Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee (PPDC)

Last week, NPMA staff participated in the EPA’s Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee (PPDC) at Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) in Crystal City. The PPDC is a federal advisory committee to EPA on pesticide-related issues. Of particular interest was a Managed Pollinator Protection Plan (MP3) Evaluation Metric workgroup meeting that occurred before the start of the full PPDC. This group has been tasked with making recommendations to EPA about how to best evaluate MP3s developed by states to protect managed pollinators from acute exposure to pesticides in situations not associated with applications made to fields in bloom when managed pollinators are present.

The full committee met on Wednesday and Thursday. Topics ranged from EPA’s role in the federal government’s Zika efforts, pollinator protection, neonicotinoid risk assessment, to an update on the proposed certification and training rule. Despite expectations, the final certification and training rule has not yet been released. The rule is still under review by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). We anticipate that the final rule will be released in mid to late November. Another topic of particular interest was a report on the Agency’s Proposal to Mitigate Exposure to Bees from Acutely Toxic Pesticide Products that was released in May of 2015. The policy laid the groundwork for the development of managed pollinator protection plans and outlined label restrictions on insecticides labeled for foliar applications of products toxic to bees when crops are in bloom and managed pollinators are on site. The proposed policy received over 113,000 comments, of which approximately 450 were unique comments. A final rule is scheduled for release in December 2016 or January 2017.