By Cassie Bumbaugh
Last updated on November 18, 2025
On November 7th, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) officially announced their 6-month Submission Prioritization Pilot via CA Notice 2025-12. This exciting pilot aims to reduce overall processing time for state registration review in California and reduce submission backlogs. This program will temporarily prioritize amendment submissions that either require minimal processing time (such as label notifications and non-data amendments) or are subject to upcoming federal deadlines.
Historically DPR has processed submissions in the order received, but the implementation of the online submission portal, CalPEST, has improved their ability to better track and categorize submissions. In order to reduce overall processing time and alleviate workload backlogs, pending submissions that were received in CalPEST through November 3rd will be screened by DPR’s newly acquired document comparison software for prioritization eligibility for the six-month pilot program.
The submissions that will be temporarily prioritized include:
- Label notifications
- Label amendments that do not require scientific evaluation (e.g. company name/address updates which currently must still be submitted via amendment)
- CSF notifications or amendments that do not involve label updates
- Label amendments subject to the 18-month EPA existing stock provisions (must have an expiration date before 5/10/26, the end of this pilot program)
- Label amendments to comply with EPA interim or final registration decision documents
DPR recommends registrants review their pending submissions in CalPEST to ensure a detailed cover letter is included that summarizes the label/CSF updates clearly. This will help ensure pending submissions that meet the prioritization criteria will be correctly identified during DPR’s pre-screening process. If your submission was processed by your SRC consultant, it already includes a detailed cover letter that meets this request.
In the coming weeks, the SRC team will review any pending DPR submissions to ensure there is enough detail to prove eligibility for the pilot, for those submissions that meet the prioritization criteria. Contact your SRC consultant if you have questions as to whether your pending submissions would qualify for this pilot. We’re happy to help!
