settlements to the manufacturers. The debate over classifying pesticides was prominent. The House of Representatives’ bill wanted relaxed classification and the Senate during their Agriculture subcommittee hearing wanted stronger requirement for classifying chemicals in order to keep them off of agriculture land, waterways, and consumer’s food as much as possible. Due to the debates and amendments that could not be agreed on, the bill had to be discussed by members from both the House and the Senate because the Senate bill was not passed in the house so it went to a conference committee on October 5, 1972.
The conference report touched on all 26 sections of the bill with the final amendments stating that the house would recede from their disagreement to the amendments of the senate bill. The amendments and debates intensely discussed the language use in the bill, and spent a lot of time choosing their words carefully. A main compromise that went into the final version of the law was “substantial effects on the environment” was changed to “unreasonable effects on the environment.” It went from taking into account public interest to taking into account the economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits of using the pesticide. This compromise was made to a Senate amendment after it went through its second committee, the commerce committee. This ended up making the regulations a little less strict. With many proposals suggested for the indemnification process, the final version determines that administrators and manufacturers of pesticides will not be indemnified but they should be able to call hearings when they believe it is useful rather than just getting issues of intent to cancel their product. This allows them review of their product before placing a stigma on their product. The compromise that came about over classification of chemicals and pesticides ended with giving the administrator the decision in cancelling or changing classification. It also allows participation by outside parties in suspending use and classifying chemicals. The Senate amendments that were fully approved were having the manufacturer apply for registration of a product with all test data to the EPA and ensure no information is hidden from the public on ground that it’s a trade secret. Another amendment by the Senate permits citizen
suits against the manufacturers of the chemicals and the EPA if they do not regulate the chemicals properly. From the conference committee, we see in order to get the bill onto the floor and passed by either house they had to let go of certain issues to get some of their priorities on the bill. It is also important to maximize production of crops but keeping health and the environment safe. This bill that went through the commerce committee was debated amended and passed the senate 71 yeas and 0 nays. After the conference committee the House voted on the bill 198 yes and 99 noes and 134 no votes. President Richard M. Nixon signed the 1972 Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act on Oct. 21, which passed the 92nd congress in the 2nd session. He made a statement with his signing about the need for regulation since the widespread use of pesticides after WWII. He believed the best parts about the new public law were the federal regulation and control of pesticides especially as they move to intrastate commerce. In addition, it was important the law addressed misusing pesticides and the importance of registering and labeling them. This bill was passed in the second session of the 92nd congress. By the 99th congress some environmental groups and congressman still wanted higher state authority for pesticide levels in food. This legislation interacts closely with the difficulty we have seen with environmental policies throughout different conferences because at this time still no comprehensive bill was introduced to protect food, ground water, liability for damages by pesticides, and extending patents for pesticides. Although bills are introduced to become more stringent, there tends to be to many contradicting ideas and scientific uncertainty and they amend them to become similar to old legislation. Our government was made to make legislation difficult in order to reduce the probability of tyranny. The house, senate and executive rule are put into practice for power control but when if comes to environmental legislation is makes it difficult for bills to pass because of contradicting interests between development and conservation and the continuous scientific uncertainty because there will always be future repercussions that cannot be fully predicted.