SPP and the EPA : Pesticides and jelly beans

Remember that whole business about Canada lowering standards on pesticide use on fruits and vegetables to match U.S. regs because the U.S. found Canada's 40% more stringent pesticide regs to be "a trade irritant"?
Sure you do :

"Richard Aucoin, chief registrar of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which sets Canada's pesticide rules said "It's just common sense for Canada to work most closely with its largest and nearest trading partner".
Besides, in practice, the question of official residue limits is moot in most cases because farmers are using fewer and fewer pesticides, he said."

LA Times :

"Despite the protests of more than 50 scientists, including five Nobel laureates in chemistry, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday approved use of a new, highly toxic fumigant, mainly for strawberry fields.
Methyl iodide is a neurotoxin and carcinogen that has caused thyroid tumors, neurological damage and miscarriages in lab animals.
Methyl iodide will be manufactured by Tokyo-based Arysta LifeScience Corp. and marketed under the name Midas. Its use will be allowed on fields growing strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, ornamentals, turf, trees and vines."

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson is a Bush appointee.
Arysta's former chief executive, Elin Miller, is now a top official at the EPA.

I repeat : Why is it still called the Environmental Protection Agency?
Scientists have been quitting in droves over its cosy ties with industry.

And about that research on "lab animals".
Several years ago progressive US blogs were up in arms about a jointly-funded project by the EPA and a pesticide lobby group which offered poor families in Florida $970 and a camcorder to spray the inside of their homes, including childrens' bedrooms, with a pesticide once a day for two years and monitor the results with the free camcorder.
In 2000, Lockheed Martin paid volunteers in California $1000 to ingest toxic chemicals and pesticides under observation.
Shagya now has a vid up of Senator Barbara Boxer detailing these experiments. She points out they do not meet the Nuremburg Code forbidding the testing of "non-therapeutics" or poisons on human beings.

EPA : "Experiments on People just like at Auschwitz!"

One of the objectives of Montebello was to enhance the so-called 'smart regulation' : "undertaking trilateral cooperation to accelerate and strengthen our national and regional risk-based chemical assessment and management efforts."

From the U.S. government's SPP website : "Regulatory Cooperation in the Area of Chemicals." Objective :"enhanced coordination of chemical assessment and management programs across North America."

Stephen Harper, responding to critics of regulatory harmonization following Montebello :
"Is the sovereignty of Canada going to fall apart if we standardize the jellybean. I don’t think so."

A very good article from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives detailing how harmonizing with the EPA would allow US chemical industries to target Canadian safety regulations :
More Than Jellybeans: The SPP Regulatory Framework Agreement and Its Impact on Chemicals Regulation

Cross-posted at Creekside