Speaking at the annual meeting of Southern Cotton Growers/Southeastern Cotton Ginners Association Jan. 21 at the Marriott Myrtle Beach Grand Dunes, Harrison Pittman said the process to register a new product and maintain registration for existing products is now more difficult, time consuming and arduous.

“Ten to 15 years ago in some of the presentations I would give I would use the term ‘regulation through litigation.’ I would say look at what these [activist] groups are starting to do, they are filing legal actions very creatively, very strategically in different places throughout the ag industry, not just with pesticides, and ultimately, they are forcing EPA to regulate in a different way,” Pittman told the cotton farmers and ginners.

“They are doing things through the court system that couldn’t be accomplished through Congress and couldn’t be accomplished through typical comments and rulemaking. That’s all come to fruition. That’s been a trend for 10 to 15 years.”

“The real target is glyphosate,” Pittman said. “That’s what the whole thing is about. The idea is if they can get the Monarch Butterfly listed [as an endangered species], for them it would be successful because for them it makes it easier to say that products like glyphosate destroy the food habitat which is primarily milkweed. Their goal is to attack the technology.”

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here