International Issues and Pesticide Labels

EPA regulates both the import and export of pesticides. All pesticides which are intended to be used in the United States must first be registered with EPA before import. All registered pesticides that are exported to other countries must bear the product label approved by EPA. Learn more about import and export of pesticides.

To increase availability of pesticides in the United States and Canada, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Technical Working Group (TWG) facilitated formation of a stakeholder work group that consists of U.S. and Canadian growers, industry, agricultural retailers, and government representatives. This group developed approaches to resolving these issues:

• The Own Use Import Program
• NAFTA labels

Information about these programs is available in the EPA Web archive. Search EPA Archive

EPA has been involved in some aspects of the the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals, which is a worldwide initiative to promote standard criteria for classifying chemicals according to their health, physical and environmental hazards. Read more about GHS and pesticides.