Despite growing trade in produce between Canada, the United States, and Mexico, regulatory barriers remain towards achieving an aligned system of crop protection registration and reviews in North America.

The establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 created the largest free trading region in the world. This trading environment gave consumers wider access to food and increased market size for domestic growers considering exports. The extent of this trade relationship wouldn’t be nearly as prolific without the regulatory cooperation promoted between these countries over the past three decades. 

An important component of this cooperation for crop protection has been the creation of the North American Trilateral Technical Working Group (NAT TWG) on Pesticides established in 1997. Launched under the former NAFTA provisions on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and continued under CUSMA, the role of the NAT TWG on Pesticides is to address regulatory issues arising in the context of liberalized trade among the three countries.

There have been some solid achievements in regulatory alignment under the NAT TWG including joint registration reviews, NAFTA-wide product labels, and progress towards alignment of Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs). These efforts have been commended for increasing the speed of the review process and aligned outcomes, benefiting regulators, registrants, and growers. The public has also indirectly benefited through growers gaining access to new crop protection technology sooner.

The 2024 edition of the NAT TWG was held mid-October with Mexico hosting the meeting in Mexico City. Regulator representatives were present from all three countries, including the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), EPA (U.S.), SENASICA (Mexico), registrants, and CropLife Canada along with grower groups from all three countries.

Despite the significant progress made towards alignment of approaches in the first decade of the 2000s, further alignment has effectively ground to a halt since the pandemic. While the regulators have indicated they remain interested in greater collaboration, domestic policies as well as litigation in the Canada, United States, and Mexico are making further progress more difficult. The regulators’ own divergent views on topics also gets in the way at times.

Starting in August 2021, the Canadian Minister of Health announced a pause on increases to Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs) along with the statement that “while the current regulations provide robust protection of human health and the environment, some of its provisions now warrant review to ensure the process meets the expectations of Canadians in the areas of transparency and sustainability.”

After a two-year pause without scientific merit, Health Canada indicated it was resuming the processing of MRL increase applications. However, it didn’t come without consequences as joint registration review decisions were finalized in the U.S. but have been significantly delayed in Canada, resulting in Canadian growers not having access to new products that were available south of the border.

Also in Canada, the PMRA has recently proposed to codify the consideration of cumulative environmental effects in the Pest Control Product Regulations (PCPR). It has been repeatedly acknowledged during these proposals that there is a lack of information and no standard methodologies to actually do assessments for cumulative environmental effects. Despite these shortcomings, PMRA continues to pursue regulatory amendments to support its inclusion. If it does get finalized into the PCPR in 2025, it will be another area of divergence from Canada’s North American trading partners.

In the U.S., the regulatory authority EPA is now facing significant additional workload regarding the protection of endangered species following a flurry of litigation which found the agency was not correctly carrying out its responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The EPA has now been reviewing an extensive list of new and existing active ingredients to ensure that their use complies with endangered species protection.

At a minimum, review timelines are slowed down for new and registered active ingredients. It can also mean label changes to conform with the ESA. Of particular note is that ESA protection measures can be very geographically specific, meaning restrictions on use that apply down to the county level. It’s another factor which is making further alignment challenging between countries, and in this case, even within one.

For Mexico, a new president was sworn in October 1st with Claudia Sheinbaum becoming the first woman to hold the office. It is believed her policy priorities will follow her predecessor which takes an inward focus for agriculture including the promotion of food sovereignty, support for small and medium farmers, and to increase domestic production of several key commodities.

While international exports of produce from Mexico will remain economically important for the country, they don’t appear to be an immediate focus of the government. With international trade taking a backseat to domestic production, the urgency of regulatory alignment for Mexico seems less important. 

Finally, the view on the horizon is cloudy at best. With Donald Trump returning to the White House in 2025 and the first review of CUSMA due in 2026, it’s very difficult to predict where the future of the trade agreement might go. Do we end up with no major changes? The return of bilateral trade frameworks? A stalemate that goes on for several years?

While initial gains towards aligning processes for registering and reviewing crop protection products in North America have been made, further significant progress seems unlikely at the present time. Ultimately for growers, the lack of alignment results in inconsistent access to tools between markets, divergent decisions on reviewing products post registration, and non-tariff trade barriers that exist due to MRL discrepancies. Unfortunately all of this contributes to additional cost of production and in the end a higher price of food for the consumer.