Go figure. Why would Congressman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., -- organic food champion and foe of ag chemicals – vote for a new law proposing to roll back the Delaney Clause?

What's wrong with this picture? Maybe nothing or maybe plenty.

By mid July, the bill to turn back the 1958 Delaney clause, keep food safe and make for a kinder, gentler regulation of crop protection products had become a runaway train that no one could slow and few could catch. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Food Quality Protection Act of 1996" on July 23 by a vote of 417 to zip. A couple days later, the senate passed the same measured in a voice vote.

A unanimous vote on environmental legislation> "It's made more extraordinary by the fact that the Senate took the House version and didn't even lay a glove on it," says Jay Vroom, president of the American Crop Protection Association. "It came to be perceived as a safe vote for the environment and everyone climbed on the train."

Smoke from this train is thick enough to leave each side of the issue -- ag chemical companies and radical environmentalists -- declaring an historic victory. But here's a bit of news through the haze:

Good News:

• Ding, dong, Delaney is dead. A law based on "zero risk" and the detection technology of the late 1950s is gone.
• It adds three years to EPA's re-registration schedule for pesticides. About 50 active ingredients will remain legal while being tested against a new standard.
• It's an improvement on registration for minor-use pesticides, those used on 300,000 or fewer US acres. The regulatory burden was becoming cost-prohibitive for small marker products. The new law provides some relief.

Bad News:

• Zero-risk has been replaced with words like "reasonable certainty of no harm." These words are like an amusement park for weasels. They could represent a life-time of job security for Washington lawyers.
• Assessment of health risk for products may include "aggregate" exposure to ingredients, whether that exposure comes from bathroom cleaner, laundry detergent, or crop protection products. That could complicate evaluation.
• A lot that is "non-scientific" about the bill concerns food processors.

"Anybody that thought we would reform Delaney exactly as we wanted to had to be smokin' some pretty strong stuff," says Vroom. "But I honestly believe that we've got workable legislation here."

As he notes, active vigilance will be needed to balance the competing interests while the law moves toward implementation.

We're not in Kansas anymore.

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