BASF Requests Rehearing of Ninth Circuit’s Dicamba Ruling
July 21, 2020 The latest development in the dicamba legal saga came on Monday with a petition filed by BASF with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit requesting a rehearing of its June 3, 2020 decision.
The court’s decision vacated the EPA registration of the dicamba-based Engenia herbicide without giving the company an opportunity to be heard, BASF said. Specifically, the petition requests a review of the decision by a panel of 11 judges from the Ninth Circuit instead of the three-judge panel that issued the previous decision.
“This request for ‘en banc’ review is necessary to correct errors by the panel in issuing a decision inconsistent with basic due process and administrative law principles,” BASF stated.
According to BASF, the panel’s decision undermined the authority of the EPA to make science- and data-based regulatory decisions to determine which herbicide products are safe and effective to meet the challenges farmers face every season. “The EPA should be allowed to continue following a science-based approach to evaluate and manage ecological risks, while balancing agricultural and societal benefits, when reviewing registration applications. This ruling was unprecedented and devastating to tens of thousands of farmers who have counted on over-the-top (OTT) applications of dicamba-based products to control resistant weeds across tens of millions of dicamba-tolerant soybean and cotton acres.”
BASF added that it remains committed to ensuring growers have access to the safe and effective crop protection solutions they have come to rely upon, including Engenia herbicide. Without such dicamba-based products, it is estimated that farmers could lose up to $10 billion and $800 million annually in soybean and cotton yields, respectively.
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