998 and 2000 election campaigns, angrily
denied any impropriety and accused environmentalists
of trying to tarnish his bill by saying industry wrote
it. He said environmentalists should look to
themselves for all the legislation they help draft.

"The bill I introduced started with this office,"
Pombo said. "Did I ask them [IWG] for input? Sure I
did. I asked a whole bunch of different groups for
input on the draft legislation."

According to an advisory opinion Pombo obtained from
the House ethics committee following a call from The
Post, "you may consult with an outside organization on
issues and accept such memoranda, legislative drafts
and other materials that it chooses to prepare," the
advisory said. "However, as a general matter, it would
be impermissible for you to request or suggest that a
private organization prepare any such materials for
you. Put another way, you may not utilize employees or
agents of a private organization as de facto
congressional staff members."

A rancher from Tracy, Calif., Pombo said he decided to
push for legislation after meeting in Stockton around
the late summer of 1998 with growers of grapes, pears
and various minor crops worried that an EPA crackdown
might put them out of business.

Pombo said he put together a bill "over the next
couple of months" when someone from the Implementation
Working Group apparently heard about it and asked to
see it. "We shared a draft with them," Pombo said.
"That became the draft everybody was working off."

IWG Chairman Mark Maslyn, deputy Washington office
director of the American Farm Bureau Federation,
confirmed the sequence. He said his group was devoting
its attention, with Jellinek, Schwartz & Connolly
serving as staff, to commenting on the rules that the
EPA was drawing up "when the Pombo bill surfaced"
around mid-February of 1999.

According to Maslyn, the IWG didn't particularly like
what they saw. "It was rough and a little bit
hard-edged," Maslyn said. "Had he worked with people
with experience in drafting legislation, certainly if
he had consulted us, we would have suggested he do
things a little differently. . . . Our interest was in
legislation that didn't do anything foolish or
adverse."

Gray was assigned to come up with an IWG version.
"There was a feeling that if bills [on this subject]
were going to be floating around, it would be good to
have one instead of many and it would be good if our
ideas were in it," he said. "I was the guy with the
typewriter."

Pombo's bill has attracted an impressive assortment of
cosponsors, with 219 in the House and 37 backers of a
similar bill introduced in the Senate by Chuck Hagel
(R-Neb.). The list includes Rep. John D. Dingell
(Mich.), ranking Democrat on the Commerce Committee,
who said he is concerned about the uncertainties
confronting "Michigan agriculture in particular
because of its high number of minor-use crops" such as
asparagus, beans and ornamental plants. Minor crop
growers are fearful that pesticide companies faced
with the expenses of new tests for each use might
abandon asparagus, for example, in favor of major
crops such as wheat and corn.

Even without the Pombo bill, farm and industry groups
have already racked up a string of victories. After
the passage of the 1996 bill, the EPA promised fast
action on the riskiest pesticides, particularly a
group known as organophosphates or OPs, nerve agents
originally developed by Nazi Germany in the 1930s. But
in the law's first three years the agency imposed use
restrictions last August on only two OPs, methyl
parathion and azinphos methyl, known as Gulthion.

Methyl parathion, used on more than a dozen major
fruits and vegetables, was allowed for use until this
spring's growing season. Apples sold during the
winter, as a result, continued to show potentially
dangerous levels of the chemical, according to a
laboratory analysis last week by the Environmental
Working Group.

"Pesticide levels in two [samples] were so high that a
2-year-old would exceed the government's safety
standard just by eating half an apple," the EWG said
in its report.

Vice President Gore waded into the controversy over
how to implement the law in May 1998 after warnings
from Democratic members of Congress that rumors of an
imminent ban on widely used pesticides were causing an
uproar in key political states. In a memo widely
hailed by agribusiness, Gore ordered establishment of
a panel to review pesticides and directed that the
Department of Agriculture--long viewed by
environmentalists as favoring the pesticide interests
of farmers--be included in "a sound regulatory
approach" that would give "due regard" to the "needs
of our nation's agricultural producers."

Environmentalists named to the review panel walked out
after several meetings. Cook, president of the
Environmental Working Group and the first to quit,
said that "overall, pesticide risks have only gotten
worse during the Clinton administration," which he
described as "unwilling to act to reduce those risks
in deference to the economic concerns of agribusiness
groups, pesticide companies and food processors."

For their part, farm groups lobbying for Pombo's bill
say the EPA's interpretation of the law is already
hurting growers and eventually could put many out of
business. Risks from pesticides are being "vastly
overstated" in the absence of real-world data showing
actual harm to children or anyone else, Arizona Farm
Bureau President Ken Evans said in 1998 testimony to
Congress.

"It [EPA's policy] will increase prices and reduce the
quality, selection and availability of the most
abundant, wholesome and affordable food supply in the
world," Evans said. "It will reduce, not enhance,
consumer's and children's opportunities for healthy
diets."

Staff researcher Lynn Davis contributed to this
report.

Revolving Door?
The consulting firm that helped write the Pombo bill,
Jellinek, Schwartz & Connolly Inc., employs a number
of former senior managers of the Environmental
Protection Agency (former EPA positions are listed
below in parentheses).

Steven D. Jellinek (Assistant administrator for
prevention, pesticides and toxic substances)

Dan Barolo (Director of Office of Pesticide Programs)

Judith Hauswirth (Chief of toxicology branch of Office
of Pesticide Programs)

Edward C. Gray (General counsel for pesticides)

Edwin F. Tinsworth (Deputy director of toxic
substances office)


© 2000 The Washington Post Company 

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