ROCKVILLE, Md. (DTN) — New details are emerging from a lawsuit calling for EPA to vacate the registration of Monsanto’s dicamba herbicide.

Originally filed in January 2017, the lawsuit’s newly released briefs claim EPA ignored key requirements of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and violated the Endangered Species Act when it registered Monsanto’s XtendiMax herbicide, designed to be sprayed over the top of dicamba-tolerant crops.

It also argues that the agency was inappropriately influenced by Monsanto during the registration process.

The lawsuit’s plaintiffs — The National Family Farm Coalition, Center for Food Safety, Center for Biological Diversity, and Pesticide Action Network — are among a crowded field.

Just two weeks ago, a panel of judges ruled that 11 separate lawsuits on dicamba drift damage should be consolidated in a federal court in St. Louis. (See the DTN story here: http://bit.ly/…). These lawsuits cover a range of complaints, but contain mostly farmer defendants seeking damages for crops injured by off-target dicamba movement and focus on the companies that sell the new dicamba formulations: Monsanto (XtendiMax), BASF (Engenia) and DuPont (FeXapan).

The lawsuit by National Family Farm Coalition et al. goes further by targeting EPA and demanding it scrap the registration of XtendiMax entirely.