Food Quality Protection Act (1996)

The Food Quality Protection Act was drafted in 1995, and was signed into law by President Clinton on August 3, 1996 This is a national act In September 2001, a Consent Decree was approved, establishing timeframes for completing certain aspects of FQPA implementation, including various pesticide tolerance reassessment.

The goal of the Food Quality Protection Act is to establish new guidelines for what is acceptable in terms of pesticides that are used on crops destined to be used as food for humans. The EPA is responsible for the administration and enforcement of this act

The FQPA established a new safety standard (reasonable certainty of no harm) that must be applied to all food commodities. The FQPA mandates that the EPA expedite the approval of reduced risk pesticides. The FQPA requires the EPA to give special consideration to pesticides used on products that have less than 300,000 acres of total U.S. production. The FQPA requires the EPA to establish a list of pests that are considered significant to public health and to give special consideration to pesticides with public health uses. The FQPA mandates the EPA to expedite the review of applications that are requesting the registration of antimicrobial products. The FQPA requires the conduction of food consumption surveys that track food consumption and related behaviors in the U.S. population. The FQPA requires that pesticide registration be reviewed periodically, with a goal of once every 15 years.