Top Pesticide Regulators Met With Industry To Discuss Benefits of Neonicotinoids
February 20, 2015
From: Chemical Regulation Reporter
By David Schultz
The Environmental Protection Agency’s top pesticide regulators met privately last month with pesticide industry-funded researchers to hear them make the case for the value of neonicotinoid insecticides, according to documents made public Feb. 10.
The researchers, Paul Mitchell and Pete Nowak from the firm Ag Informatics, were responding to a recently issued EPA study that found treating soybean seeds with neonicotinoids provides farmers with no significant financial or agricultural benefits.
At the Jan. 22 closed-door meeting at the EPA’s Arlington, Va., offices, Mitchell and Nowak presented the findings of their own study, which found that banning neonicotinoids would impose $848 million a year in initial transition costs on the agriculture industry and lead to huge increases in the use of older, more dangerous and less effective insecticides.
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