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.
California officials based their decision on the conclusion of an expert panel assembled by the UN International Agency for Research on Cancer that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” An EPA study said it is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans at doses relevant to human health risk assessment.”
Fresno County Superior Court Judge Kristi Kapetan tentatively ruled in favor of the state on Friday and said a formal ruling would come soon. The state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment said it would wait for the final ruling before moving ahead with the warnings.
The trade group American Chemistry Council launched a campaign last week against the IARC, a WHO agency. It says the IARC process results in misleading headlines because it considers whether a substance poses a cancer risk but does not discuss relevant exposure levels. The trade group says the United States provides two-thirds of IARC funding. Republican lawmakers raised questions about IARC after its 2015 rating of glyphosate.