The Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), or H.R.1627, was passed unanimously by Congress in 1996 and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 3, 1996.

[5] Under these new, more urgent circumstances, Congress was able to pass a bill that was celebrated by both sides of the debate; farmers, food processors and pesticide manufactures were glad to see the Delaney Clause go, while environmental groups and consumer advocates were pleased to have a formalized safety standard with an added emphasis on children.

[6] John Cady, president of the National Food Processors Association, praised the legislation for being "...based on modern, real-world science".

[9] The FQPA requires the EPA to set tolerances for pesticide uses that fall under section 18 of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (emergency exemptions).

[citation needed] The EPA has established guidance for assessing the cumulative risk for multiroute exposures to pesticide groups determined to have a common mechanism of toxicity.

[11] The risk calculation is based on dose addition, where individual pesticide exposure levels are scaled by their relative potency and then summed.

The EPA is also required to provide maintenance fee waivers to and encourage the safe and necessary use of methods/pesticides that either combat or control pests that have been deemed of public health importance.

[citation needed] The FQPA was the most comprehensive reform of food safety and pesticide laws in decades and posed an implementation challenge for the EPA.

Referring to the discrepancies between what constitutes reliable data when determining whether or not to increase the margin of safety tenfold, Richard Weiss (a pesticide expert with the Environmental Working Group) said, "The EPA has failed to comply with the clear intent and requirements of the law".

As their ability to harvest quality crops was threatened, farmers said the EPA was unfairly enforcing a "zero risk" instead of a "reasonable certainty of no harm" policy.

The FQPA required the EPA to enforce a safety margin 10 times greater than before if reliable data proving that the pesticide posed no risk for children could not be provided.

[20] "Chemical Business News" published an article suggesting that the idea that pesticides pose special dangers for children was actually an alarmist issue not based in science.

[22] Environmentalists argued that the EPA was buckling under the pressure of these lobbies and needed to uphold the legal safety standard mandated in the FQPA.

[22] In response the EPA published a report saying that they stood by their decisions and the 10 fold safety increase was both conservative and prudent and was only applicable under special circumstances.

[24] Following their moratorium the EPA had the National Academy of Sciences convene a panel of experts to determine the ethical solution to the human studies debate.

The Environmental Working Group and the Natural Resources Defense Council argued that clinical studies were both inaccurate and ethically wrong; pesticide manufacturers argued that not only were clinical studies crucial but that they must be allowed to conduct the tests to determine "No observable adverse effects level", meaning they administer the drug until an effect is observed.