EPA Considering Petition to Require Submittal of Efficacy Data for Neonicotinoids and Other Systemic Insecticides

On November 24, 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it is accepting comments on a petition for rulemaking submitted by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), and several other groups. The petition asks EPA to amend regulations implementing the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) to require submission of efficacy data for neonicotinoid insecticides and other systemic insecticides (both for existing and any pending or future registrations) and to review currently registered products in view of that data. Comments are due by January 23, 2024. The full petition for rulemaking can be found in the docket at EPA-HQ-OPP-2023-0428.

The requested change would be a paradigm shift in how EPA evaluates a large percentage of the pesticide products it registers and would create significant administrative burdens on EPA. Against the backdrop of EPA’s longstanding procedure for evaluating registration applications, the petition in effect challenges the rationality of EPA’s prior registration decisions for a large number of widely used pesticide products. Neonicotinoid insecticides include clothianidin, thiamethoxam, and imidacloprid. Systemic pesticides are chemicals absorbed by an organism that make the organism toxic to pests; they include fipronil, flupyradifurone, and sulfoxaflor. Petitioners do not define the extent of what active ingredients would be considered “systemic insecticides” for purposes of their proposal, though they do reference a list maintained by a third party. See Xerces Society’s “Systemic Insecticides List.”