9th Circuit Court Will Hear Case On EPA Labeling Of, Rules For Bee-Killing Pesticides
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed last week to hear the first case to challenge U.S. EPA's role in the massive loss of bees in the last decade.
Petitioners in Pollinator Stewardship Council v. EPA filed the appeal in 2013 to request changes to EPA's label for sulfoxaflor, a chemical in the neonicotinoid class of insecticides that have been linked to declining bee health and deaths. The petitioners include the Pollinator Stewardship Council, the American Honey Producers Association, the National Honey Bee Advisory Board, the American Beekeeping Federation, and beekeepers Bret Adee, Jeff Anderson and Thomas Smith. Dow Agrosciences, who developed and commercialized sulfoxaflor, has intervened on behalf of EPA.
The beekeeper groups will be represented by environmental law group Earthjustice. The case joined a number of pending legal cases on EPA's pesticide decisions under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, the law that dictates the required language on pesticide labels, said Greg Loarie, one of the Earthjustice attorneys arguing the case.
"There's very little case law in general challenging directly EPA's decisions" regarding pesticide labels, said Loarie, compared to logging challenges, clean water disputes or other environmental cases. Other recent challenges include two separate suits filed by Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council over the agency's approval of the herbicide Enlist Duo, a combination of the defoliant 2,4-D and the weedkiller glyphosate that was also developed by Dow (Greenwire, Oct. 23, 2014).
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