As interest grows in biopesticide use, navigating international regulations remains a complex challenge. Made possible by a Washington State Specialty Crop Block grant, this report from BCI explores biopesticide regulations across eight key U.S. export markets, helping producers, manufacturers, and exporters to remain compliant and competitive.
Integrated pest management (IPM) officially entered the U.S. agricultural zeitgeist in 1972 when President Nixon highlighted it as a part of his proposed environmental program. Balancing effectiveness with environmental responsibility, the IPM approach to pest control is predicated on a thoughtful, science-based evaluation of a given pest’s impact on agricultural output prior to pesticidal intervention. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identifies four key steps in the IPM framework:
- The setting of action thresholds, which requires evaluating at which point it is economically unacceptable to not address a given pest. Naturally, this varies from crop to crop, but it is a critical step that mitigates potentially overaggressive pest control actions.
- The monitoring and identification of pests, which allows producers to understand the types and numbers of pests in and around their crops. This monitoring helps to inform when a given action threshold has been exceeded.
- Non-pesticidal prevention efforts, which can vary from thoughtful crop rotation to the planting of pest-resistant crops. The key to this step is using methods that pose little to no risk to human or environmental health.
- Judicious control, which is, typically, the final step involving the ramping up of chemical use from targeted application all the way to broad-spectrum pesticide use. When able, the goal should be to avoid using higher risk pesticides for this step.
Since Nixon’s environmental program pitch in the 70’s, interest in IPM practices has grown over the years with both private and public IPM initiatives, groups, and task forces becoming commonplace.
With many countries and regions, such as Japan and the European Union, launching biopesticide-focused initiatives with the goal of better facilitating the registration process, understanding the sometimes-disparate regulatory landscapes will become more and more important in the years and decades to come.
Here at BCI we’ve experienced this growth firsthand in our conversations with Washington growers about biopesticides. Biopesticides are pesticides derived from a natural source such as plants, animals, microorganisms, and fungi. As a complement to conventional pesticides, biopesticides are, typically, used in rotation with their conventional counterparts to sustainably manage resistance, residues, and plant and soil health, making them a valuable tool in an IPM approach.
Questions like these are common among growers:
- Will biopesticide maximum residue level (MRL) exemptions in the U.S. be accepted abroad?
- Where can a given country’s list of MRL exemptions be found? And how can a biopesticide be added to the list?
- What are the competent authorities in charge of biopesticide regulation in a given market?
As BCI investigated these questions, it became clear that there was a major gap in the understanding of international biopesticide regulations. Some markets have clear regulations, while others do not, making compliance a challenge. As such, with support from a Washington State Specialty Crop Block Grant, BCI undertook a review of how biopesticides are regulated in eight key U.S. export markets. Paired with subject matter expert interviews, this review culminated in the report accessible here.
Broadly, the report reveals a regulatory landscape dominated by ad hoc determinations and case-by-case exemptions. This contrasts starkly with biopesticide’s synthetic cousins, whose regulations have made leaps and bounds toward international harmonization. That said, with many countries and regions, such as Japan and the European Union, launching biopesticide-focused initiatives with the goal of better facilitating the registration process, understanding the sometimes-disparate regulatory landscapes will become more and more important in the years and decades to come.
Putting this report together was a real team effort at BCI with several staff members contributing. If you have any questions about this report or would like help navigating international biopesticide regulations, we’d be happy to help. Please visit our website here for contact information or to submit an inquiry.
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