Monsanto Sues California Agency Over Plans to List Roundup as Cancer-Causing Chemical

Monsanto has filed a lawsuit against California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) and the agency’s acting director, Lauren Zeise, arguing that glyphosate is “a widely used herbicide” approved in 160 counties worldwide and does not “present a carcinogenic risk to humans.”

Under California’s Proposition 65 law, enacted in 1986, the state is obliged to keep and publish a list of chemicals “known to the State of California to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity.” Last revised in early December, the entire list currently takes up 23 pages and includes over 800 chemicals, according to the agency. 

In September, the OEHHA said it planned to include glyphosate to its “database,” adding that it does “meet the criteria for [Labor Code] listing mechanism.”

“The law requires that certain substances identified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) be listed as known to cause cancer under Proposition 65,” it said.

However, Monsanto has rejected the assessment, arguing that OEHHA has “no sound basis” to include glyphosate in that list. The agriculture giant pointed out the regulator’s own conclusion from 2007, when it said that “based on the weight of evidence, glyphosate is judged unlikely to pose a cancer hazard to humans.”

The company also argues that “OEHHA relied exclusively on a determination by IARC,” whose classification is “inconsistent” with the findings of regulatory bodies both in the US and worldwide.

In December, Monsanto assembled a 16-member panel from Intertek Scientific & Regulatory Consultancy to dispute the World Health Organization’s (WHO) March 2015 conclusion, which deemed Roundup herbicide “probably carcinogenic” to humans.

Continue reading original article on RT

Source Article from http://fracturedparadigm.com/2016/01/22/monsanto-sues-california-agency-over-plans-to-list-roundup-as-cancer-causing-chemical/

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