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.
Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:
TPP a Disaster for Natural Health
Eleven States Join the Push for Medical Monopoly
Coca-Cola Scandal: Emails Prove Deception
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This is one of the few good things that the EPA has done for the citizen of this country in a very long time. Stop only doing for the big companies, whether they pay your bills or not. Think of the health of your citizenry.
The only reason the EPA did this is because of all the petitions going around that was against it and the lawsuit. I think I signed a petition for each group. None of these agencies do anything for the good of the people, you have to fight them to get them to change. Monsanto is the worst and more people need to get involved. This stuff is also killing the bees that pollinate agri plants.
I realize that. I sign every petition that comes my way. I’m really worried what’s going to happen when there’s no more organic food to eat even in the organic stores. It’s a horrendous situation.
Too little to late as one of my best friends is slowly dying from exposure to this garbage used to defoliate in Vietnam.
Even if that stuff is banned now, it remains that it has been used for a long time on crops….most dangerously on tobacco because inhalation is the worst possible path via the highly-efficient lungs into ones body. So, where are demands for compensation to victims for PAST mass endangerment, mass poisoning mass experimentation on people without Informed Consent…and even mass murder?
As horrific as the perpetrators are, it is a sad indictment of just about the entire Anti-Pesticides community, and of those who feign concerns about health by being “anti-smoking” (i.e., anti the ‘life style’ of the primary victims), that it is ignored that Big Dioxin (pesticides, paper, pharms, etc.) is all over the cigarette industry.
That’s not just via the MANY pesticide residues but being the glaringly obvious (but ne’er mentioned) chlorine-bleached cig paper.
This is only a start. We must get neonicotiniods also banned. This insecticide is killing many beneficial insects in the environment. Also some birds and small mammals. We must learn that poisoning is not the way to a save and adequate food supply. Pests, whether insect or plant will always adapt or become immune to the poison.
Has anyone knowledge about what is actualy happening regarding the GMO that Enlist is supposed to be sprayed on. Will it still bee legal to plant next year, knowing that farmers do not need the mixed chemical to spray the stuff on the plants,
Farmers are well acostumet with mixing chemicals in a tank mix. It might also be cheaper buying Glyphosate and 2,4D in each there container, and mixing them acording to what weeds are in the field! If 2,4d + RR Crops are still allowed to be planted, the desision to stop Enlist means NOTHING!
Actually, the EPA has the pulled the herbicide Enlist Duo off the market but rather filed papers with the 9th Circuit Court that would allow it to rescind its allowance of the product is approved last year. Farmers which have some of the herbicide left over will still be able to use it next spring when planting begins so we shouldn’t start celebrating quite yet.
Too many farmers only care about making money off of their crops and do not care if spraying Agent Orange on their food supply will eventually kill people or cause serious illnesses. I came from a farm family and my farming brothers say farmers do not want to leave their air conditioned tractor cabs to do any manual labor. I am a drafted Veteran of the U.S.Army Ninth Infantry Division having served in the Vietnam War. I am also in a Assisted Living Facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana, fighting several illnesses caused by my exposure to Agent Orange.