Section 3 of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act at 7 U.S.C. § 136a Provides That No Person in Any State May Distribute or Sell Any Pesticide That Is Not Registered With the Administrator, Section 2 at 7 U.S.C. § 136(u) Defines a Pesticide as Any Substance or Mixture of Substances Intended for Preventing, Destroying, Repelling, or Mitigating Any Pest, Section 2 at 7 U.S.C. § 136(t) Defines a Pest to Include Any Insect, Section 11 at 7 U.S.C. § 136i Provides for the Certification of Applicators Authorized to Use or Supervise the Use of Any Pesticide Classified for Restricted Use, the Global Spider Community Kills an Estimated 400 to 800 Million Metric Tons of Insect Prey Every Year by Injecting Venom Through Its Fangs, a Venom That Has Never Been Submitted for Registration and an Application Program for Which No Spider Has Ever Been Certified Under the Standards of 40 CFR Part 171, the Label Is the Law and No Spider Carries a Label, and the Largest Pesticide Application Operation on Earth Has Never Filed a Single Form With the Agency

I. The Registration Requirement

The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act governs the sale, distribution, and use of pesticides in the United States. It operates, in the words of every casebook that teaches it, mainly through a registration mechanism.¹ The mechanism is stated without qualification at Section 3(a), 7 U.S.C. § 136a(a): “Except as provided by this subchapter, no person in any State may distribute or sell to any person any pesticide that is not registered under this subchapter.”²

Section 12(a)(1)(A), 7 U.S.C. § 136j(a)(1)(A), makes it unlawful for any person in any State to distribute or sell to any person any pesticide that is not registered under Section 3.³ The regulation at 40 C.F.R. § 152.15(a) restates the rule in the negative: no person may distribute or sell any pesticide product that is not registered under FIFRA.⁴ Registration is not a formality. It is the statute’s central command, and it admits of no exception for operators that are small, numerous, or eight-legged.

The question before us is whether a chemical program that destroys between 400 and 800 million metric tons of insects every year, conducted continuously on every continent except Antarctica, has ever submitted a registration application. The answer is that it has not. The program predates the statute by approximately 400 million years, and it has filed nothing in the 79 years since the statute’s enactment.

II. The Definition That Decides the Case

Section 2(u), 7 U.S.C. § 136(u), defines “pesticide” to mean “any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest.”⁵ Section 2(t), 7 U.S.C. § 136(t), defines “pest” to mean, in its first clause, “any insect, rodent, nematode, fungus, weed,” followed by a second clause covering other organisms the Administrator declares to be pests.⁶ The first clause requires no declaration. An insect is a pest by statutory definition, whether the Administrator has noticed the particular insect or not.

The definition is effects-based and intent-based in equal measure. The Environmental Protection Agency has explained that a substance is considered intended for a pesticidal purpose, and thus a pesticide requiring registration, where the distributor claims or implies the substance can be used as a pesticide, where the substance contains an active ingredient and has no significant commercially valuable use other than pesticidal use, or where the distributor has actual or constructive knowledge the substance will be used for a pesticidal purpose.⁷ The agency has further held that a product need not act directly on a pest to mitigate it: claims affecting a pest’s habitat or food source are mitigation claims subject to registration.⁸

Consider the substance at issue. It is a mixture of substances. It is injected directly into insects. Its purpose, as demonstrated by several hundred million years of consistent field performance, is the prevention, destruction, and mitigation of insects. It has no other use. It is not sold as a food additive. It is not marketed as a fragrance. It does not condition hair. Its sole function in the economy of its producer is the killing of pests, and it performs that function at a scale no registered product has ever approached.

III. The Substance

The substance is spider venom. Almost all of the approximately 46,000 described spider species possess venom glands, and spiders use that venom primarily to paralyze prey so they can eat it.⁹ The venom is typically one of two types: neurotoxins, which attack the nervous system of the prey, or cytotoxins, which liquefy tissue to make consumption easier.¹⁰

The delivery mechanism is the chelicerae, a pair of jointed jaws in front of the mouth, each housing a sharp fang. The fangs work, in the standard description, something like hypodermic needles: each has a small hole in the tip and a hollow duct inside, and the duct leads to the venom gland. When the spider pierces its prey with the fang, it squeezes out the venom, injecting the animal with enough neurotoxin to paralyze or kill.¹¹ This is application equipment of considerable precision. The spider can inject controlled doses depending on the size of its victim, a metering capability most commercial spray rigs cannot match.¹²

Venom chemistry varies widely among species; the venoms are complex mixtures of peptides and proteins, largely specific to the lineage that produces them. With more than 45,000 described species, the global spider community manufactures tens of thousands of chemically distinct pesticide products. Not one has an EPA registration number. Not one has submitted the statement of all claims required by Section 3(c)(1)(C), 7 U.S.C. § 136a(c)(1)(C), which demands a complete copy of the labeling, a statement of all claims to be made, and directions for use.¹³

IV. The Applicator

There are more than 45,000 known spider species, and in some places they reach densities of a thousand individuals per square meter.¹⁴ The global spider biomass is estimated at approximately 25 million tons.¹⁵ Every one of these individuals is, in the functional sense, a pesticide applicator: it holds a pesticide, it applies that pesticide to pests, and it does so as a service, controlling pests on property it does not own, for the benefit of parties that did not hire it and cannot fire it.

The statute anticipates this exact fact pattern. Section 2(e)(1), 7 U.S.C. § 136(e)(1), defines a “certified applicator” as any individual certified under Section 11, 7 U.S.C. § 136i, as authorized to use or supervise the use of any pesticide classified for restricted use.¹⁶ Section 3(d)(1)(C) provides that a restricted use pesticide shall be applied only by or under the direct supervision of a certified applicator.¹⁷ Whether spider venom would be classified for restricted use, given its acute toxicity to the target organisms and its application by injection at point-blank range, is a question the agency has never reached, because the agency has never reviewed the product.

Certification is administered by the states under standards set by the EPA at 40 CFR Part 171. Commercial applicators are certified by passing a written test and a performance-based test, or another EPA-approved system, and must be recertified periodically, generally through continuing education every three to five years.¹⁸ In North Carolina, for example, a commercial applicator must pass a core examination on pesticide laws plus a specialized category exam before becoming eligible to apply for a license, which must then be renewed annually.¹⁹ No spider has passed the core exam. No spider has passed a category exam. No spider holds a license in North Carolina or in any other state, territory, or tribal jurisdiction.

V. The Application Record

In 2017, Martin Nyffeler of the University of Basel and Klaus Birkhofer, then of Lund University, published the first global estimate of the spider community’s prey kill in The Science of Nature. Using two independent calculation methods, one based on the spiders’ metabolic requirements and one based on observed prey capture in the field, they arrived at the same broad answer: the annual prey kill of the global spider community is in the range of 400 to 800 million metric tons, fresh weight, with insects and springtails composing more than 90 percent of the captured prey.²⁰ Spiders associated with forests and grasslands account for more than 95 percent of the annual kill; the communities in annual crop fields contribute less than 2 percent, a finding the authors attribute to intensive management creating unfavorable living conditions.²¹

For scale: the Food and Agriculture Organization reports that total agricultural pesticide use worldwide was 3.70 million tonnes of active ingredients in 2022.²² Humanity’s entire registered pesticide program, the product of a century of chemical regulation, thousands of registered products, and the full enforcement apparatus of the EPA and its state counterparts, applies less than four million tons of active ingredient per year. The spider community’s unregistered program kills between 400 and 800 million tons of pests per year. The unregistered operation out-applies the registered one by a factor of roughly one to two hundred, measured by the weight of pests destroyed rather than the weight of chemical applied, which is the only measurement the statute’s definition cares about.

The authors note that the spider kill equals approximately one-thousandth of global terrestrial net primary production, and that it exceeds the annual prey consumption of the world’s whales, estimated at 280 to 500 million tons.²³ The comparison to whales is instructive. The whales are not accused of operating an unlicensed pesticide program, because whales eat krill and fish, which are not pests under Section 2(t)’s first clause. The spiders eat insects, which are. The statute does not grade on ecological virtue. It grades on whether the target organism is listed, and insects are listed first.

VI. The Label Problem

It has been said that the label is the law. The EPA’s formulation, repeated by every extension service in the country, is that using a pesticide in a manner inconsistent with the use directions on the label is a violation of FIFRA and can result in enforcement action.²⁴ The label contains the directions necessary for the legal application and use of the product, including required personal protective equipment.²⁵

No spider carries a label. There are no directions for use. There is no statement of personal protective equipment, though the applicator is itself unprotected and appears unconcerned. There are no restricted-entry intervals posted at the treated area, though the treated area is, in the case of forest and grassland spiders, most of the world’s forests and grasslands. Section 2(q)(1)(F), 7 U.S.C. § 136(q)(1)(F), provides that a pesticide is misbranded if its labeling does not contain directions for use adequate to protect health and the environment.²⁶ Spider venom has no labeling at all, which is the limiting case of inadequate directions.

The absence of the label is not a technicality. The label is the mechanism by which the statute communicates every substantive requirement, application rates, target pests, safety intervals, protective equipment, environmental hazards, to the person holding the sprayer. The spider holds the sprayer in its mouth. It has received no communication. It applies at whatever rate the prey presents itself, to whatever insect arrives, at whatever interval the web requires, wearing no equipment whatsoever.

VII. The Establishment Gap

Section 7 of FIFRA, 7 U.S.C. § 136e, requires the registration of establishments where pesticides are produced. The statute defines “producer” at Section 2(w), 7 U.S.C. § 136(w), as a person who manufactures, prepares, or packages any pesticide, and “registrant” at Section 2(z), 7 U.S.C. § 136(z), as a person who has registered a pesticide under FIFRA.²⁷ Every spider is a pesticide production facility. The venom glands manufacture the product continuously. The fangs package it for delivery. No establishment has been registered. No producer has identified itself.

The recordkeeping failure compounds the violation. Certified applicators operate within state programs that require documentation of applications. The spider community maintains no application records. It keeps no record of the date of application, the target pest, the amount applied, or the location treated. It cannot produce these records on inspection because it cannot write, and it cannot be inspected because there are a thousand of its applicators per square meter in some habitats and no inspector workforce on Earth could visit them all.

VIII. The Penalty Exposure

Section 14(a)(1), 7 U.S.C. § 136l(a)(1), authorizes the Administrator to assess a civil penalty against any registrant, commercial applicator, wholesaler, dealer, retailer, or other distributor who violates any provision of FIFRA, of up to $21,805 for each offense occurring after November 2, 2015, as adjusted for inflation under 40 CFR Part 19.²⁸

The registration violation alone presents a striking arithmetic. More than 45,000 spider species have been described, and venom chemistry varies widely among them, so the global spider community manufactures tens of thousands of chemically distinct pesticide products. Each distinct unregistered product distributed in the United States is a separate violation of Section 12(a)(1)(A). At $21,805 per offense, 45,000 unregistered products produce a civil penalty exposure of approximately $981 million. This figure counts only the registration violation. It does not count the certification violations, the labeling violations, the establishment violations, or the recordkeeping violations, and it does not count the offenses occurring before November 2, 2015, a period that includes roughly 400 million years of continuous unregistered production.

For comparison, the EPA’s enforcement docket is filled with consent agreements assessing five-figure penalties against small businesses for distributing unregistered bug spray.²⁹ The agency pursues lavender farms and disinfectant importers with admirable diligence. The largest unregistered pesticide operation in the history of the planet operates in the open, in every garden, forest, and grassland in America, and has never received so much as a notice of arrival.

IX. The Defense, Disclosed

Four objections present themselves, and the honest investigation discloses each before overruling it.

First, Section 2(s), 7 U.S.C. § 136(s), defines “person” to mean “any individual, partnership, association, corporation, or any organized group of persons whether incorporated or not.”³⁰ A spider is none of these. It is not an individual in the legal sense, not a partnership, not a corporation, and not an organized group of persons, though a spider colony might wish it were. Against this, the definition’s function in the statute is to identify who may be held liable, and the registration requirement’s purpose is to ensure the agency reviews every pesticide before it reaches the environment. A reading that exempts the largest pesticide program on Earth because its operators lack articles of incorporation elevates form over the statute’s stated purpose.

Second, venom is not distributed or sold in commerce. It is manufactured endogenously and applied directly, never changing hands. Against this, Section 2(gg), 7 U.S.C. § 136(gg), defines “distribute or sell” expansively to include holding for distribution, holding for shipment, delivering for shipment, and receiving and delivering, and the regulation at 40 C.F.R. § 152.3 extends the term to every grammatical variation of the act.³¹ The spider holds venom in its glands for distribution to insects. It delivers it by shipment through hollow fangs. The commerce is conducted in chitin rather than in cardboard, but the verbs are satisfied.

Third, the pesticide definition turns on intent, and spiders make no pesticidal claims. They affix no label, publish no advertising, and state no implications. Against this, the agency determines intent objectively: a substance with no significant commercially valuable use other than pesticidal purpose is a pesticide under 40 C.F.R. § 152.15(c), regardless of what is claimed.³² Venom has no other use. It is not a condiment. The intent is written in 400 million tons of dead insects per year, which is more evidence of intent than any label has ever provided.

Fourth, FIFRA exempts certain minimum-risk pesticides from registration under Section 25(b). Against this, the Section 25(b) list, codified at 40 C.F.R. § 152.25, names specific exempted substances such as corn oil, sodium chloride, and dried blood. Spider venom is not on the list. The agency has had 79 years to add it and has not done so.

X. Conclusion

Section 3 requires registration of every pesticide. Spider venom is a pesticide under Section 2(u), applied to pests defined in Section 2(t), and it has never been registered. Section 11 requires certification of applicators. No spider is certified under 40 CFR Part 171. The label is the law, and there is no label. Section 7 requires registration of producing establishments, and none is registered. Section 14 provides penalties of up to $21,805 per offense, and the offenses number in the tens of thousands of products and the hundreds of millions of tons.

The spiders have been applying unregistered pesticides since the Devonian period, approximately 400 million years ago, before there were flowers, before there were birds, before there was soil worthy of the name. They were killing insects with injected neurotoxins 399,999,921 years before Congress enacted FIFRA. They kill more pests in a year than the entire registered pesticide industry has killed in its history. They do it without a registration number, without a certified applicator, without a label, without an establishment registration, and without a single record of any application.

The regulatory infrastructure built to govern pesticides in the United States is comprehensive, detailed, and actively enforced against lavender farms. It requires written examinations, performance testing, continuing education, approved labels, registered establishments, and documented applications. It does not account for an applicator workforce of 25 million tons that holds its pesticide in its mouth, applies it through hollow fangs with dose control no spray rig can match, and communicates its intent exclusively through the corpses of 400 to 800 million tons of insects per year.

No registration has been submitted. No applicator has been certified. No label has been approved. No establishment has been registered. No penalty has been assessed. The total regulatory response to 400 million years of continuous, unregistered, uncertified, unlabeled, and unrecorded pesticide application across every terrestrial habitat on Earth is a guidance document explaining how to tell whether a cleaning product is a pesticide, and an enforcement docket that has never named the largest applicator on the planet.

Ergo.