It was present in northwest Washington a few years ago and has also been reported in BC. It was/is a commonly applied herbicide used to control weeds and invasive species on pastures and rangelands, typically for dairy cattle. It is very likely that your manures were contaminated.

You can do a fairly simple bioassay to determine if the aminopyralid is the culprit (sure looks like it and the use of manure tends to confirm but other herbicides can cause similar symptoms) and if it is, I'd start by reporting it to the BC Ministry of Agriculture and see where that takes you. Somebody should be aware of it and is making sure that contaminated compost or manures are being restricted from sale.

edited to add: it is NOT a disease and I seriously doubt it is a nutrient deficiency. Persistent herbicides like the aminopyralid, clopyralid and picloram from a few years back have been very restricted in their usage. They are not available to home owners, do not appear on grass clippings and are pretty much limited to farmers for livestock feedlot applications. Contaminated manures, which may or may not be included in municipal composting operations, are the way these contaminated materials get disbursed.

You can obtain contaminated OM from many sources, not just from municipal compost. Hereabouts, we've seen such damage every year since it was first reported.
To verify or not, I suggest you bio-assay your current amended growing mix. See bio-assay

Well, not to stat a big argument, but it is my understanding that grass clippings from sports fields etc have been the most prevalent source of herbicide in compost, and as a result many commercial compost facilities will not take them.

Visual symptoms are notoriously difficult to evaluate and I would not report it to anyone without some evidence. A bioassay is not evidence. If the manure has a problem, low in some nutrient or high is salts for example, and you grow another tomato you will get the same symptoms. That proves nothing except that the manure is not suitable for growing tomatoes (which you already know). Calcium, Chloride, Copper, Boron or Molybdenum deficiencies can all cause distortions in the growing tips of plants, as do many diseases. Again, I would get the plants out of the manure and into some good garden soil.

Since the discovery of persistent herbicides in commercial compost going on 15 years ago, the use of these particular pesticides has been severely curtailed. At least in the US. One was removed from the marker entirely. The others are either highly regulated or a restricted use product. And the regulations even extend to waste material treated with these products - golf courses and sports fields treated with any of these products must compost their waste onsite and reuse it. It is not allowed into commercial composting operations.

Most of the contamination that still exists is coming from agricultural operations. Treated grasses and grains - like hay - are often transported and sold far from their origin and consumed by livestock which then produces contaminated manures. Or the pesticides are used to maintain local feedlots and pastures and the same thing occurs. There are restrictions on these compost inputs as well but ignorance, lack of ability to test for the herbicide at the very low but still damaging levels these products contain and lack of attention to or ignoring restrictions and requirements persist. As do the herbicides. The only way we can effectively expect this contamination to stop is to remove these herbicides from the market.

btw, bioassys are the standard method for testing for these contaminates. Tomatoes and other Solanaceae crops are particularly sensitive but beans tend to produce the fastest results.

The soluble salts on the manure are too high. A soluble salts test costs around $5-10 but you don't need to do that. Just get them out of the manure laden pots (ideally they'd be in the ground) and into soil/potting mix.

this is the reason why I only go with dried leaves and urea only since a few years. I have put wood chips in my orchard but that is the extent of it. Commercial composts are no longer reliable. Also, my OM is free, although part of the space near the garden is now occupied by rotting paper bags full of leaves.

Sorry this happened! Always best to use a potting mix made for that purpose. You're less likely to get something that's too salty, contaminated with something, or not completely composted. I'm a cheapo but I do buy potting mix when I'm potting up my tomatoes, or sift last year's with some home made compost and use that.

I think you may be on the right track Erica. This does look like damage from a growth hormone-containing herbicide and it is DEFINITIVELY NOT from salt or nitrogen in 'hot' manure. Tomatoes are very sensitive, so you might see it in tomatoes, but not in other plants.

a possible solution is to throw this compost on the lawn, then start over with verifiably clean OM.

Thanks for the helpful comments everyone. I will do a bio-assay and then throw out the manure and start again. My spinach that I planted in the garden with the same manure also looks unusually crinkly and stunted and in both cases the manure was mixed with a large percent of soil from our own household compost. Interesting lesson though, whether it is aminopyralid or not it has definitely made me think more about the ways in which pesticides have lasting affects in not only our food but the food chain. From now on I will just use potting soil to start plants and be careful about where my manure is coming from.

Here is the thing about bio assays; they are typically done on fields that have had herbicides used on a previous crop that may be detrimental to the following crop. In this instance soil is taken from an area known to have been treated with herbicide and an area known not to have been treated. Seeds from the crop to be grown are planted in each of the soils. If there is an obvious detrimental effect it is likely from the herbicide so the crop isn't planted.

Bio assys are also done on composts or manure prior to using them as a potting media. In this instance there is no control (same material known to be suitable) so plants are grown simply to see how they do. If there is a problem it is not possible to say what the problem is, but you know the material is not going to work. Whether herbicide, salts or whatever, leave it for a year and try agin.

In this case it is known that the maure is not suitable so there is really nothing to be gained by a bio assay.

I disagree with that assessment. If there is residue of an herbicide that affects only broad-leaved plants, then testing both broad-leaves and grasses would provide evidence (not proof) that herbicide residue is the culprit.