The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for a chance to withdraw the agency’s own decision to approve difenoconazole, a fungicide used to mitigate mold and mildew in potatoes, grapes, soybeans, tomatoes, almonds, and other crops. EPA made its request after considering a lawsuit filed by the Center for Food Safety (CFS), which petitioned the court to reverse EPA’s registration of the fungicide. Syngenta Crop Protection LLC, which holds EPA registrations for difenoconazole, was also listed on the petition as a respondent-intervenor.
CFS asserted that EPA “blatantly and intentionally” ignored the neurological harms that difenoconazole poses to humans, as well as its damaging effects to wildlife, when the agency renewed its approval of the fungicide. CFS stated that EPA violated the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in its failure to collect relevant studies on the risks that difenoconazole poses to public health and animal life, calling the agency’s approval of the fungicide “unlawful.”