Utah Farm Bureau officials say they are not against a proposal by President Bush to more closely regulate the pesticide industry, which includes both insecticides and herbicides, or weed killers.
The plan, which still needs Congressional approval, would cut in half the time it takes the federal government to cancel the use of any pesticide.UFB executive vice president C. Booth Wallentine said the proposal would remove the zero tolerance concept in the Food and Drug Administration's present law and establish, instead, a risk benefit analysis for chemicals that would weigh the good a pesticide does against the harm it might cause.
The plan would establish a negligible risk factor of perhaps one cancer case in 100,000. Currently, the standard is one cancer case in 1 million people exposed to a substance.
He said the plan also would establish uniform standards throughout the United States.
The new law could bring some chemicals that have not been available before onto the market and, Wallentine said, "will most certainly abolish or definitely reduce the use of other chemicals."
He said Utah farmers are not against the President's plan, "but we want to make sure that any legislation that is passed is done so after careful study and thought - not just in response to hysteria or pressure from some special-interest group.
"As a matter of fact, Utah farmers use less chemicals to grow food than most other states, especially California, which uses more chemicals per acre and more total chemicals than any other state, and Southern states, especially in the Southeast, where heat and moisture promote pest growth."
Most Congressmen and women understand, he said, "we have the safest food in the world and the least expensive and most abundant food supplies - because of the knowhow of the American farmer and the chemicals that American technology has produced.