Ensuring that fruits, vegetables, and other plants can be grown safely and productively in the United States is essential to public health. Mycogen Corporation, a small innovative company in California experimenting with multiple approaches to pest control on tomatoes, grapes, and other plants, hired N. Chapman Associates, Inc. to conduct research on one safety aspect of one promising safer pesticide and eventually hired the firm to secure approval with EPA. The process for clearance was long and arduous despite the fact the substance had no toxicities for humans except for potential skin irritation. Working with the fruit and vegetable industry and the manufacturers of safer pesticides, N. Chapman Associates, Inc. developed legislation and secured passage of language for expedited review of safer pesticides as part of the rewrite of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. Biotechnology offered promising safer pesticides, and the firm developed an analysis and recommendations for revisions of biotechnology regulations for use of at USDA and FDA, with funding from the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology.
