Monsanto Company is taking legal action to prevent a listing of the herbicide glyphosate under California’s Proposition 65 (Prop 65), which requires the state to maintain a “list of chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.”
“The listing of glyphosate would be flawed and baseless because glyphosate does not cause cancer, as has been concluded by the U.S. EPA, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and pesticide regulators around the world,” Monsanto says in a news release. “The listing would violate the California and U.S. Constitutions because the state would be ceding the basis of its regulatory authority to an unelected and non-transparent foreign body that is not under the oversight or control of any federal or state government entity.”
Monsanto filed the suit against California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) last week in California’s Fresno Superior Court.
Indeed, OEHHA, the very state agency that has announced its intention to add glyphosate to the Prop 65 list, determined in 2007, after conducting a rigorous and science-based assessment, that glyphosate was unlikely to cause cancer. “In striking contrast, OEHHA now interprets Prop 65 to require the agency to accept the erroneous classification of glyphosate as a ‘probable carcinogen’ by an ad hoc working group of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), based in Lyon, France, as the solebasis for the proposed listing. This interpretation of Prop 65 is unconstitutional,” Monsanto says.
“Glyphosate does not cause cancer, so listing glyphosate under California’s Prop 65 is not warranted scientifically and would cause unwarranted concern for consumers,” said Phil Miller, Ph.D., vice president of regulatory affairs at Monsanto. “Based on the overwhelming weight of evidence, regulatory agencies have concluded for more than 40 years that glyphosate can be used safely. The conclusion from the IARC meeting in France was erroneous, non-transparent and based on selectively interpreted data. We are bringing this challenge forward because this intention to list is contrary to science.”
