Registration of Plant Protection Products: Comparison of the U.S. and EU Models

Abstract

Registration of plant protection products (PPPs) is going through major changes world wide. The European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) pursue harmonization of their registration requirements, e.g., efforts in the EU have resulted in the 91/414/EEC Council Directive for the Registration of Agrochemicals. However, success is limited, since only one list of PPPs has been published and its assessment has been delayed by about 4 years. In the Americas, with the passage of the US Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) in 1996, the concept of a uniform "reasonable certainty of no harm" standard and newly adopted risk assessment criteria will require more than 8,000 tolerances to be reviewed over the next decade. In 1996, the NAFTA technical group for pesticides agreed to pilot joint reviews of applications to register low-risk pesticides. The harmonization procedure must take place at different levels to achieve its objectives. A comparison of the EU and the U.S. models points out some of the factors that ought to be taken into account in the process of mutual acceptability.