om the United States. The present system had proved ineffective because it did not require that the importing country government be informed prior to the shipment of the chemical even though the exporter had notified the EPA, which informed the State Department, which notified the U.S. Embassy in the country of destination, which informed an importing country official about the export of the unregistered pesticide.
The Bill's further proposals included: the stipulation that only countries with an effective system for assessing, classifying, and regulating the manufacture, distribution, and use of pesticides would be appropriate destinations for exporters; the intent to make the imported food supply safer by changing the regulations for permissible pesticide residues on imports; and the requirement that the EPA become more involved in informing the world about its regulatory activities and helping developing countries to build their own regulatory infrastructures. For these proposals, considerable mail-in support was received as well as by grass-roots organizations and by environmentalists. As was not unexpected, Administration agencies and departments were aligned to express their opposition including: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the Departments of Agriculture USDA), Justice and Commerce.
Proponents of the Bill, especially environmentalists, claim that the overall testing of food for pesticide residues is woefully inadequate, and that the only way to insure the safety of the food supply was to slow the use of chemicals on food products grown abroad and then shipped to the United States (dubbed the "Circle of Poison"). The importing of beef is among many examples: "Even though chlordane was banned from use in our country in the mid-1970s, it continued to be exported to Honduras. When 80,000 pounds of Honduran beef then was imported back into
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