Will we ‘bee’ smart about pesticide regulation?
May 15, 2014
From: The Daily Caller
Henry Miller/Fellow, Hoover Institution
On April 29, the European Commission failed for the second time to get the votes necessary to pass a proposed two-year ban on several innovative agricultural pesticides known as neonicotinoids (“neonics”). But immediately after reporting that a “qualified majority” of member states had not been reached, the Commission’s health and consumer affairs commissioner, Tonio Borg, announced that he would institute the ban administratively.
Such is the democratic process in the E.U., where the “precautionary principle” — ban or overregulate a product, process or activity, in the absence of complete assurance of safety — reigns.
***
It was the European Commission’s wholesale disregard of these inconvenient truths that caused the independent, Washington, D.C.-based Center for Regulatory Effectiveness to conclude that in the United States, similar regulations would fail to meet the requirements of the Data Quality Act (DQA) — the U.S. law that demands that certain scientific standards be met by federal regulatory agencies.
Leave a Comment