An active interest

Farm Chemicals, Sep 1999 by Powell, Steve

Consumer activist organizations will continue to play gadfly to the crop protection industry and agriculture at large.

FOR those in the crop protection industry speculating about the direction of activist group interest in pesticide issues in the 21st century, events last month painted a picture that perhaps illustrates who the key players will be, and how they operate. As EPA Administrator Carol Browner put the finishing touches on her speech outlining the agency's progress toward meeting the Aug. 3 regulatory deadlines imposed by the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), the activist organizations' heavy hitters strode to news conference podiums of their own to bash EPA for failing to move quickly and decisively enough.

True To Their Roots

Activist groups' attention to the Aug. 3 deadline came as no surprise to the crop protection industry; FQPA has been a rallying cry issue for activists since Congress passed the law three years ago. But the flurry of media events, releases of special "reports," and promises of litigation against EPA did serve as a refresher course about these groups -- which are lined up to serve as the industry's public opinion adversaries as crop protection technology evolves into the next millennium. And the tactics employed by various organizations to publicly hold EPA's feet to the FQPA fire seemed to typify the approaches that historically have characterized the groups.

First out of the chute was the Environmental Working Group (EWG). With the "in-yourface" style favored by EWG since its inception in 1993, the group issued a 39-page report which it claims documents EPA's lax application of FQPA regulatory mandates to the herbicide atrazine. EWG also ran full-page ads in The New York Tmes urging Vice President Al Gore to press EPA to ban the chemical.

Consumers Union (CU), true to its datacrunching heritage perfected with decades of consumer products testing, weighed in by releasing an analysis of 3,200 FQPArequired pesticide tolerance reassessments by EPA. "Our analysis shows that EPA has failed to do its job," CU's Dr. Edward Groth said. "If this were a report card, EPA would earn an 'F.'

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), meanwhile, used the FQPA deadline as an opportunity to demonstrate its long-standing affinity for litigation and the tort system. At a joint news conference with CU, NRDC announced plans for a lawsuit "to force EPA to strengthen controls on pesticides that cause cancer, disrupt the reproductive, nervous, and hormonal systems, and harm the environment." Perhaps recognizing that the public and media can only digest so much information about the supposed dangers of under-regulated pesticides, advocacy group mainstays such as Pesticide Action Network and the Public Interest Research Group opted not to add their voices to the FQPA deadline cacophony They settled instead for joining in as plaintiffs on the NRDC lawsuit.

Magnet Issue

To public affairs experts in the crop protection industry, the recent spate of advocacy groups renewing their long-standing agendas to influence public attitudes about pesticides is predictable. "Food safety is personal, it's family-oriented, it's often kid-specific," says Christopher Klose, vice president of communications for the American Crop Protection Association. "It's a natural issue for consumer interest, and that makes it a natural target for activists."

And as last month's activist feeding frenzy shows, that target will continue to draw salvos from the advocacy groups. "Activist groups have certainly developed the ability to create snappy headlines and fearsome stuff," says Klose. "Their interest is in working the news media to their ends, not in providing information with any real depth or validity."

Reggie James, director of CU's Southwest regional office in Austin, TX, counters, `The message we hear from the industry says you can either have no food, or you have to accept pesticides. We really don't think that's what the choice is. A lot of farmers have proved they can avoid the use of things that are hazardous to health."

Anti-Ag War Nothing New Debate about the use of pesticides in food production has been fertile ground for consumer advocacy for decades. Indeed, some consumer advocacy leaders trace their organizations' involvement in pesticide use issues back to when the crop protection industry was in its infancy. "We have always had a strong interest in food safety," James says. "Our interest goes back to before Alar, even before Rachel Carson and Silent Spring. In fact, soon after CU was founded in 1936, some of the first issues we looked at involved the presence in milk of arsenic and other pesticide products used on farms back then."

Such "involvement" by activist groups throughout the years has generated many of the crop protection industry's public affairs low points. Activists often cite the 1989 Alar controversy as a showcase triumph.

Going back further, in the early '70s, consumer activist icon Ralph Nader's Center for the Study of Responsive Law made pesticides and food safety one of its central issues. So-called "Nader's Raiders" authored "The Chemical Feast" (1970), an investigative report on FDA's supposedly lax oversight of pre-EPA food production, and "Sowing the Wind" (1971), a frightening report which claimed cancer-causing residues in food resulted from the widespread