NIAGARA FALLS, Ont. – The Pest Management Regulatory Agency’s new chief bureaucrat won plaudits from Canada’s pesticide manufacturers last week by promising to create a more efficient, transparent and industry-friendly agency.
Karen Dodds, executive director of the PMRA, promised in a Sept. 22 speech to the CropLife Canada annual convention to try to make the much-maligned regulator more open to scrutiny, more co-operative with the Americans in doing joint reviews and faster in completing reviews of the acceptability of products approved in the past.
“My interest is to build the credibility of our regulatory system for pesticides, doing the things that Canadians want in a way that they support,” she said.
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But the former Health Canada bureaucrat, who was appointed last spring to the PMRA position, also made it clear she will not be a patsy for the industry.
When one delegate asked what she plans to do to promote the safety of pesticides to the broader public, Dodds said her role will be to explain the strengths of the regulatory system rather than promote the products.
“I’m not going to go out and say pesticides are safe,” she said. “If they were safe, why would we regulate?”
She noted a broad skepticism among members of the public about pesticides.
A survey that asked consumers if they considered pesticide use safe if they were applied according to label instructions produced a positive but slim response of just 52 percent. Almost half said they considered pesticides unsafe even if all the rules are followed.
“That is a message to us,” she told the room filled with representatives of pesticide manufacturers and distributors.
In fact, CropLife Canada has started an expensive advertising and publicity campaign aimed at convincing consumers that pesticide use is both safe and necessary if unwanted pests are to be kept out of fields, gardens and foods.
Dodds said she is working to make the secretive PMRA more visible, more available to the industry and the public and more willing to present data in a form that can be understood.
The Pest Control Products Act, approved by Parliament almost three years ago but still not implemented by PMRA, calls for much more information to be made available to the public about test results and procedures.
She said despite resistance and concerns about commercial confidentiality, the act could be implemented by year-end.
