The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has paved the way for the introduction of Monsanto’s dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybeans. On Friday, USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service published its final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on varieties of cotton and soybeans that have been genetically modified to survive spraying with several herbicides, including dicamba, concluding that both should be fully deregulated. The decision was heavily criticised by health and environmental groups. “Monsanto’s genetically-engineered dicamba-resistant crops are yet another example of how pesticide firms are taking agriculture back to the dark days of heavy, indiscriminate use of hazardous pesticides, seriously endangering human health and the environment,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety (CFS), a U.S.-based non-profit organisation. CFS estimates that the anticipated widespread adoption of these GE crops would lead to an over 10-fold increase in dicamba use in U.S. agriculture, from 3.8 million lbs. at present to more than 43 million lbs. per year. Dicamba is a selective herbicide used to kill broad-leaved plants. It has been linked to increased rates of cancer in farmers. According to CFS, Monsanto has developed dicamba-resistant crops “as a quick fix” to the epidemic of glyphosate-resistant weeds generated by the massive use of that herbicide with the company’s first generation of genetically modified crops. However, the use of dicamba with the new GE cotton and soybean varieties could give rise to weeds resistant to both dicamba and glyphosate. “Monsanto’s dicamba-resistant crops are the latest fruits of a pesticide industry strategy to increase sales of their toxic herbicides,” said CFS Science Policy Analyst Bill Freese. Monsanto welcomed USDA’s decision that moves them one step closer to the introduction of their new crop varieties. The last step is now the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) registration of the trait’s corresponding herbicides. In October, the EPA approved Dow AgroSciences’ Enlist Duo herbicide, only two months after USDA issued its final EIS for the corresponding Enlist corn and soybean traits.