The Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 was hailed by agriculturalists and agrichemical suppliers as a replacement -- finally -- for much maligned Delaney Clause.

However, after the champagne bottles were emptied, a sobering reality set in...the Delaney replacement legislation is just about as unpalatable as what it replaced, according to Larry Hodges, senior registration manager for Rhone-Poulenc Ag Co.

Hodges told pest control advisors at R-P's 1997 Vegetable Conference in Monterey, Calif., that agricultural lobbyists were caught napping during the final days before passage of the Food Quality Protection Act when last minute amendments were slapped on the act and, as a result, the federal Environmental Protection Agency is struggling with implemntation of the law. It is almost creating gridlock as the agency tries to figure out how to reallocate existing resources to meet the law's reporting and tolerance setting requirements.

The fallout of this, he says, will likely be a slowdown in federal pesticide registrations and a severe cutback on the granting of Section 18 emergency registrations because manpower will be redirected at setting tolerances on the 9,300 products [sic, tolerances] currently registered by EPA, says Hodges.

"This has to be completed within the next 10 years, with a third of these within the next three years. And, six months has passed since the law was passed and nothing has been done," Hodges says.