EPA agrees to rule by April 30, 2027, on NRDC bid to revoke food tolerances for five neonicotinoids

Six years and three months after the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) asked the Environmental Protection Agency to pull every food tolerance for the five main neonicotinoid insecticides, EPA has agreed to a date for its answer. A proposed settlement published in the Federal Register on Aug. 20 commits the agency to “issue a final decision” on the petition no later than April 30, 2027^[1]. The chemicals at stake, imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam among them, are registered for uses that include food crops and seed treatments^{[2, 10]}.

The details: a deadline, not a verdict

The agreement would resolve In re Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., No. 25-1251, a mandamus petition NRDC filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Oct. 29, 2025^[1]. That suit argued EPA’s failure to rule on the 2020 petition was an unreasonable delay under the All Writs Act and the Administrative Procedure Act^[1].

Under the proposed terms, EPA must issue its decision under 21 U.S.C. 346a(d)(4)(A) by April 30, 2027^[1]. Within 15 days of signing, the two sides would jointly ask the court to keep the case in abeyance until that date^[1]. The notice was signed Aug. 13 by Randolph L. Hill, an associate general counsel at EPA^[1].

The comment window is short. EPA will take written comments for 30 days, through Sept. 21, from anyone who is not a party to the case, in docket EPA-HQ-OGC-2026-6172^[1]. The agency or the Justice Department “may withdraw or withhold consent” if comments show the deal is inappropriate or inconsistent with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA); otherwise the terms will be affirmed^[1].

What the agreement does not do matters as much. It sets no outcome. It does not change any tolerance, label or registration^[1].

What did NRDC ask EPA to do?

The petition, dated May 4, 2020, asked EPA to revoke all tolerances for acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam^[2]. A tolerance is the legal limit for a pesticide residue on a food or feed commodity^[4]. EPA published the petition for a 30-day comment period in July 2020^[2].

According to EPA’s summary, NRDC claimed the agency’s human health and drinking water assessments were flawed in four ways^[2]:

• EPA did not use the most sensitive toxicity endpoint or the full 10-fold children’s safety factor, despite evidence of developmental effects and harm at low exposures.
• It did not assess cumulative toxicity from exposure to several neonicotinoids at once.
• It did not consider interactions between neonicotinoids and the chemicals used to sanitize drinking water.
• Its acute dietary assessment did not account for highly exposed individuals.

When NRDC sued last fall, Rebecca Riley, the group’s managing director for food and agriculture, said in a release: “This failure to respond to unsafe levels of neonics in our food is a danger to our health, especially for our children,” E&E News reported^[9].

EPA’s own recent findings point the other way

The settlement leaves open how EPA will rule, but the agency has made dietary safety findings for two of the five chemicals within the past year. Both came in rules setting import tolerances for black pepper requested by the American Spice Trade Association^{[4, 5]}.

For imidacloprid, the February 2026 rule said EPA “continues to conclude that there are reliable data to support the reduction of the 10X” children’s safety factor to 1X^[4]. It noted “increased quantitative susceptibility” in a rat developmental neurotoxicity study but said the doses used for regulation protect against the pup effects seen at higher doses^[4]. Acute exposure from food and water came to 86% of the acceptable dose for children 1 to 2 years old, the most exposed group; chronic exposure was 32%^[4].

For thiamethoxam, the December 2025 rule put acute exposure at 13% of the acceptable dose for infants under 1 year and chronic exposure at 75% for children 1 to 2^[5].

Both rules addressed the cumulative question NRDC raised. EPA said the neonicotinoids form a candidate common mechanism group and that its screening-level cumulative assessment “indicates that cumulative risk estimates for neonicotinoids are below the Agency’s levels of concern”^{[4, 5]}.

Those findings answer the petition’s themes on paper. They do not answer the petition itself, which requires a formal order or rule.

In the field: what a tolerance decision can do to a seed program

Tolerances are the FFDCA side of pesticide law, and they work differently from the registration review under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) that farm groups usually track. Registration review, which EPA runs on a 15-year cycle, asks whether a product causes “unreasonable adverse effects,” a test under which EPA considers benefits as well as risks^{[3, 10]}. A tolerance stands only if EPA finds “a reasonable certainty that no harm will result from aggregate exposure,” with special consideration for infants and children^[4]. That standard, as EPA quotes it, says nothing about crop benefits^[4].

That is why growers who rely on treated seed should watch the petition more closely than its narrow docket suggests. EPA has examined the neonicotinoids’ farm value before, including a 2014 assessment of the benefits of clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam seed treatments to soybean production^[10]. In 2023 it asked for information on how treated seed is stored, planted and disposed of, and whether it is used contrary to labeling, while weighing a possible FIFRA rule on treated seed^[11]. Neither of those reviews governs the tolerance question.

The statute gives EPA three choices on a petition like NRDC’s: issue a final regulation “establishing, modifying, or revoking a tolerance,” issue a proposed regulation and then a final one, or “issue an order denying the petition,” as the Ninth Circuit laid out in 2021^[6]. A denial can be challenged through objections and then in a federal appeals court^[6]. A partial outcome, such as dropping certain crop tolerances while keeping others, falls within the first two options.

Chlorpyrifos shows how the process can play out for producers. Two environmental nonprofits petitioned EPA in 2007 to revoke its tolerances; the agency denied the petition in 2017 and the objections in 2019^[6]. In April 2021 the Ninth Circuit held that once EPA becomes aware of “genuine questions” about a tolerance’s safety, it has a continuing duty to decide whether that tolerance is still safe, and it ordered EPA to either modify the tolerances with a new safety finding or revoke them all^[6]. EPA revoked every chlorpyrifos tolerance in August 2021, saying it could not conclude that aggregate exposure met the FFDCA standard; the tolerances expired Feb. 28, 2022^[7].

Grower groups and a registrant, Gharda Chemicals International, took that rule to the Eighth Circuit, which vacated it on Nov. 2, 2023, in Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Ass’n v. Regan^[8]. EPA formally reinstated the tolerances in February 2024^[8]. The court’s mandate issued Dec. 28, 2023, so for about 22 months chlorpyrifos had no tolerances in effect^{[7, 8]}.

The neonicotinoid record differs in one plain respect. With chlorpyrifos, the Ninth Circuit found that EPA’s own studies showed harm at levels below the existing tolerances^[6]. For the neonicotinoids, EPA’s latest published findings say the residues are within its safety margins^{[4, 5]}.

The settlement notice does not break the question down by crop^[1]. Growers who plant treated seed, such as the soybean seed treatments EPA assessed in 2014, and those who apply the products directly on food crops would learn only from EPA’s decision which tolerances, if any, change^{[1, 10]}.

On the Hill and in the courts

Congress has no direct role in the settlement. The deal is before the public only because of a March 18, 2022, memorandum from the EPA Administrator on consent decrees and settlement agreements, under which the notice was published^[1].

The D.C. Circuit case would stay on hold rather than be dismissed^[1]. That gives NRDC a path back to court if April 30, 2027, passes without a decision. Whatever EPA decides, the losing side has a statutory route to object and then to seek review in a federal appeals court, the same two-step path the chlorpyrifos fight took^{[6, 8]}.

The registration review track also remains open. EPA proposed interim registration review decisions for all five neonicotinoids in February 2020^[3]. Those decisions apply the FIFRA registration standard, a separate legal question from the tolerance petition^[3].

What to watch

• Sept. 21, 2026: comments close on the proposed settlement^[1].
• After the comment period: EPA and the Justice Department decide whether to sign; the joint abeyance motion follows within 15 days of signing^[1].
• April 30, 2027: EPA’s deadline to grant, partly grant or deny NRDC’s petition^[1].

Whether EPA answers with a denial that rests on its 2025 and 2026 safety findings, or reopens the children’s safety factor question for some crops, the notice does not say.