After initially receiving the agency’s rubber stamp, a dangerous
pesticide has been removed, at least temporarily, from the market.
Following a lawsuit filed by a coalition of groups led by the Center
for Food Safety and Earthjustice, the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) has stated that it is revoking the registration of Enlist Duo, a combination of glyphosate and 2,4-D.
Approved a year ago by the agency, Enlist Duo was created by Dow Agrosciences for use on the next generation of GMO crops.
The basis of the legal challenge
was that, in approving Enlist Duo, the EPA had failed to consider the
impact of the herbicide on threatened and endangered plants and animals
protected under the Endangered Species Act, which requires that agencies
consider the impact their actions will have on endangered species.
Dow’s Enlist Duo—and Monsanto’s combination of dicamba and
glyphosate, Xtend—are the biotech industry’s answer to “superweeds” that
are now resistant to Roundup, the herbicide that has been increasingly
dumped on American crops. To kill this new generation of weeds, Dow
turned to 2,4-D, which, as we’ve reported in the past,
is one of two active ingredients in Agent Orange, the chemical that
wreaked havoc on the Vietnamese population and US troops alike during
the Vietnam War and which is linked to a long list of horrible diseases and health conditions.
It is extremely disconcerting that it takes a legal action under the
Endangered Special Act to compel the EPA, charged with protecting the
public from these kinds of dangers, to conduct thorough safety reviews
of dangerous chemicals. At this rate, it will be humans who are
endangered. Bravo to the Center for Food Safety for holding the agency
accountable—and shame on the EPA for making such actions necessary.
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