Farm groups ask EPA to keep Enlist Duo registration

Six key farm groups asked Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy on Tuesday to withdraw its request to a court to vacate the registration for Dow’s Enlist Duo herbicide.

Citing new information, EPA asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to remand the Enlist Duo registration back to EPA for further review.

“U.S. growers have an urgent need for a new mode of action as these regulatory delays have exacerbated the proliferation of hard-to-control weed populations,” the American Soybean Association, the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Corn Growers Association, National Cotton Council and the National Farmers Union wrote.

The groups also took issue with EPA’s reference to additional and new data in its decision to reevaluate Enlist Duo.

“There will always be new information to be considered about products EPA has registered,” wrote the groups, which sent a copy of the letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

“Congress has recognized this, and included in FIFRA [the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act] several vehicles for reviewing products. But none of these vehicles authorize the agency to withdraw a previously approved product in the absence of an ‘imminent hazard.”

–The Hagstrom Report