Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 6/7/19

An interagency working group tasked with improving how the government evaluates the impact of pesticides on endangered species and their habitat held its first official meeting on Thursday. Top officials from the departments of Interior, Commerce, USDA, EPA and the Council on Environmental Quality have convened informally for years, but the 2018 farm bill codified the process and requested that regular updates be sent to Congress.

Fix is needed: EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who leads the working group, described as "broken" the government's consultation process for ensuring approved pesticide uses and other federal actions don't jeopardize endangered species. He noted the agency has more than 600 pesticide registrations to review by 2022 and said the workload will be a challenge without a more timely and transparent consultation process that can withstand legal challenges.

How it works: Most pesticides used by the agriculture industry must be registered with EPA before they can be used; the agency by law must review them every 15 years. As part of that process, EPA works with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or National Marine Fisheries Service to minimize harmful effects on threatened and endangered species.

But if harm can't be avoided, the agencies prepare a lengthy biological opinion to determine whether a pesticide is likely to "jeopardize the continued existence" of certain species. Such opinions are rarely conducted.

The complex consultation process has long been bogged down. A number of factors contribute to the problem, including disagreement among federal agencies over what research and data to use when evaluating pesticides; litigation by environmental groups; and the agriculture and pesticide industries' political influence in Congress and at federal agencies.

Back in 2017, top political appointees at the Interior Department, including Secretary David Bernhardt, who was then serving as deputy secretary, blocked the Fish and Wildlife Service from publishing a biological opinion on three widely used pesticides and also started a process to apply a more narrow standard for determining risks, The New York Times reported.

That opinion had found that two of the pesticides — malathion and chlorpyrifos — were so toxic that they jeopardized the existence of more than 1,200 endangered birds, fish and other animals. The interagency working group is expected to develop a new standard for determining risks.