pesticide

The largest U.S. farm organization and state agriculture directors petitioned the EPA to delay the Jan. 2 implementation of revised pesticide safety rules for growers and farmworkers. Under the rules, for the first time, people under the age of 18 years will be prohibited from handling pesticides.

In California, a new law will limit prevent farmers from “banking” their use of the pesticide Telone and carrying over permits for its use from one year to the next, says The Los Angeles Times.

Special agents from EPA's Criminal Investigation Division served federal search warrants on several locations in Cape Girardeau, Dunklin, New Madrid and Stoddard counties in southeastern Missouri, tied to complaints of crop damage from pesticide drift, said the Daily Dunklin Democrat. The EPA is investigating possible misuse of the herbicide dicamba.

The U.S. appellate court in San Francisco set a deadline of March 31 for EPA to decide whether to allow continued use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, says Agri-Pulse. In its decision, the three-judge panel said there would be no more extensions of the deadline previously set for this Dec 31. The EPA had asked for six additional months.

Pesticides applied to honeybee hives to kill Varroa mites and other parasites may actually be hurting the bees by damaging bacteria in their guts, according to a study published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.

Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, has asked the EPA to revoke the Hawaii Department of Agriculture’s authority to enforce federal pesticide regulations, claiming the department’s pesticide program is understaffed and effectively failing to do its job, reports Honolulu Civil Beat. “The public is at risk and the Department of Agriculture is asleep at the wheel,” Paul Achitoff, managing attorney of Earthjustice, told Civil Beat.

New research suggests that neonicotinoids, a leading culprit in the ongoing decimation of honeybee populations, may also be snuffing out the next generation of bees by cutting the quantity and viability of sperm in male bees by nearly 40 percent, writes The Guardian.

A lawsuit filed over the weekend on behalf of consumers in California and New York accuses PepsiCo of wrongfully labeling its Quaker Oats brand “100% natural” after small amounts of the pesticide glyphosate (commonly sold as RoundUp) were detected in some oatmeal, reports The New York Times.

Seed companies will be required to encourage corn growers to take steps to keep rootworms from developing resistance to the the biopesticide known as Bt, reports DTN.

The German pharmaceutical and chemical company, Bayer, recently declined when the EPA requested that the company pull the pesticide flubendiamide off of shelves.

The U.S. food supply is generally free of dangerous levels of pesticide residue, according to federal monitors who looked at fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, oats, rice, infant formula, and salmon in 2014.

The EPA "proposed a zero-tolerance policy for food-borne residues of a pesticide widely used on edible crops nationwide, effectively ending its application to more than a dozen food crops including tree nuts, soybeans, corn, wheat, apples and citrus," reports the Los Angeles Times.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and two conservation groups launched a campaign to save the monarch butterfly that includes restoration and enhancement of 200,000 acres of habitat.

Some 118 foodmakers, including Clif Bar, Nature’s Path, Organic Valley and Stonyfield, called on the Obama administration to suspend immediately the use of neonicotinoid pesticides on grounds they are driving down honeybee populations.

The Center for International Environmental Law says the proposed U.S.-EU trade agreement "would reduce protection compared to the more stringent pesticide standards already in place in the EU and in individual U.S. states," says the Guardian.

The provincial government of Ontario proposed a three-point initiative to reduce use of corn and soybean seed treated with neonicotinoid pesticides by 80 percent by 2017, to reduce over-wintering deaths of honeybees by 15 percent by 2020 and to develop a comprehensive plan for pollinator health, says the CBC.

An updated risk assessment for chlorpyrifos, a pesticide, shows "additional restrictions may be necessary to ensure that workers who use or work around areas treated with chlorpyrifos are protected and that drinking water sources are protected," says an EPA release.

Soybean and cotton growers in Arkansas are free to spray the weedkiller dicamba on their crops until June 30 under an order from the Arkansas Supreme Court on Tuesday. It was the latest turnabout in court for use of the herbicide, which has been embraced by farmers as a tool against invasive weeds but criticized as too likely to evaporate from its target areas and land on nearby fields.