The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) closed a 30-day public comment window on 21 September on a proposed legal settlement that binds it to a firm date for deciding the future of five neonicotinoid insecticides on food crops. Under the agreement, filed under docket EPA-HQ-OGC-2026-6172, the agency must issue a final decision on or before 30 April 2027 on whether to revoke all food-residue tolerances for acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam.

The settlement, published in the Federal Register on 20 August 2026, resolves a case brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in the DC Circuit. NRDC petitioned EPA in May 2020 to revoke tolerances for all neonicotinoid residues on food, arguing the compounds pose unacceptable risks to pollinators and human health. When the agency had not acted after more than five years, the group filed a claim of unreasonable delay in October 2025. Rather than litigate, EPA and NRDC negotiated a schedule for a decision without settling what that decision will be.

The agreement revokes nothing on its own. It obliges EPA to make a formal choice, to revoke the tolerances in whole or in part or to leave them in place, by the April deadline, and the litigation stays in abeyance while that clock runs.

The five actives are among the most widely applied insecticides in US agriculture, used as seed treatments on the large majority of maize and a significant share of soybean acreage, and as foliar sprays across row and specialty crops. Revoking their food tolerances would not cancel the registrations, which is a separate action, but it would make it effectively illegal to sell treated food domestically, which in practice would force registrants and growers to abandon most current uses.

EPA has run a multi-year registration review of the neonicotinoid class, issuing draft risk assessments, proposed interim decisions and reopened comment periods without reaching final tolerance decisions on these five compounds. The settlement turns that open-ended review into a court-enforceable deadline.

Grower groups, CropLife America and the registrants, including Bayer, Syngenta and Mitsui Chemicals, which holds clothianidin, were expected to file comments before the settlement is finalised, given the acreage and revenue tied to the products. Environmental and public-health groups aligned with NRDC are expected to back the fixed date.

Photo: Huwmanbeing / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

Source: Global Agriculture