Download PDF
April 27, 2018

James V. Aidala and Richard E. Engler Quoted By Bloomberg Environment Regarding Proposed Public Data Plan

The ACTA Group

On April 27, 2018, James V. Aidala, Vice President, Policy and Government Affairs with The Acta Group (Acta®) and Richard E. Engler, Senior Chemist with Acta, were quoted in the Bloomberg Environment article “Pesticide Makers Back Public-Data Plan—But Not for Trade Secrets.”

If the agency sticks with the $100 million threshold under the executive order, then the EPA decisions on whether new chemicals can enter commerce would largely be unaffected, as most wouldn’t meet that threshold, Richard Engler, a senior chemist at Bergeson & Campbell PC who was formerly a senior staff scientist in the EPA’s chemicals office.

Decisions about new pesticides would be unlikely to trigger the rule’s requirements, he said. But the EPA’s decisions about whether to reregister a pesticide used on commodity crops such as wheat, corn, or soybeans could easily trigger the rule, he added.

[…]

Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the agency still must enforce these companies’ data protections and rights, despite the call to ban “secret science,” Jim Aidala, former official of EPA’s OCSPP, told Bloomberg Environment.

But Aidala, a senior consultant with Bergeson & Campbell PC, said this could be a “tricky issue.”

“There’s a provision for a period of time [under FIFRA] when other competing companies can’t use the data to support an application [for registration], but after that time expires, competitors can use the data, but only if they agree to the FIFRA data compensation rules” to share costs with other users, Aidala said.

“They can’t just take the data and use it,” he said. “These provisions say if you generate the data to get the first approval, you have the rights to be compensated and the EPA is trying to keep that straight. But there’s the concern about making sure it [the April 24 proposal] doesn’t mess” those arrangements up.

See – https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/pesticide-makers-back-public-data-planbut-not-for-trade-secrets (subscription required)