Saying federal environmental regulators still have work to do, a federal appeals panel has struck down the U.S. EPA's approval of the use of the antibiotic streptomycin as a pesticide on citrus crops in California and elsewhere in the U.S.
The ruling was hailed as win by environmental activists, but comes at a time when U.S. citrus crops are reeling under various blights, and growers are struggling to find viable solutions.
The case landed for the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as a petition from a coalition of environmental groups and organizations advocating for migrant farm workers to review the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2021 approval of the use of streptomycin on a group of citrus fruits, including lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruits.
The approval came at the request of citrus growers, tech company GeoLogics and agricultural services company AgroSource, who believed the use of pesticides containing streptomycin can give growers a new tool against the blight.
Streptomycin has been used safely for decades as an antibiotic in agriculture, veterinary medicine and human medicine. Since the 1950s, the compound has been used to attack bacterial diseases in plants, and has been used on a wide variety of other fruits and vegetables, including apples, pears, beans, peppers, celery and tomatoes.
The citrus growers wished to deploy streptomycin against the conditions known as citrus greening, an incurable bacterial disease carried by an invasive insect from Asia, and citrus canker, a bacterial illness carried in the wind.
The two blights have devastated U.S. citrus yields by as much as 42 percent or more.
Streptomycin pesticides were granted an emergency approval by the EPA for use in California and Florida after 2015, and in 2018, the agency launched the process to grant full approval for use throughout the country.
In 2021, the agency issued a final registration decision, granting a seven year approval, at the conclusion of which the EPA would reevaluate to determine if the products posed any real-world risks.
That approval was challenged in court by a coalition, including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and farm workers associations, among others.
The challengers asserted EPA had not completed the full assessments required by two federal laws - the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Endangered Species Act - before approving streptomycin for use on citrus crops.
While conceding streptomycin is not harmful to humans, they said the agency did not fully evaluate whether more widespread use of the product in the environment would increase antibiotic-resistant bacteria, or if the products could be harmful to pollinators, and to bees, particularly.
In response, EPA asserted it had fulfilled its obligations. The EPA particularly noted it faces a long backlog of challenges to rules and approvals from environmental activists in court, which has slowed review processes even further. EPA estimated the earliest it could complete the full streptomycin citrus review would be 2026.
However, the EPA's analysis to date has shown no ill effects to pollinators from streptomycin, and the agency lists the substance as "practically nontoxic."
In court, the Ninth Circuit panel agreed with EPA that the challengers' antibiotic-related concerns were not sufficient to undo the approval.
But the judges revoked the streptomycin citrus approval, saying the EPA has relied on "conflicting statements" concerning the safety of streptomycin for bees and other pollinators.
"As it stands, the EPA has not explained how additional data that it has deemed essential for assessing the risk of streptomycin on registration review are not also necessary to conclude, under this amended registration, that streptomycin poses no unreasonable risks to pollinators," the judges wrote.
The court vacated the EPA's approval of streptomycin for citrus crops, and ordered the agency to complete the risk assessments under FIFRA and the ESA.
The EPA argued against such a vacatur order, saying it will "have considerable disruptive consequences for citrus growers, who have few alternatives for managing (citrus greening) and citrus canker."
"We are sympathetic to the EPA’s equitable concerns and to the plight of citrus growers, whose products contribute to our food supply," the judges wrote. "But ... a blank check remand without vacatur would not be an appropriate remedy in this case."
The decision was authored by Ninth Circuit Judge Daniel Bress, with concurrence from judges Ronald M. Gould and Johnnie B. Rawlinson.
Environmental groups celebrated the ruling.
“The court’s decision to vacate the EPA’s unlawful approval of streptomycin is a win for public health, pollinators and endangered species,” said Hannah Connor, a senior attorney and environmental health deputy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “I hope that the EPA understands now that it can’t just wave away its legal obligations to examine the impacts of the pesticides it approves.”