Senate Ag Panel Clears Pesticide Registration Bill

Approval of the Pesticide Registration Enhancement Act (PREA) of 2017 (HR 1029) was secured by the Senate Agriculture Committee today by a unanimous voice vote.The version approved by the Senate ag panel would shorten the end date for the reauthorization from 2023 to 2020 via a manager's amendment offered by Senate Ag Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan. The bill still has to go through the full Senate before it will be returned back to the House for another vote."This historically noncontroversial, bipartisan legislation is vitally important to both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as farmers and farmworkers," said Roberts and Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., in a statement after the vote. "Not only does this legislation provide certainty to the pesticide industry, but it also provides new products to farmers for crop protection and to consumers to protect public health."PREA would renew the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) authority to collect fees from pesticide makers to register the products and to approve their use around humans and in the environment. It would increase by almost 12% the amount of money the agency can raise to maintain existing registrations and set aside up to $1 million for farmworker safety training. The legislation passed the House March 20. The latest version of the law expires September 30.The bill also would set aside up to $1 million for farmworker safety training. Besides the roughly 12% fee increase for existing registrations, the bill would instate two scheduled 5% fee increases — one in 2019 and the second in 2021 for product-registration service fees. The measure also would provide a $500,000 set-aside to combat bedbugs and crawling and flying insects, and require the EPA to track changes to product labels that are triggered by a safety review.