TWN Info Service on Biosafety
3 May 2024
Third World Network
www.twn.my
Dear Friends and Colleagues
US Federal Court Rescinds EPA’s Approval of Dicamba Herbicide
A federal court in Arizona recently rescinded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2020 approval of the highly volatile herbicide dicamba for use on certain GM crops, finding that the EPA failed to comply with public notice and comment requirements under the law to protect agricultural workers, consumers, and the environment (Item 1). It held that the EPA committed a “very serious” violation in failing to consider serious risks of over-the-top dicamba in issuing the prior registration. The lawsuit was filed by farmer and conservation groups.
The ruling is specific to three dicamba-based weedkillers manufactured by Bayer, BASF and Syngenta, which have been blamed for millions of acres of crop damage and harm to endangered species and natural areas across the Midwest and Southern USA (Item 2). Dicamba-resistant crops have been planted on as many as 65 million acres.
This is the second time a federal court has banned these weedkillers since they were introduced in 2017. A 2021 EPA report uncovered intentional exclusion of scientific evidence of dicamba-related hazards, including the risk of widespread drift damage. The ruling also follows an earlier ruling that found Monsanto and BASF liable for damage to a Missouri peach farmer’s groves caused by dicamba.
With best wishes,
Third World Network
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Item 1
FEDERAL DICAMBA RULING CALLED ‘VITAL VICTORY FOR FARMERS AND THE ENVIRONMENT’
Brett Wilkins
Common Dreams
https://www.commondreams.org/news/dicamba
6 February 2024
“The court today resoundingly reaffirmed what we have always maintained: The EPA’s and Monsanto’s claims of dicamba’s safety were irresponsible and unlawful,” said one plaintiff.
In what one plaintiff called “a sweeping victory for family farmers and dozens of endangered plants and animals,” a federal court in Arizona on Tuesday rescinded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2020 approval of the highly volatile herbicide dicamba for use on certain genetically engineered crops.
In a 47-page ruling, U.S. District Judge David C. Bury found that the EPA failed to comply with public notice and comment requirements under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), legislation passed in 1947 to protect agricultural workers, consumers, and the environment.
“This is a vital victory for farmers and the environment,” said George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety (CFS), a plaintiff in the case. “Time and time again, the evidence has shown that dicamba cannot be used without causing massive and unprecedented harm to farms as well as endangering plants and pollinators.”
“The court today resoundingly reaffirmed what we have always maintained: The EPA’s and Monsanto’s claims of dicamba’s safety were irresponsible and unlawful,” Kimbrell added.
Dicamba has damaged millions of acres of U.S. cropland since the EPA, during the Trump administration, dubiously approved its use on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans developed by Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018.
The EPA subsequently identified spray drift as the main environmental risk for dicamba due to its potential to contaminate nontargeted crops, declaring that since 2016 “there has been a substantial increase in the overall number of reported nontarget plant incidents.”
As CFS explained on Tuesday:
In today’s decision, the court canceled dicamba’s over-the-top use, holding that EPA violated FIFRA’s public input requirement prior to the approval. This violation is “very serious,” according to the court, especially because the 9th Circuit previously held EPA failed to consider serious risks of over-the-top dicamba in issuing the prior registration. The court outlined the massive damage to stakeholders that were deprived of their opportunity to comment, such as growers that do not use over-the-top dicamba and suffered significant financial losses and states that repeatedly reported landscape-level damage yet, in the same 2020 decision, lost the ability to impose restrictions greater than those imposed by the federal government without formal legislative and/or rulemaking processes. As a result, the court found “the EPA is unlikely to issue the same registrations” again after taking these stakeholders’ concerns into account.
“We are grateful that the court held the EPA and Monsanto accountable for the massive damage from dicamba to farmers, farmworkers, and the environment, and halted its use,” Lisa Griffith of the National Family Farm Coalition—another plaintiff in the case—said in a statement Tuesday. “The pesticide system that Monsanto sells should not be sprayed as it cannot be sprayed safely.”
Tuesday’s decision in Arizona follows a July 2022 ruling by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis that found Monsanto and BASF were liable for damage to a Missouri peach farmer’s groves caused by dicamba.
A 2021 EPA report revealed that high-ranking Trump administration officials intentionally excluded scientific evidence of dicamba-related hazards, including the risk of widespread drift damage, before reapproving the dangerous chemical. A separate EPA report described the widespread harm to farmers and the environment caused by dicamba during the 2020 growing season.
“Every summer since the approval of dicamba, our farm has suffered significant damage to a wide range of vegetable crops,” said Rob Faux, a farmer and communications manager at the advocacy group Pesticide Action Network, a case plaintiff. “Today’s decision provides much-needed and overdue protection for farmers and the environment.”
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Item 2
US COURT BANS THREE WEEDKILLERS AND FINDS EPA BROKE LAW IN APPROVAL PROCESS
Johnathan Hettinger
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/07/us-weedkiller-ban-dicamba-epa
7 February 2024
Ruling, specific to three dicamba-based weedkillers, is major blow to Bayer, BASF and Syngenta
Dealing a blow to three of the world’s biggest agrochemical companies, a US court this week banned three weedkillers widely used in American agriculture, finding that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) broke the law in allowing them to be on the market.
The ruling is specific to three dicamba-based weedkillers manufactured by Bayer, BASF and Syngenta, which have been blamed for millions of acres of crop damage and harm to endangered species and natural areas across the midwest and south.
This is the second time a federal court has banned these weedkillers since they were introduced for the 2017 growing season. In 2020, the ninth circuit court of appeals issued its own ban, but months later the Trump administration reapproved the weedkilling products, just one week before the presidential election at a press conference in the swing state of Georgia.
But a federal judge in Arizona ruled on Monday that the EPA made a crucial error in reapproving dicamba, finding the agency did not post it for public notice and comment as required by law. US district judge David Bury wrote in a 47-page ruling that it was a “very serious” violation and that if EPA had done a full analysis, it probably would not have made the same decision.
Bury wrote that the EPA did not allow many people who are deeply affected by the weedkiller – including specialty farmers, conservation groups and more – to comment.
The lawsuit was filed by farmer and conservation groups.
“Time and time again, the evidence has shown that dicamba cannot be used without causing massive and unprecedented harm to farms as well as endangering plants and pollinators,” said George Kimbrell, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, which litigated the case.
An EPA spokesman, Jeffrey Landis, said the agency was still reviewing the ruling but declined to comment further.
Dicamba was introduced to American agriculture in 1967, but was never widely used during warm months because it was well known that the chemical can volatilize and move long distances when temperatures climb. Volatilization is the process when dicamba particles turn from a liquid to a gas in the hours or days after the herbicide is applied, in effect turning into clouds of weedkiller and causing landscape-level damage.
Dicamba is also prone to drifting on the wind far from where it is applied. And it can move into drainage ditches and bodies of water as runoff during rain events.
Monsanto, along with the chemical giant BASF, introduced new formulations of dicamba herbicides they said would not be as volatile, and they encouraged farmers to buy Monsanto’s newly created dicamba-tolerant crops. Farmers buying the specialized seeds could spray dicamba on fields while the crops were growing, killing the weeds, but not the precious commodities.
Dicamba-resistant crops have been planted on as many as 65m acres, the EPA estimated, an area larger than the state of Oregon.
The EPA first approved Monsanto and BASF versions of dicamba touted to be less likely to move off target for the 2017 growing season. Since then, dicamba has caused millions of acres of crop damage, and has been the subject of several lawsuits.
In February 2020, a federal jury in Missouri awarded the state’s largest peach farmer $265m for damage to his farm, though that total was later reduced by a federal judge. In June 2020, Bayer announced a $400m settlement with soybean growers that had been damaged by non-target drift.
For years, Bayer and BASF have blamed other factors than their weedkillers, including illegal use of older chemicals, for the damage. Discovery documents turned up in the litigation showed the companies knew that their dicamba weedkillers would probably lead to off-target crop damage.