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New Approaches to Minor Uses

Current as of March 30, 2009

Minor uses of pesticides are those for which the total United States production for a crop is fewer than 300,000 acres. Minor use also applies to pesticide uses which do not provide sufficient economic incentive for a registrant to support initial or continuing registrations. Minor uses include fruits, vegetables and control of disease vectors, such as mosquitos, ticks, cockroaches, rodents and disease-causing organisms.

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Minor Use Report

EPA has prepared a Report on the Minor Uses of Pesticides (30 pp,131 K, about PDF), mandated by Section 13 of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) as amended by the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 (FQPA). The report describes actions taken by EPA to increase communication with minor use stakeholders and expedite registrations for minor use pesticides. To accomplish this, EPA has designated a minor crop advisor and a public health coordinator to increase responsiveness to minor use concerns. The report also describes the coordinated approach between EPA, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) required by FQPA for dealing with minor use issues.

EPA in partnership with USDA’s Interregional Research Project 4 (IR-4) has aggressively sought to increase pesticide registrations for minor uses, registering 814 new uses in 1999 and 901 in 2000. Over 80% of the new use registrations have been for reduced-risk pesticides. Minor use priorities for reregistration and tolerance reassessment have been guided by recommendations from the EPA/USDA Tolerance Reassessment Advisory Committee (TRAC) and the Committee to Advise on Reassessment and Transition (CARAT). In conducting its minor use related activities, EPA has embraced core FQPA implementation principles including:

Minor Use Activities

FQPA requires that minor use issues be addressed in a coordinated, cross-agency manner. As a result, EPA and USDA are building on existing efforts at both agencies by increasing the involvement of stakeholders in collecting information crucial for common-sense regulatory decision making and expediting registrations of pesticides for minor uses. To increase coordination on public health pesticide issues, EPA has signed a memorandum of understanding with DHHS’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) which outlines how the agencies will collaborate on implementing the public health provisions of FQPA.

EPA’s Minor Use Team and Public Health Coordinator

EPA has a Minor Use Team that provides a coordinated, program-wide approach to minor use pesticide issues. The team includes a leader reporting directly to the Director of the Office of Pesticides Programs (OPP), and representatives from all sectors of OPP as well as USDA’s IR-4 (http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/oct96/ir4.htm) program and Office of Pest Management Policy (OPMP) (www.ars.usda.gov/opmp/). The Minor Use Team works closely with grower organizations, USDA, and other stakeholders. EPA arrived at this organizational structure with help from EPA’s Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee, USDA, and growers concerned about minor uses, including the Minor Crop Farmer Alliance, an advocacy group representing minor crop farmers.

The Minor Use Team has three primary goals:

  1. Obtaining and Using the Best Available Usage Data by; supporting processes for users to be able to provide real world data and verify that the data are used, strengthening cooperation with USDA and the minor use community to generate and/or obtain data, and using EPA’s Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program (PESP) to increase and improve communication with minor use stakeholders;


  2. Facilitating Open Dialogue with the Minor Use Community by increasing involvement with stakeholders early in the regulatory process; and


  3. Promoting Development of Reduced Risk Pesticides for Minor Uses by supporting efficacy testing of new products and working with IR-4 to expedite registration of reduced risk pesticides for minor uses.

EPA/USDA Partnerships

EPA and IR-4 have a long history of working together to register pesticides for minor crops. IR-4 shares EPA’s commitment to prioritizing registration of reduced risk pesticides, and as a result, over 80 percent of IR-4 projects support registration of reduced risk pesticides. EPA gives high priority to both minor use and reduced risk chemical reviews. EPA and IR-4 are working together to streamline processes and procedures for minor use pesticide registrations. EPA/IR-4 registration streamlining partnership projects include: developing ‘blanket’ tolerances for selected reduced risk chemicals; reducing cost and time for IR-4 field and laboratory work and shortening EPA review time; sharing work plans, allowing EPA to predict arrival of IR-4 petitions and IR-4 to group submissions to expedite reviews; streamlining the reduced risk justification for minor uses by making it less resource intensive for IR-4 to request reduced risk classification for those materials which have already been designated as reduced risk; assigning an IR-4 minor crop expert to EPA’s Office of Pesticide Program to assist with minor crop issues; and creating crop groupings, resulting in fewer data requirements and substantial savings to IR-4 and to EPA.

In response to the needs expressed by many producers of minor crops and FQPA requirements, USDA created the Office of Pest Management Policy (OPMP). This office serves as the focal point within USDA for pesticide regulatory issues. OPMP integrates and coordinates pesticide issues across existing USDA programs including:

Information Contacts

EPA Minor Use Program:

EPA-OPP Minor Use Officer: Barbara Madden, Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Pesticide Programs - Registration Division, 7505P, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20460. Telephone 703-308-6463. Email: Barbara Madden (madden.barbara@epa.gov)

EPA-OPP Specialty Crop Advisor: Pat Cimino, Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Pesticide Programs -Biological and Economic Analysis Division, 7503P, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20460. Telephone 703-308-9357. Email:Pat Cimino (cimino.pat@epa.gov)

EPA-OPP Public Health Coordinator: Susan Jennings, Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Pesticide Programs - Registration Division, 980 College Station Road, Athens, Georgia 30605-2720. Telephone 706-355-8574. Email: Susan Jennings (jennings.susan@epa.gov)

IR-4 (Interregional Research Project No. 4):

Jerry Baron - Executive Director, IR-4 Project, Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey, 500 College Road East, Suite 201W, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540. Telephone: 732-932-9575 ext.4605. Email:Jerry Baron (jbaron@aesop.rutgers.edu)

Dan Kunkel - Associate Director, Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey, 500 College Road East, Suite 201W, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540. Telephone: 732-932-9575 ext. 4616. Email:Dan Kunkel (kunkel@aesop.rutgers.edu)

USDA Office of Pest Management Policy: Teung Chin - Acting Director, USDA-Office of Pest Management Policy, USDA-SOAGRIBG, Room 3869, 1400 Independence Avenue, Washington, DC, 20250. Telephone: 202-720-5375. Email:Teung Chin (teung.f.chin@usda.gov)

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