California Roundup Ruling Allows Warning Label for Chemical

Fresno County Superior Court Judge Kristi Culver Kapetan's ruling last Friday was a blow to multinational chemical giant Monsanto, which had fought to prevent California officials from making the requirement, the Fresno Bee reported.

Monsanto argued in court that other regulatory agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the European Food Safety Authority have not gone so far as to list glyphosate, an active ingredient in Roundup, as linked to cancer, the Bee said.

Kapetan had ruled against Monsanto in January that California could require the company to label Roundup as a possible cancer threat, making it the first state in the country to require such labels, according to The Associated Press.

Monsanto attorney Trenton Norris said in January that the labels would have immediate negative financial consequences for the company, the AP noted. Norris said many customers would stop purchasing the product once they saw the label.

"It will absolutely be used in ways that will harm Monsanto," Norris said in January, according to the news service.

In 2015, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer listed glyphosate and a handful of other insecticides as "probably carcinogenic to humans." The agency stated that the chemical showed "limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans for non-Hodgkin lymphoma."

Monsanto sued the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment in California's Environmental Protection Agency after it issued a notice of intent to add glyphosate to its Proposition 65 list of chemicals known to cause cancer, the Fresno Bee reported.

Kapetan ruled, though, that none of Monsanto's objections were viable, the Bee reported. Organizations like the National Resource Defense Council, cheered the ruling.

"Monsanto may prefer to keep glyphosate off the Proposition 65 list, but that does not empower them to override the choice of California’s voters," said Selena Kyle, a senior attorney with the council, according to the Bee.

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