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 The government of the most populous U.S. state added glyphosate, the
main ingredient in Monsanto's herbicide Roundup, to its list of
cancer-causing chemicals in July and will require that products
containing glyphosate carry warnings by July 2018.
California acted after the World Health Organization’s International
Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded in 2015 that
glyphosate was "probably carcinogenic".
For more than 40 years, farmers have applied glyphosate to crops,
most recently as they have cultivated genetically modified corn and
soybeans. Roundup and Monsanto's glyphosate-resistant seeds would be
less attractive to customers if California requires warnings on
products containing the chemical.
In the lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, Monsanto and
groups representing corn, soy and wheat farmers reject that
glyphosate causes cancer. They say the state's requirement for
warnings would force sellers of products containing the chemical to
spread false information.
"Such warnings would equate to compelled false speech, directly
violate the First Amendment, and generate unwarranted public concern
and confusion," Scott Partridge, Monsanto's vice president of global
strategy, said in a statement.
California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA),
which is named in the lawsuit, said it generally does not comment on
pending litigation.
The controversy is an additional headache for Monsanto as it faces a
crisis around a new version of an herbicide based on another
chemical known as dicamba that was linked to widespread U.S. crop
damage this summer. The company, which is being acquired by Bayer AG
for $63.5 billion, developed the product as a replacement for
glyphosate following an increase of weeds resistant to the chemical.
Monsanto has already suffered damage to its investment of hundreds
of millions of dollars in glyphosate products since California added
the chemical to its list of products known to cause cancer,
according to the lawsuit.
U.S. farmers apply glyphosate to fields to kill weeds before
planting corn fed to livestock, spray it on genetically engineered
soybeans while they are growing and sometimes on wheat before it is
harvested. The crops are then shipped across the country in food
products.
"Everything that we grow is probably going to have to be labeled,"
said Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, a plaintiff
in the lawsuit.
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Certain goods that meet a standard for containing low amounts of
glyphosate, known as a No Significant Risk Level (NSRL), may be able
to be sold without warnings under a proposal California is
considering, said Sam Delson, a state spokesman.
"We do not anticipate that food products would cause exposures that
exceed the proposed NSRL," he said. "However, we cannot say that
with certainty at this point and businesses make the determination."
A large, long-term study on glyphosate use by U.S. agricultural
workers, published last week as part of a project known as the
Agricultural Health Study (AHS), found no firm link between exposure
to the chemical and cancer.
Reuters reported in June that an influential scientist was aware of
new AHS research data while he was chairing a panel of experts
reviewing evidence on glyphosate for IARC in 2015. He did not tell
the panel about it because the data had not been published, and
IARC's review did not take it into account.
A 2007 study by OEHHA also concluded the chemical was unlikely to
cause cancer.
Still, flour mills have started asking farmers to test wheat for
glyphosate in anticipation of California's requirement, said Gordon
Stoner, president of the National Association of Wheat Growers,
another plaintiff.
Such tests add costs for farmers and could push up food prices or
unnecessarily scare consumers away from buying products that contain
crops grown with glyphosate, he said.
The case is National Association of Wheat Growers et al v. Lauren
Zeise, director of the OEHHA, et al, U.S. District Court, Eastern
District of California, No. 17-at-01224.
(Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by Tom Brown)
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