University
of California
to links below | to the reference archive
The Worker Protection Standard Forum
University
of California
The Worker Protection Standard Forum
The WPS-Forum is an e-mail discussion network and reference archive for people contending with the Worker Protection Standard for Agricultural Pesticides in one way or other. It carries announcements, discussions, and resource documents on a variety of WPS-related issues. Everyone interested in agricultural pesticide use or government regulation generally, or the WPS more particularly, is welcome to take advantage of WPS-Forum.
You can use the Forum to send and exchange with other participants questions, answers, notices of events, reference documents, descriptions of practical problems, speculations, learned clarif ications, pearls of wisdom, complaints, and other ideas. Message topics and types range widely, and they include timely updates on rule interpretation, proposed changes, resources for living within the law, litigation, hearings and meetings, and actual impacts in agricultural operations.
As with many other laws and regulations of broad scope, achievement of objectives depends on effective flows of information, and people need plenty in relation to the WPS. The purpose of WPS-Forum is to speed and broaden its flow among everyone concerned, to help them get nearer and stay closer to the "same page."
Currently active on the forum are about 300 subscribers from land-grant universities, other education and research organizations, agricultural firms and associations, pesticide manufacturing and service companies, environmental and worker advocacy groups, consulting firms, government agencies--at county, state, and federal levels, and the industry press.
Part of the Forum system is an archive that contains (1) a copy of all messages ever posted, and (2) a set of reference documents and other resources. Messages sent to WPS-Forum are organized in monthly folders (consecutively in the order posted). Large reference files are not posted but rather placed directly into the archive for subscribers to retrieve if they wish. Some important documents that have been posted are also later placed in the archive as files unto themselves. As items are added to the archive, they are announced in the general flow of posts to the forum.
The U.S. EPA uses the Forum as part of its public outreach effort, and Forum discussion has contributed to consideration of practical problems with the rule and proposals for revision. Other governmental perspectives are often posted by participants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, state agriculture departments in other states, and county Agricultural Commissioners Offices.