The Consumers Union group advocated wider use of a practice called Integrated Pest Management (IPM) which makes use of natural predators or times crops to minimize pest damage.

In particular, the group favored biointensive IPM which would allow use of reduced risk pesticides only if other tactics failed.

"We're on a pesticide treadmill" said Charles Benbrook, lead researcher for the group's report. "Not only don't chemical methods of pest control work as well as they should, they pose substantial ecological and economic risks."

Consumers Union suggested the goals of doubling crop acreage under biointensive IPM by the end of this decade and putting all household pest control under biointensive IPM by 2010. All U.S. crop acreage would come under biointensive IPM by 2020 under the group's proposed timetable.