If you're curious about the influence industry wields over national environmental policy, you need look no further than the companies that manufacture pesticides.

In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency set up the FIFRA Endangered Species Task Force (FIFRA being the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act) to generate data on where protected species are located so EPA can determine whether they are being affected by pesticides.

The task force is made up entirely of agro-chemical companies, 14 of them, and they hold regular, secret, unrecorded meetings with EPA officials. The public is neither represented nor told what transpires in these meetings.

In the past year, the task force has shifted its focus from gathering data to pushing EPA to weaken endangered species protection.

Earthjustice has been investigating this deplorable situation and is moving on several fronts. First, Patti Goldman from our Seattle office sued EPA to force the agency to regulate pesticide use as it affects salmon and steelhead in the Northwest. Industry jumped into the suit, but in the waning hours of 2003, Judge Coughenour issued a ruling that will lead to buffers along salmon streams and notices that will be posted where pesticides are sold. Interestingly, King County, which includes Seattle and many salmon streams that pass through urban areas, is eager to do the right thing and has developed point of sale warnings for urban home and garden stores.

Meanwhile, as you read this, Goldman is filing suit to open up the task force to public participation and scrutiny: It is clearly illegal under several provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

And finally, rumor has it that the EPA is about to grant the task force's primary wish that EPA stop seeking input from the Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries -- whose scientists know more about pesticides and wildlife than EPA's scientists do -- when determining how and whether to regulate pesticide sales and use. "Self-consultation" is what this phenomenon is called, and it is illegal as well.

Never a dull moment.

Tom Turner, Senior Editor
yourturn@earthjustice.org