ST. LOUIS — Farmers, lawyers and scientists said on Tuesday that the future of the weedkiller dicamba now faces fresh uncertainty after an Environmental Protection Agency report revealed that senior Trump-era staffers improperly influenced the decision to re-approve the controversial herbicide in 2018.
The report, released Monday, does more than sow distrust, several said. It undermines the credibility of federal regulators, discourages the participation of outside scientists, encourages lawyers to mount new arguments, and could push farmers to reconsider their crop decisions.
"The report begs to have further investigation done into it," said Paul Lesko, a St. Louis-based attorney working on a wave of dicamba cases. New clients are continually telling him of damage done to their fields by dicamba, he said.
