having pesticides registered for use in the production of food crops for human consumption and we are having great difficulty with the present situation in getting pesticides registered and reregistered.

Our growers and canners are concerned about the future ability to produce the food needed by consumers in the United States at a reasonable cost and with the quality they should reasonably expect.

Senator LEAHY. What do you see as the major reason for that problem of registering and reregistering?

Dr. CROSBY. That is complex. One of our problems could be easily resolved if we could get a clear and definite definition of use inconsistent with the labeling. We have proposed a definition of the term which we think is adequate to protect human health and the environment. It is a different approach than EPA.

We are taking the position that defining the term rather than simply saying what will be permitted under the term we think is much clearer, less confusing and would go a long way toward resolving many of the problems of use essential in the production of fruits and vegetables. We have also tackled several other areas. I will not cover them all here but one, which I think may be of interest to you in regard to an earlier discussion is this problem of economic impact assessment prior to the promulgation of regulations. It exists in the law through an amendment in 1975 for cancellations and reclassifications. It does not exist in regard to regulations. We think it should because regulations have a very significant economic impact on agriculture and the impact of regulations on our future ability to produce food, food prices for the consumer, and supply should be assessed.

I would say in regard to the compensation issue, our concern is let's get the issue resolved and move on to registration. We do not think, however, that many of the registration problems now confronting us are due to that particular issue. It is simply the inability of the Agency to get the job done.

We have had many issues which go around in circles; we are promised they will be resolved and weeks go by and they are not resolved. To me, it is the issue of finally making a decision to do something, somebody having the authority and the guts to do it.

Senator LEAHY. One of the main reasons why we are having these hearings. Obviously, our committee is concerned about the time taken and the final decisions made. We see that as a major problem. We took this out of the overall-I have an overall farm bill that is going to address it as a specific problem.

Senator Lugar.

Senator LUGAR. I have just two comments. I think Dr. Crosby has underlined the concern of all of us and I asked Mr. Costle directly this morning about the 50,000 backlog, and even after the resolution of the legal problems whether they would be able to get on with it. I am not satisfied at this point that they will, although he is suggesting greater resources might be helpful.

I asked him, as perhaps you heard, to give us some indication of what these resources are. Quite apart from the excuse that we have, the ability of the Agency to do it at all I think it is of the essence to farmers, canners, and lots of other people.

The other point is with regard to nonedible products, in this case, a crop of flowers. Of course, when we are talking about the boats, we never thought about eating them but still, the problem of getting rid of the organisms that are on boats, and so forth, I am not certain that that problem has been addressed in much of the dispute of EPA or chemical people and what have you. I hope that in our report we might underline that there are a whole subgroup of issues here, the destruction of organisms that have something to do with commerce, in this case, flowers, and in other cases the painting of ships and so forth. In order to expedite those industries we may need to have some language. I appreciate your coming.

Mr. MACDONALD. We are certainly willing to help you in any way. Senator LEAHY. Thank you very much. Your statement will be in the record, and if there are further things that occur to you that we should have before us-I believe you are going to testify before the other House.

Dr. CROSBY. We will be filing a statement for the House side. I have appeared there twice before and I think that is enough.

Senator LEAHY. You know your way around here more than most Members. If anything further comes up as a result of that, feel free to add further material.

Dr. CROSBY. Thank you, Senator.

Senator LEAHY. We will call Jacqueline Warren, and Maureen Hinkle. Jacqueline Warren is the Washington counsel and Maureen Hinkle is the pesticides monitor for the Environmental Defense Fund, and Harriet Barlow, who is a staff member of Rural America.

STATEMENT OF MAUREEN HINKLE, PESTICIDES MONITOR, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND AND HARRIET BARLOW, STAFF MEMBER, RURAL AMERICA, INC.

MS. HINKLE. Mr. Chairman, Jacqueline Warren was called to South Carolina to argue the Tris case and, unfortunately, won't be here. I am Maureen Hinkle.

Senator LEAHY. And Ms. Barlow?

Ms. BARLOW. Correct.

Senator LEAHY. Thank you. Go ahead, please.

The statements you have, again, will be a part of the record.*

I commend you for your patience. I have seen you sitting back there throughout the long, involved hearing.

Ms. BARLOW. As public interest people and women, we are used to it. Senator LEAHY. I am not sure I understand that. I don't think that there has ever been a hearing that I have chaired where either one of those factors has entered into it one way or the other.

Ms. BARLOW. It is a whole life of patience, not in relation to you. Senator LEAHY. You really develop patience if you are a Democrat from Vermont.

Ms. BARLOW. I'm a Democrat from Vermont.

Senator LEAHY. Are you?

Mr. BARLOW. From Charlotte.

*See p. 225 for the prepared statement of Ms. Barlow, and p. 220 for the prepared statement of Ms. Hinkle.

Senator LEAHY. You obviously are from Vermont. Anybody else would mispronounce the name of the town.

Ms. HINKLE. I have my statement that was prepared prior to the Tuesday, June 7 meeting with NACA, so the statement does not reflect the NACA proposal.

Senator LEAHY. Please refer to that if you would.

Ms. HINKLE. For the sake of brevity, I would like to say we appreciate NACA's attempt at being conciliatory about two very thorny issues on which we have been polarized: 3 (c) (1) (D) and the section.

10.

In regard to trade secrets, the registrant is allowed to designate whatever portions of his data is confidential, in our 10 years of existence in which we have been initiating court litigation on pesticide cases, these have involved four pesticides; DDT, aldrin/dieldrin, chlordane/heptachlor and mirex. It has taken EDF 10 years to litigate those four chemicals. That has hardly made a dent in the industry. In fact, in spite of these cancellations, and in spite of new regulations requiring additional data, each year industry reaches a record high in profits on pesticide sales.

The only way the public has access to data submitted in support of a registration is in court litigation. The public should not be required to have to go to court at an expense of over $300,000 per case. Most people can't afford it. We do not have attorney's fees. We are dependent on private foundations and on public support 50-50 percent. We should also point out that our scientists work for us for free. Scrutiny by independent parties contributes to and encourages sound scientific conclusions. In the case of aldrin/dieldrin, independent pathologists examined the slides that were submitted by the Shell Chemical Co. Independent pathologists found tumors where Shell Chemical did not. In order to resolve the difference, slides were blinded and Shell pathologists rereviewed the slides. Several Shell pathologists agreed with the independent pathologists findings so the conclusion was reached that indeed tumors were present.

Under the NACA proposal this opportunity would not be available to us. Our scientists would have to trot to Washington, at our expense or their own, and be allowed to inspect the studies, to review them, not copy anything, not take anything away, have nothing on which to rely in case they did discover that something didn't look quite like the registrant's claim.

Senator LEAHY. This is one of the areas the subcommittee's questions were directed at this morning.

MS. HINKLE. Not only are the conclusions of the pathologists on these slides sometimes not correct but summaries have been notoriously, according to the GAO and congressional investigations, inaccurate, misleading, or inadequate.

In fact, most of the data on which most of the registrations are based are inadequate and this is why EPA now has to go into conditional registrations, conditional tolerances, granting minor uses which is questionable. Major uses include cotton, citrus, fruits, corn. Is everything except major crops going to be minor? And then everything else is going to be let through? We really feel we have a valid, viable and extremely anxious interest in what the Congress does to FIFRA this time around.

Senator LEAHY. We all do.

Senator Lugar.

Senator LUGAR. You are arguing essentially a case for maximum public disclosure. Are there any conditions that you would see in which something other than total disclosure is warranted? How do you meet in any way the problems of the research people, not only the private ones that we heard today but also the public research people who felt that to some extent disclosure all the way through their procedures and so forth, inhibits the amounts of research and incentives for this type of thing?

MS. HINKLE. I thought their major complaint was about competition rather than incentive.

Senator LUGAR. I suppose the incentive being that if you do research and this is considered property, or something that is valuable that there is an incentive to do it if you think you want to keep the fruits of your labor for an x number of years.

MS. HINKLE. The incentive for developing new pesticides is, no doubt, reduced because of the increased data requirements for new chemicals. It will take from 6 to 8 years. And perhaps there should be some way of compensating them for those years. I really don't know. But, about the patents already running out or are about to run out, they only required less than 3 years of development. They have had their 17 years of exclusive protection and they really don't have an adequate complaint about exclusive patent right to those they already have had for nearly 20 years.

They do have to conduct defensive data tests but they know this probably applies to long-term data and they know they will have to supply a second oncogenic test. This isn't terribly worrisome. It is not going to put them out of business. They know they have to do it. They should want to do it.

Senator LUGAR. But, in essence, for purposes of the public interest the full disclosure, other than summaries, is of the essence as you look at it in terms of examination, filing of complaints or even publicity?

Ms. HINKLE. The National Farmers Union submitted an amendment that followed TOSCA language which would routinely disclose to the public environmental effects, efficacy and safety data. It would leave out the formula, the inerts that are deliberately added and processes of manufacturing.

There might be situations where the registrant would feel that he would have to, for purposes of competition, preserve his product and designate other similar things to that category as a trade secret. Senator LUGAR. Thank you.

Senator LEAHY. Ms. Barlow.

Ms. BARLOW. Understanding your constraint of time, I would say, first of all, that rural America supports the position of the Environmental Defense Fund fully. Also, our approach to this is somewhat different than the previous witnesses in that we are concerned with the human scale of the problem and specifically with the effect on farmworkers and on the land itself.

Many of our members and the people with whom we work are small farmers who are increasingly realizing that the economics of

major pesticide influence on the land are no longer tenable. They are personally turning to integrated pest management as a viable alternative but feel there needs to be much more expression of Federal confidence in that approach.

Senator LEAHY. Do you feel that-you are not suggesting that integrated pest management would be the answer in every instance?

Ms. BARLOW. I would remind you, from my understanding of integrated pest management, and not being a scientist I defer to those who teach me, but they are professionals in that field, integrated pest management does include the use of pesticides as necessary. But, when I was listening to Mr. Seetin, for example, I was wondering why one would insist on continuing to grow a crop that was of concern. My response would be perhaps it was time to change the crop. If that is not possible and nothing else is possible, then you use the pesticide, obviously, I am naive about this.

Senator LEAHY. Obviously, there is the commercial interest involved and commercial interests that are realistically involved for a farmer who has a

Ms. BARLOW. $70,000.

Senator LEAHY [continuing]. Combine.

Ms. BARLOW. Then it becomes partly a question of scale in my mind. Senator LEAHY. The question of integrated pest management is one that interests me a great deal. I talked with people in Vermont about this at some length and I fully intend, hopefully this year, if not by next year, to get into the question of it with this committee. As I said to the USDA people today, I want them to keep me advised personally of what they are doing in this field.

Ms. BARLOW. Could I mention one other thing?

Senator LEAHY. Sure.

Ms. BARLOW. When I came in this morning and reviewed the list of witnesses I realized again, that, while you are in Washington and the responsibility for legislating rests here and it costs a lot to get into the field-I know how expensive the hearings are there are a great many people who experience first hand the problems of the scale of our pesticide use in this country who probably would be well served to be heard. I understand the timetable this year is prohibitive although I think on the House side they are hoping to hold field hearings.

Senator LEAHY. One of the problems is having the time to go out. Ms. BARLOW. I have a long view about most everything.

Senator LEAHY. I understand. I have made statement after statement that there is no reason why the Senate has to be here as far as floor action is concerned-more than 6 months of the year. I would, in the remaining 6 months of the year, be inclined to pass a law that would require the incarceration of any Member of Congress who, during 4 months of the year is found within the area of Washington, D.C.

I would like to see us out. I would like to see us have far more field hearings. I would like to go out and see some of the forests we are talking about and this kind of thing. I am concerned that too often the people who testify, some of the farmers who testified on the problems of just raising grain, people who take out personal loans or