Biden EPA says Trump administration dicamba decision was political; future for the herbicide is unclear

The Environmental Protection Agency's 2018 decision to reauthorize dicamba formulations was unduly influenced by political interference and ignored critical scientific evidence on the herbicide's risks, Emily Unglesbee reports for DTN/The Progressive Farmer. That's according to internal EPA email obtained by DTN and verified by the agency. Dicamba is notorious for drifting to nearby fields and killing crops and trees that aren't genetically engineered to resist it.

Michal Freedhoff, acting assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, sent an email to all OCSPP employees March 10 saying "political interference sometimes compromised the integrity" of the agency's science. "In 2018, OCSPP senior leadership directed career staff to: (1) rely on a limited data set of plant effects endpoints; (2) discount specific studies (some with more robust data) used in assessing potential risks and benefits; and (3) discount scientific information on negative impacts," she wrote. "This interference contributed to a court's vacating registrations based on these and other deficiencies, which in turn impacted growers' ability to use this product." 

Freedhoff is referring to a court decision in June 2020 that essentially banned sales of dicamba-based herbicides for the next six months after finding that EPA hadn't done its due diligence in 2018 when reauthorizing the chemical through December 2020. The decision caused widespread uncertainty among farmers who needed to make decisions about buying seed for the next year. But soon afterward, EPA told farmers they could use existing stores of dicamba through July. A federal appeals court upheld that call, but it was unclear whether dicamba would be legal in 2021 until October, when EPA reauthorized three dicamba formulations and limited states' ability to further restrict dicamba use.

"It's not immediately clear what EPA's new view of its 2018 dicamba registrations will mean for how the agency will manage its most recent dicamba re-registrations," which were released in October, Unglesbee writes.