Ag Regulatory Update
By Oregonians for Food and Shelter,
This week, the natural resource organizations serving on Oregon’s Pesticide Stewardship Partnership Advisory Group since the Advisory Group’s inception, including OFS, Oregon Farm Bureau, Oregon Association of Nurseries, and Oregon Forest Industries Council, submitted a resignation letter and withdrew our support for the program. After attempts over several years to highlight the egregious errors being made by DEQ with the analysis, interpretation and reporting of the water quality sampling data, it has become clear that the agency is making an intentional decision to ignore established scientific protocols and proceed with biased methods that vastly overstate both risk and impacts, making it impossible to develop targeted education and outreach. At the same time, ODA is proposing to raise fees paid by pesticide registrants, whose fees have supported this program for decades. We cannot support increased costs paid by our members toward a program that is no longer serving its intended purpose or producing measurable results for the state. We will continue to raise this issue with agency and state leaders and legislators, as we firmly believe it is a foundational expectation that our state agencies adhere to rigorous and defensible scientific principles and standards as they carry out their mandates.
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