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Pesticide XtendiMax approval challenged in US Appeal petition
Feb. 14, 2018
By Irvin Jackson, AboutLawsuits.com
A number of environmental and consumer protection groups have an appeal over the recent approval of a new Monsanto pesticide, which is designed to be used with “Roundup Ready” crops, but may pose serious health risks for consumers.
The petition for review (PDF) was filed last month with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision to grant conditional registration for XtendiMax, a dicamba-based pesticide introduced by Monsanto for use on genetically engineered cotton and soybean crops.
Plaintiffs include the National Family Farm Coalition, Pesticide Action Network, Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity, all of whom argue that the approval was illegal and violated the agency’s duties under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), as well as the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
According to the petition, which is a type of lawsuit that seeks to overturn the EPA’s decision, the approval of XtendiMax will lead to a tenfold increase in the use of dicamba, the active ingredient, which the groups say is toxic. In addition, the plaintiffs say that the crops XtendiMax is designed to be used on are genetically modified to be resistant to both dicamba and Roundup, a glyphosate-based pesticide, and will increase the use of both. The lawsuit says both pesticides are linked to increased rates of cancer.
The petition for review of the EPA approval comes as Monsanto also a growing number of Roundup cancer lawsuits filed on behalf of farmers, landscapers, agricultural workers and others regularly exposed to large amounts of the weedkiller, each involving allegations that plaintiffs were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma because the manufacturer failed to provide safety warnings.
A recent U.S. Geological Survey on glyphosate usage nationwide found that an estimated 2.6 billion pounds of the herbicide has been sprayed on America’s agricultural land over the two decades since the mid-1990s, when Monsanto introduced “Roundup Ready” crops that are designed to survive being sprayed with glyphosate, killing the weeds but not the crops.
The lawsuits over Roundup allege that plaintiffs may have avoided a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma or other cancers if they had been warned about the Roundup risks for farmers, landscapers and others in the agricultural industry, as safety precautions could have been taken or other products could have been used to control the growth of weeds.
Source: AboutLawsuits.com
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