EPA Fails to Consult USDA in Glyphosate Case
With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp.A senior U.S. Senator is blasting the Environmental Protection Agency for not consulting with USDA on a key issue affecting farmers.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley asked Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack at a recent Ag Committee hearing if the EPA consulted him before urging the Supreme Court not to hear a challenge to California restrictions on the widely-used herbicide glyphosate…
“Were you consulted on that in any way?” Vilsack “Senator, we weren't.”
Grassley says he should have gone further…
“I should have said it's a sad commentary that with the impact that this is having on American agriculture, that he wasn't, that Vilsack and the USDA weren’t consulted.”
Vilsack added that he has stressed to EPA in a general sense that its crop protection decisions be science-based, and that EPA listens to producers, which he claims it has. But Grassley suggests otherwise…
“Sometimes, I sense that he's caught between what he knows is best and what this administration might be pushing.”
Again Senior U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley representing the state of Iowa challenging Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack during a recent Agriculture Committee meeting as well as contemplating that discussion afterwards.