Earlier this month, an appeals board for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) upheld the agency’s decision to cancel registration for Bayer’s insecticide flubendiamide, marketed in the U.S. as Belt®, while still existing stocks to be sold by retailers or used by growers, but Bayer is continuing to evaluate its options going forward.

“We’re currently going through due diligence and vetting all of the information and reviewing that internally,” said Lee Hall, Industry Relations Lead for Bayer. In the meantime, Hall says there is no problem with growers and retailers taking care of existing stocks.
“All the Belt product that was in the channel is allowed to move through the channel as it would in a normal year,” he explains.

“It’s very important to understand that all of our labels are still intact, that Belt can be used in all of the over 200 crops that it’s registered for,” said Hall. “So a grower can use Belt to provide his pest control, he can harvest that crop without a concern of issues with domestic consumption or export to other markets.”

In this interview, Hall provides background on the insecticide and explains some of Bayer’s concerns with how the flubendiamide decision was handled by EPA. [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/bayer-belt.mp3″ text=”Interview with Lee Hall, Bayer”]