In the notice that it was eliminating the regulations, USDA officials wrote that “upon reviewing these regulations, USDA has determined that they should be rescinded due to their obsolescence.” The agency hadn’t been collecting the records since 2012 due to funding constraints, they wrote. They added that 23 states have their own recordkeeping regulations, and some pesticide applicators keep records to comply with a different rule, the EPA’s Worker Protection Standard (WPS). However, that leaves 27 states without state-level regulations, and the WPS requirements are different and don’t apply to all farms.
In rescinding the regulations, the USDA did not follow the typical rulemaking process of proposing a change, taking public comment, and then finalizing it.
In the notice, the agency officials said the regulations are “not a priority” and that “to the extent there is any uncertainty about the costs and benefits [of the regulations], it is the policy of USDA to err on the side of deregulation.”
“That says it all,” Feldman said. “Federal agencies should be erring on the side of protecting public health and the environment, not erring to protect a political motive to deregulate.”
Coming on the heels of the Make America Healthy Again report, which calls some attention to how exposure to chemicals may be harming children, he said it’s yet another example of how the Trump administration’s actions fly in the face of its messaging. “MAHA comes along and is pointing to all of those problems,” he said. “One could argue quite easily that deregulation will make all of that worse.”
