By Emily Unglesbee
DTN Staff Reporter
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (DTN) — The inspector general of the EPA is planning to look into whether EPA acted properly when it registered dicamba in 2016 and 2018, as well as review states’ use of Section 24(c) labels, often used for dicamba in recent years.
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) functions as an internal government watchdog for all the major federal and state agencies. Each government agency, including EPA, has an OIG division within it that regularly reviews the agency’s actions and programs for fraud, waste, abuse or mismanagement.
Once released, OIG reports are public and often require responses and action plans from the federal agency under review.
Each year, the EPA’s OIG releases its annual plan for audits, evaluations and investigations. The 2020 plan states that inspectors plan to look into the EPA’s past registrations of dicamba herbicides XtendiMax (Bayer), Engenia (BASF) and FeXapan (Corteva) in the second half of 2021.
