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Bayer backs off Belt insecticide appeals

Bayer CropScience dropped a court challenge to re-register its Belt insecticide product.

Bayer spokesman Jeff Donald tells Brownfield they used the EPA’s process and tried to convince the agency to re-register flubendiamide-based products like Belt based on sound science. He says, “During that process, they basically made it clear that they just weren’t going to consider the science, that this was really going to be a decision based solely on process arguments, and so we really exhausted every option that we could.”

Bayer announced earlier this year it would appeal EPA’s decision to take flubendiamide off the market, but Donald says going any further with a federal appeals court challenge of the EPA ruling would not guarantee farmers access to the insecticide.  “The real challenge was that it wouldn’t bring back the tool for growers for some time, perhaps years, and even then, we weren’t assured of ever getting it back.”

He says an earlier Environmental Appeals Board ruling would also have been at risk in federal court.  That ruling allows farmers and distributors to use existing stocks of Belt, and it stops the EPA from using this same tactic to cancel chemical registrations in the future.

In a statement released Wednesday, Bayer’s Director of Registrations Charlotte Sanson says gains from the EAB (Environmental Appeals Board) ruling included not having the EPA use the “unique” voluntary cancellation method again, and a that allows companies like Bayer to have a clear path to challenge future EPA conditions they don’t agree with.

The EPA claimed Belt by Bayer and its similar counterparts Tourismo and Vetica from Nichino America was a risk to aquatic invertebrates, but Bayer says the science doesn’t back that up.  EPA officials say the insecticide is used on over 200 crops, including soybeans.

Bayer’s Jeff Donald talks to Brownfield’s Larry Lee about the decision to drop appeals in the Belt insecticide case.