By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Fruit growers in Michigan and throughout the country who rely on Guthion for insect control are having to get by on less of it, starting this year.

That’s thanks to officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who’ve decided to phase it out by 2012 and step up restrictions on its use before then. Last year the maker of the insecticide, Makhteshim Agan of North America (MANA), asked the EPA to extend the use of Guthion, whose active ingredient is azinphos methyl, beyond 2012.

It also asked the agency to allow continued use of the product at the same levels it had been allowing through last season. It also asked that growers who apply the insecticide aerially be allowed to continue the practice.

“They rejected it,” said Scott Rollins, vice president of regulatory affairs at MANA. “We submitted new information and at the end of the day they called us up and said they would deny it.”

In memoranda written and made public earlier this year, EPA officials made reference to studies by Mark Whalon, an entomologist from Michigan State University, who studied the effectiveness of alternatives to Guthion and found they are not adequate. However, the EPA wasn’t convinced. Rollins described Whalon as “arguably the top cherry expert in the country, but the EPA said it doesn’t agree.”

A call made to the EPA’s chemical review manager for Guthion, Tom Myers, went unanswered last week and a message left with him wasn’t returned. The EPA has found that Guthion poses unacceptable risks to workers and believes there are effective alternatives that are less toxic.

“The EPA didn’t do a good job and they don’t want to talk about it,” Rollins said. “For the cherry growers in particular, it’s going to be tough.”

Rollins said the company still makes the product for its overseas customers, but will close down the plant that produces it for its U.S. customers.

Denise Donahue, executive director of the Michigan Apple Committee, hosted several EPA officials just last week for its annual tour of several farms.

“We like to get them out here to see what a grower’s life is like,” she said. “They took lots and lots of pictures and took lots of and lots of notes.”

Donahue said the EPA is under a lot of pressure from environmentalists. “I do think they’re concerned about the growers,” she said.

Although according to Donahue, there are alternatives to Guthion for apple growers, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they work as well. According to a survey she conducted last year of apple growers in the state, 84 percent were using less Guthion than they did in 2004, typically about half.

Also, 20 percent of apple growers said they are seeing more codling moth, which has been the growers’ main pest worry, and are now seeing the emergence of pests they didn’t see at all before.

“What we’d really like is to be able to keep Guthion as one tool in the apple grower’s tool chest, for rescue purposes,” Donahue said.