What you should know about the chlorpyrifos ruling

Last Thursday a federal court took an extraordinary step by ordering EPA to revoke all tolerances and cancel all registrations for chlorpyrifos. This is to be done within 60 days. This happened, despite the fact that USDA says it is a mistake to conclude chlorpyrifos is unsafe.EPA argued that administrative process deprived the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals of jurisdiction. The court basically said nonsense to EPA. The San Francisco court said “…in light of the strong individual interest against requiring exhaustion and weak institutional interest in favor of it, petitioners need not exhaust their administrative objections and were not precluded from raising issues on the merits.“In plain English, the court said that petitioners did not have to exhaust all of their administrative remedies, which is generally required. The evidence against chlorpyrifos use is so overwhelming the court will act in EPA’s stead.