New, Improved Pesticide Permit Gives Opportunities to Growers

Jackie Fraser, Executive Director, AGCare

Back in the 1990s, AGCare and the Ontario Corn Producers’ Association (OCPA) fought to secure the right for farmers to import pesticides from the US for their own use if they could provide a label and chemical data to show that the imported product was identical to a Canadian registered product. The purpose was to provide some discipline over Canadian pesticide prices, which were often much higher in Canada than in the US, at the time.

The Own Use Import (OUI) program was born, administered by Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA). Although the OUI has been helpful and has resulted in significant cost-savings for producers, there is currently only one product, Clear Out 41 Plus (a glyphosate herbicide), eligible to be imported under the OUI program. The OUI program was proving cumbersome for sponsors and importers, and only a limited number of candidate products were eligible. Container disposal was also becoming a problem with only 14-17% of imported containers being recycled (versus 70% for all other containers).

In November of 2005, Health Canada assembled an “Own-Use Import Task Force” made up of national grower organizations, government staff, CropLife and the Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers (CAAR) to make recommendations regarding the issues of the current OUI
program.

The Task Force issued a report in June of 2006 making several recommendations on the OUI program as well as the registration process for generic products and harmonization. A new and improved “Grower Requested Own-Use” (GROU) program has been proposed to replace the
OUI program.

Under this new proposed GROU program, growers would request products to be reviewed through their national grower organization, and PMRA and registrants will determine identicality. This takes the onus and the cost away from the grower, simplifying the process. Grower groups identified thirteen potential candidate products to test as a “GROU pilot project” of which it has been determined that eight are materially identical, four are not, and one is still under consideration. Results of the GROU pilot and the subsequent list of products eligible for this program will be made widely available once the determination is made that the package of recommendations is, in fact, an effective substitute for the current OUI program.

Advantages of the proposed new GROU program include a simplified permit process for growers, a less cumbersome process for establishing program eligibility, and the potential for a large number of candidate products to become available very quickly creating the potential for immediate, widespread savings for growers. Containers would be managed by the CropLife Stewardship program.

The only disadvantage to growers is that products need to be “identical”, not “equivalent”, to qualify. However, given the advantages of the proposed simplified process, we will see many more products eligible than under the current program (only one).

A December 18, 2006 news release from the Canadian Horticultural Council (CHC) states that most major grower organizations (Pulse Canada, CHC, and the Canola Council of Canada) have recognized “that the suite of new programs is far better for our members. The old OUI program has inherent problems that are not in the best interest of all Canadian growers, or the public. In fact, poor container management, poor product stewardship and material product differences could feed the positions of our anti-pesticide lobbyists to our detriment.”

The recommendations have been described as “everyone got something, but no-one got everything they wanted”. The Task Force recommendations form a greater package that includes significant steps to improve and/or speed up the NAFTA label project, harmonization, access to generics, and other issues.

A joint news release from Pulse Canada, the Canadian Horticultural Council, and Grain Growers of Canada highlighted the progress made since the Task Force report was released in June.

Eight active ingredients, as well as two newly proposed ingredients, have been proposed for NAFTA labelling which will allow cross border shopping without the need for permits. “Our grower organizations created the short list of needed chemicals which would provide needed cost savings to producers”, the release states.

“A new generics system has been proposed for Canada by 2008. If this system functions well, Canadian farmers could have a rapid registration system for generics that satisfies the need for price discipline. This is a dramatic improvement over the system currently available.”

Further, a proposed project known as Project 914, could see over 200 minor uses approved if workable.

The proposed new program has not been without controversy. A company called “Farmers of North America Inc.” that is in the business of importing the only product available under the OUI program successfully lobbied the Standing Committee on Agriculture to keep the old OUI program in place. Unfortunately, this will likely keep the new GROU program “on the fence” until the current “Clear-Out 41 Plus” permit ends on June 28th, 2007.

Clearly we are making progress, but growers will need to ensure that their MPs have all the facts about this new program to counteract the lobby effort against it. AGCare has consistently supported the availability of safe new technologies, harmonization, and a swift science-based
regulatory system. The new GROU and associated programs moves us in that direction, while the old OUI program reduces new product availability and endangers growers’ ability to compete.