EPA

The world's largest seed company, Monsanto, says it will challenge a ruling by a federal judge that allows California officials to require a cancer warning on its weedkiller Roundup, said The Associated Press. If carried out, it would be the first such state-level warning on the herbicide, made with glyphosate, the most widely used weedkiller in the world.

Federal employees from more than a dozen U.S. departments are tweeting climate change and other scientific information under unofficial Twitter accounts in a move against the climate-skeptical Trump administration, says Reuters.

The Trump administration has told EPA officials to remove the agency's Internet page on climate change, says Reuters, "the latest move by the newly minted leadership to erase ex-President Barack Obama's climate change initiatives."

Doug Ericksen, head of communications for President Trump's EPA transition team, says that during the transition period, agency scientists will have their work vetted on a “case by case” basis before it can be published and dispersed outside the agency.

The EPA failed to consult with the Interior Department over the risk to endangered species before approving use of the Monsanto weedkiller dicamba on GE cotton and soybeans, say four farm and environmental groups in a federal lawsuit. The groups want the U.S. appellate court in San Francisco to order the EPA to consider again if the herbicide merits approval.

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt put "the brakes" on state pursuit of a water-pollution suit against poultry processors, said the New York Times in describing how Pruitt "will have the opportunity to engineer a radical shift" in federal policy if he is confirmed as EPA administrator.

With President-elect Donald Trump figuratively looking over his shoulder, Scott Pruitt assured Farm Belt senators that he will support the Renewable Fuels Standard, which guarantees biofuels a share of the gasoline market, if he is confirmed as EPA administrator. Pruitt is state attorney general in Oklahoma, an oil-producing state, which raised questions about whether he would enforce the biofuels mandate.

The EPA has saddled farmers and ranchers with "burdensome, unnecessary and, too often, unlawful federal regulations," said the American Farm Bureau Federation in calling for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to approve Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt to lead the agency. "We desperately need an administrator who understands the challenges our farmers and ranchers face in producing safe, wholesome and affordable food for our nation and the world."

The largest U.S. farm organization and state agriculture directors petitioned the EPA to delay the Jan. 2 implementation of revised pesticide safety rules for growers and farmworkers. Under the rules, for the first time, people under the age of 18 years will be prohibited from handling pesticides.

After a four-day meeting, members of a Scientific Advisory Panel were divided over the EPA's conclusion, issued in a September 2016 white paper, that glyphosate, the world's most widely used herbicide, is "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans," Agri-Pulse reported.

Erik Solheim, executive director of the UN Environment Program, says he’s troubled by president-elect Trump’s appointments so far, says Reuters. " I am concerned that some elite American politicians deny science. You will be in the Middle Ages if you deny science," he said.

Worried that federal climate databases might soon be taken offline, scientists are frantically trying to download as much data on climate change as they can before the Trump administration takes office, says The Washington Post.

The technique of hydraulic fracturing by the oil and gas industry "can impact drinking water resources in the United States under some circumstances," the EPA says in a new report. "Impacts cited in the report generally occurred near hydraulic fractured oil and gas production wells and ranged in severity from temporary changes in water quality to contamination that made private drinking water wells unusable."

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who filed suit to block the Waters of the United States rule and who challenged the Obama administration on climate change, is President-elect Donald Trump's choice to run the EPA. Before the transition team circulated word of the choice, Jason Miller, communications director for the transition, said Pruitt "led Oklahoma's legal challenges to the EPA, Obamacare, executive actions on illegal immigration, Dodd-Frank and President Obama's repeated attempts to bypass Congress."

President-elect Donald Trump's lineup for agency heads is comprised of people who have deeply opposed the policies of President Obama on social programs, public lands, the environment, labor issues, and veterans affairs, says The New York Times.