Monsanto + Dow = Deadly Duo

Tell the EPA: Stop Dow’s Deadly Duo of Agent Orange and Roundup Herbicides

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What’s more poisonous than Dow’s 2,4-D “Agent Orange” herbicide or Monsanto’s Roundup?

Enlist Duo, an herbicide made of both 2,4-D and Roundup.

Deadline Midnight June 30, 2014: Tell the EPA, Don’t let Dow poison our food with its “Deadly Duo” of Agent Orange and Roundup herbicides.

Last week, the OCA submitted more than 19,000 signatures to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requesting regulators reject Dow’s request for approval of 2,4-D for use on the company’s new Enlist brand corn and soy, genetically engineered to tolerate massive amounts of 2.4-D.

But Dow is also asking for approval of a new, even deadlier herbicide. Enlist Duo uses a combination of 2,4-D, one of the toxic ingredients in Agent Orange, and Roundup, whose key active ingredient, glyphosate, is linked to a host of ills, including birth defects, infertility, allergies and cancer.

Alone, each of these toxins has a rap sheet long enough to warrant a ban. Yet the so-called Environmental Protection Agency is ignoring the science. The EPA rejected  the National Resources Defense Council’s petition to take 2,4-D off the market and has so far refused pleas from Moms Across America and Thinking Moms’ Revolution to recall RoundUp.
Will EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy also allow Dow to spray its new genetically engineered herbicide-tolerant food crops with this deadly duo?
The deck is stacked in Dow’s favor. In its review of Enlist Duo, the EPA won’t be considering any of the new evidence on the dangers of glyphosate. And it isn’t looking at the harms to human health when we’re exposed to glyphosate and 2,4-D in combination.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) signaled it will approve Dow’s new Enlist-brand corn and soy crops, even though the agency admits that if the new crops are approved, the annual use of 2,4-D would jump from 26 million pounds to 176 million pounds.
Independent scientists predict the spike in the use of 2,4-D would be even more dramatic.
The proliferation of Roundup Ready crops caused a 527-million-pound increase in the use of glyphosate in the first 16 years, between 1996 and 2011. If farmers start growing Dow’s Enlist brand corn and soy, experts estimate the use of 2,4-D could increase by up to 50 times.
Dow is telling farmers that they need these new genetically engineered “Agent Orange” crops because Monsanto’s genetically engineered “Roundup Ready” crops are failing. (“Super weeds” have predictably developed resistance to glyphosate.)
But Dow and Monsanto don’t want farmers to stop using glyphosate and replace it with 2,4-D. They want farmers to use 2,4-D and glyphosate.  

For Dow and Monsanto, more pesticides mean more profits.
For consumers, Dow and Monsanto’s profits mean more poisons.

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Docket No. EPA-HQ-OPP-2014-0195-0427

I urge you to reject Dow’s request to use its Enlist Duo herbicide on its genetically engineered herbicide-tolerant corn and soy.

Rather than expanding the uses of 2,4-D and glyphosate, the EPA should ban these dangerous herbicides that have been linked to serious health harms. Both have been linked to cancer, birth defects and endocrine disruption.

The dramatic rise in glyphosate use in conjunction with Roundup Ready crops tells us that widespread use of 2,4-D on corn and soy that is genetically engineered to tolerate the herbicide will create a surge in its application. The use of 2,4-D has already gone up several-fold since bottoming out in the early 2000s. Experts predict its use could increase by 50 times if the use of Enlist Duo on Dow’s herbicide tolerant crops is approved.

Dramatically increasing the use of these herbicides would exacerbate the public health crisis that is growing in the U.S. and other countries where 2,4-D and glyphosate are widely used.

Please consider this new evidence that 2,4-D and glyphosate are too dangerous to continue to be used in food production:

Antoniou M, Habib MEM, Howard CV, Jennings RC, Leifert C, et al. Teratogenic Effects of Glyphosate-Based Herbicides: Divergence of Regulatory Decisions from Scientific Evidence. J Environ Anal Toxicol 2012, S4:006.

Samsel, A.; Seneff, S. Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Diseases. Entropy 2013, 15, 1416-1463.

Samsel A, Seneff S. Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases II: Celiac sprue and gluten intolerance. Interdiscip Toxicol. 2013 Dec;6(4):159-184.

Schinasi, L.; Leon, M.E. Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and Occupational Exposure to Agricultural Pesticide Chemical Groups and Active Ingredients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2014, 11, 4449-4527.

We urge EPA to reject Dow’s petition for use of its Enlist Duo on herbicide-tolerant corn and soy, and we call on your Agency to instead ban these dangerous herbicide.