Disagreements between the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency are prompting legislators and industry leaders to question EPA pesticide use decisions as the two agencies clash publicly over the risks and benefits of agricultural chemicals.

At least five times within the past 12 months, senior USDA officials have sent letters to the EPA containing sharp, detailed criticism of EPA pesticide decisions. By law, the EPA has been required to post these letters to publicly available dockets.

In some of these letters, USDA officials write to simply get their objections to an EPA pesticide decision on the record. But in others, the officials rebuke the EPA for taking actions they specifically requested the agency not take.

Disagreements between federal agencies are not unusual, but the intensity and public nature of these ongoing disputes has caught the attention of the agriculture industry and some lawmakers.
Lawmakers Concerned

The working relationship between the two agencies was among the topics discussed in a May 2015 hearing before a House Agriculture subcommittee. At that time, legislators worried that conflicts over pesticides were preventing the USDA and the EPA from effectively carrying out their regulatory duties .

Since that hearing, the USDA has sent several more letters to the EPA expressing strong, detailed concerns over at least four additional EPA pesticide decisions.

Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), the Agriculture subcommittee’s chairman, told Bloomberg BNA that he plans to bring up the issue at a Feb. 11 full committee hearing with EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.

“We continue to see this pattern where the EPA is unwilling to work with the USDA on pesticide approval and other issues,” Davis told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail.

In a Feb. 9 e-mail to Bloomberg BNA, EPA spokesman Nick Conger said: “We value our relationship with USDA as well as all our federal partners and work closely with them on many issues of mutual concern.”