Today I am going to continue to slog through the label and begin to record all the information that must be on the label for Diatoms to be sold leagally. The motivation seem reasonable, products should be labeled accurately. Fine, no problem – reading and understanding the rules. Minor problem. This is going to take forever. The rules are in English, I should be able to figure this out. Along my journey I will slowly dole out my pearls of knowledge as they are obtained. First, navigating the federal code of regulations is not straight forward, to start, it is good to know that the laws as passed by congress are organized into code for us to follow. The laws are passed chronologically and the code is organized by subject matter, so the laws take some repackaging. So the law is first changed in the “United States Code” and those laws are translated into rules that are administered by federal agencies and the rules are called the “Code of Federal Regulations”. Confused yet? And I don’t even think I have it right. But the point is that the “United States Code” I need to follow is Title 7 “agriculture”, Chapter 6 “Insecticides and Environmental Pest Control”, Sub Chapter 2, “Environmental Pesticide Control”. Sub Chapter 2 has 35 sub sections. The pdf is 90 pages long. So, on we go.
Now, that same information is in the “Code of Federal Regulations” Title 40, “Protection of the Environment”, Chapter 1 “Environmental Protection Agency”, Sub Chapter E “Pesticide Programs”, which has 30 parts and a 700 plus long PDF. Don’t be confused by the fact that in the “Code of Federal Regulations Title 7 is also “Agriculture” the same as in the “United States Code” as far as I can tell that is just a coincidence.
So, what have we learned? The law is 100 pages and that translates into 700 pages of rules. All to try and sell you a product that is also used as a dietary supplement. Anyway, I think that the 700 pages were written to make the 100 pages easier to follow. Hum.
Ah well, that is business in America. Hopefully this little photo of a beautiful water drop will cheer you, as it does me.