The recent federal court ruling barring enforcement of California’s Proposition 65 warning on the herbicide glyphosate is a win for American agriculture and conveys that state regulators overreached by trying to attach it to a product that worldwide consensus has deemed safe, trade group leaders say.
“The judge’s ruling sends the message that laws and regulations that are arbitrary or that ignore facts and scientific data must fail,” Chandler Goule, CEO of the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG), told the Northern California Record by email. “It also shows that an agriculture coalition defending farmers’ use of legally registered and scientifically reviewed crop protection tools can compel this just result through proper use of the legal system.”
The NAWG, along with 11 other industry groups and the Monsanto Co., in 2017 filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, stating the Proposition 65 warning requirement on glyphosate violated the First Amendment.
A U.S. district court has ruled that a Proposition 65 warning on herbicides containing glyphosate is not warranted.
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The office of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra defended the mandate, but Federal Judge William Shubb found for the plaintiffs in National Association of Wheat Growers et al., v. Becerra.
Shubb’s June 22 ruling states, “the balance of equities and public interest weigh in favor of permanently enjoining Proposition 65’s warning requirement for glyphosate.”
Five years ago, the International Agency for Research on Cancer had said glyphosate was potentially carcinogenic, mainly based on animal testing, a finding countered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and government regulators from multiple countries.
Shubb noted that the EPA last year, “stated that it would not approve herbicide labels with a Proposition 65 warning, as such labels would be false and misleading and ‘misbranded’ under the federal herbicide labeling law.”
“The judge’s ruling said you can’t force people to mislead the public about a product,” Daren Coppock, president and CEO of the Agricultural Retailers Association, part of the plaintiffs’ coalition, told the Record. “It verifies that decisions need to be based on science and California stepped over the line with this, and hopefully it indicates that future decisions will be based on science as well.”
It is counterproductive when false information manages to override scientific facts, Goule of the NAWG said.
“Glyphosate is backed by more than 40 years of safety data and is one of the most effective tools to combat weeds available to farmers. In recent years, we have seen a drastic increase in consumer interest around sustainability and the public calling on agriculture to use more environmentally friendly practices.”
Glyphosate is helping growers adopt no-till farming methods, in which crops better maintain soil moisture percentages, and soil better retains carbon and nutrients, Goule added.
The ruling is especially helpful amid the COVID-19 economic downturn.
“This would have added more burden to current regulatory requirements of the supply chain, which are already being strained as a result of COVID-19,” Goule said. “Adding this type of label to food products is much more complex than realized by the public. It could also lead to an increase in cost for food companies, which could later be passed on to the consumer.”