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Monsanto, ag groups sue California over glyphosate warning

Monsanto and a coalition of U.S. ag groups have filed a lawsuit against the state of California to prevent it from requiring cancer warnings on products containing the weed killer glyphosate.

California added glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, to its list of cancer-causing chemicals in July and will require that products containing glyphosate carry warnings by July of 2018.

In the lawsuit filed in federal court in California, Monsanto and the ag groups reject the claim that glyphosate causes cancer.  They say California’s action was based on “a highly-controversial and deeply flawed finding” by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which concluded in 2015 that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic”.

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the National Association of Wheat Growers, says California’s “erroneous warning” about glyphosate is unconstitutional and would result in “higher food costs, crushing blows to state and agricultural economies and lost revenue up and down the entire supply chain.

Other ag-related groups joining the lawsuit include Associated Industries of Missouri, the Iowa Soybean Association, Agribusiness Association of Iowa, Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Missouri Farm Bureau, the National Corn Growers Association, North Dakota Grain Growers Association, South Dakota Agri-Business Association and the United States Durum Growers Association.