I'm sorry but this cannot go unanswered.  I will also apologize in advance for the extensive quotes but this must be answered in detail.  First the disclaimers - I am not a lawyer and I am most especially not YOUR lawyer.  If you want legal advice, talk to someone licensed in your jurisdiction. 
 
> You only need to look at the FIFRA definition of "State" to see that the 50 states are excluded from the definition of "STATE".  <snip>
>> (aa) STATE.—The term ‘‘State’’ means a State, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and American Samoa.
> Please note the capital "S" in State, which denotes a national government, and not a political subdivision known as a state.  By defining "State" to mean the federal government or possessions/territories (ie, federal zone) FIFRA would pass constitutional muster.  <snip>
 
While the copied definition of "State" from 7 USC Sec 136 (aa) is exact, this interpretation of it is false.  "State" as used there and throughout the rest of the US legal code does mean the sovereign jurisdiction that we commonly think of as a "state" - that is, Delaware, Ohio and all the rest.  Capitalization only means that it is a defined term.  In this case, it was defined within the context of 7 USC 136 to explicitly add the non-state territories - DC, Guam, et al - an addition which might not match the common definition.  That does not, however, remove the more general definition.  

See for example 1 USC 2 which defines the word “county” to include "a parish, or any other equivalent subdivision of a State or Territory of the United States."  That clause would be nonsense if one tried to use the the limited definition of "State" above.  
Another example - Look to 4 USC 112 which reads "The consent of Congress is hereby given to any two or more States to enter into agreements or compacts for cooperative effort and mutual assistance in the prevention of crime and in the enforcement of their respective criminal laws" - another clause that would be nonsense under the paltry definition offered above.
A third example - You can also look to the Constitution itself which consistently uses "State" capitalized and clearly meaning the sovereign states.
 
> This means that the federal government only has the power to regulate pesticide labels on areas the federal government has jurisdiction over, ie "federal zone".
 
False.  This line of reasoning ignores the federal preemption powers which flow from those responsibilities which are explicitly assigned to Congress.  In this case, Congress is drawing its authority from the Commerce Clause.  ANY interstate commerce is sufficient to trigger the law.
 
Okay, there actually may be a tiny loophole here.  If you made the pesticide within your home state using only raw materials and labor from your home state, advertised and sold it only within your home state, used it only within your home state and there were zero interstate effects (stream runoff, transport by fauna, contaminated honey, etc), you MIGHT be able to argue that the Commerce Clause is insufficient to grant the federal authority.  There are a very few precedents in this regard (mostly in the area of firearms licensing) but it is an uphill battle and the Supreme Court decisions are clear that Congress' commerce powers are broad.
 
None of the pesticides in discussions on this list could possibly qualify for the loophole above.
 
On a broader note, you just have to look at the EPA's published list of enforcement actions to see that they clearly have jurisdiction to enforce the label.  (States have primary jurisdiction and responsibility to enforce the law but the EPA is authorized direct civil enforcement through administrative actions.)  FIFRA even has its own category in the list of federal enforcement actions and none on the list are limited to "federal zones".
 
> The US House of Representatives' Office of the Law Revision Counsel observes that of the 50 titles in the US Code, only 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 23, 28, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 44, 46, and 49 have been enacted into positive law.
> FIFRA is USC Title 7, which isn't on the list.  Enough said.
 
This fundamentally misunderstands what is meant by "positive law".  Most laws are passed with a common name like the Taft-Harley Act but they affect multiple sections of the US code and may get chopped up when they are administratively compiled into the various USC sections.  The original law is called the Statute At Large.  Obviously, there is potential for confusion when the law is compiled and the legal standard is that whenever there is confusion, the original wording controls.  Some laws, however, are brought into the USC intact.  The OLRC has been working on a project to clean up many sections of the code and re-enact them as a unit to eliminate the potential confusion.  What the OLRC said is merely that only the listed USC sections have so far been enacted by Congress as a single unit.  
 
FIFRA is an example of a Statute At Large - a law passed as it's own discrete entity but (especially with the amendments) affecting multiple subsections of the code.  FIFRA was organized into USC 7 and the wording is largely identical so there is little potential for confusion but if there were, you would have to go back to the original FIFRA statutes and amendments to clear it up.  Nothing in this argument undermines the enforcability of FIFRA itself. See http://uscode.house.gov/codification/legislation.shtml for the OLRC's own explanation of Positive Law Codification.
 
> In 1904 Ohio passed legislation for the inspection of apiaries.  It wasn't until 80 years later those inspection laws were ruled unconstitutional.
 
This is true but largely irrelevant.  The case was Allinder v State of Ohio, 808 F.2d 1180.  Ohio's apiary inspection law was found unconstitutional because as it was then written, it allowed warrantless searches.  The constitutional violation was clear.  The underlying point that it can take many decades for the constitutional violation to be decided is true but it took 83 years here because nobody seriously challenged the law in all that time.  The EPA's jurisdiction under FIFRA has been aggressively challenged many times and consistently upheld.
 
> (It should also be noted that under a FOIA request in 2012, Ohio was unable to find a single citation or prosecution under a beekeeping law since the laws were put on the books.)
 
This is also true and it's an appalling indictment on our collective will to enforce the laws.  This I believe is the real problem.
 
So back to the original question.  Yes, FIFRA and its enabling regulations mean that "the label is the law" and while you might not get prosecuted for violating the label, that's an enforcement failure, not a problem with the underlying law.
 
Mike Rossander

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