"There is a problem with information provided by the product
registrants:  it is not necessarily public."

Those results were generated using private money and you have no right to know any of the findings.  Just like I have no right to examine your income tax returns or mortgage agreements or will.  Those results are all submitted to the government as part of the registration package and you need to trust the agency people to make correct decisions.  The law requires that every test conducted be disclosed.  You can not pick and choose which are submitted.  You do the test you submit the results.

It costs something like half a billion $ to bring a new chemical molecule to market today.  That cost is for discovery and lab and field testing to meet registration requirements.  What company is going to spend that kind of money and not be able to keep the information as a trade secret?  None.  If made public every Tom, Dick and Harry garage operator with a bathtub and wooden paddle could be competing in the market place the day the patents expire.  As it takes many years to do such testing there is typically little patent life left by the time you have registration and can sell product.

Very bluntly you have no right to see those results.  You simply follow label directions during application and observe required pre-harvest intervals specified and trust that the EPA has properly done their job.  And, I will tell you those EPA people are smarter that you are in make such judgements.

Dick


" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

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