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don't want this to happen. Worse, an intentional GLP violation can be a criminal offense, a felony. Meeting EPA GLPs is very serious business. For example, should a finding in research in progress suggest that the substance being tested is more hazardous or toxic than previously believed, the company responsible must report that finding to EPA within 30 days or face the possibility of criminal charges. A GLP study is expensive to be sure, but it is also demonstrably valid. Orily industry research required to meet EPA/GL.Ps EPA GLPs apply only to reseazch done by in~V for regulatory purposes. Gov- ernment reseazch organizations, such as the National Cancer Institute, are exempt, a posi- tion industry has opposed for many years. Any study, whether done by the government, a university or an environmental organization, should be required to be of GLP quality if it is to be used for regulatory purposes. The fact that they are not is one of the reasons that we see so many contradictory studies reported by the news media. Wheat Life will publish an article in a future issue which will document some appalling examples of this. 2,4-D and the expert panel reviews 2,4-D has now been reviewed by expert independent panels six times in the last decade and all six panels reached the same conclusion - -that the evidence of carcino- genicity was insufficient to establish a cause and effect relationship between 2,4-D and cancer. One panel (Munro et al, Journal of the American of Toxicology, 1992) concluded that any risk associated with the continued use of 2,4-D was "negligible." Why the huge gap between science and public perception? Has the fact that 2,4-D now has an extraordinary data base of GLP studies helped close the enormous gap that exists between the science and public perception? The an- swer, unfortwrately, is no. This data base is, for the most part, simply ignored by both the mainstream media and anti-pesticide advocacy groups, as are [he expert panel reviews. Let's look at some recent examples. On July 24, 1995, ABC World News Tonight launched an attack on EPA and the registration program. Reporter John Martin solemnly told viewers that, "By law, manu- facturers (of pesticides) submit their own test results to EPA for approval. But the agency has so far rejected about a quarter of all results as incomplete." That statement seems to imply that pesticide manufacturers do their own research studies, and in so doing, can somehow manipulate the results. As of July 1, 1996, the task force had submitted all 270 studies, EPA had accepted 172 of them, and the remaining 98 were still under review. If the ABC News allegation is correct, EPA will have to reject 67 of the remaining 98 2,4-D studies still in review, a rejection rate that is highly improbable.