A groundbreaking legal action launched Wednesday calls on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to immediately suspend and cancel the dangerous herbicide glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup.
Glyphosate’s registration is illegal, says the petition filed by Center for Food Safety on behalf of itself, Beyond Pesticides, and four farmworker advocacy groups. Last year, in a lawsuit by the same nonprofits, a federal court of appeals struck down EPA’s human health assessment because the agency wrongfully dismissed glyphosate’s cancer risk. Today’s petition, calling for the cancellation and suspension of glyphosate’s registration, runs over 70 pages and includes more than 200 scientific citations.
“This petition is a blueprint for the Biden administration to do what the law and science require and finally cancel glyphosate’s registration,” said Pegga Mosavi, an attorney at the Center for Food Safety and counsel for the petitioners. “There is a wealth of scientific evidence demonstrating that glyphosate endangers public health, and poses cancer risks to farmers and other Roundup users. Glyphosate formulations are also an environmental hazard and have driven an epidemic of resistant weeds that plague farmers. After last year’s court decision, EPA has no legal legs to stand on. EPA must take action now.”
Glyphosate is the most widely used pesticide in the world, with approximately 300 million pounds applied annually in the U.S. Yet EPA has declined to act despite the damage inflicted by glyphosate’s pervasive use. Numerous studies—including many sponsored by Monsanto—show that glyphosate has harmful effects on the liver, kidney, and reproductive system, and is a probable carcinogen linked specifically with the immune system cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
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Bill Freese, science director at Center for Food Safety, noted, “EPA once acknowledged that glyphosate has adverse effects on the mammalian liver, kidney, and reproductive system, and might even cause cancer—effects that were first revealed in decades-old registrant studies. But as Monsanto sought ever wider uses for its blockbuster herbicide, EPA consigned those incriminating studies to regulatory oblivion, thus facilitating greater use, even as independent scientists confirmed the harms EPA now denies.”
Glyphosate formulations have also ravaged the environment, causing considerable drift damage to crops and wild plants. By decimating milkweed, glyphosate has been a major factor in the decline of the monarch butterfly, and many Roundup formulations are extremely toxic to amphibians. EPA itself has found that glyphosate is likely to adversely affect an incredible 93% of threatened and endangered species, and 96% of the critical habitat that supports them.
Today’s petition calls on the EPA to suspend glyphosate use until the agency can conclude the cancellation process or can demonstrate that glyphosate meets the required safety standards in the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Cancellation would make the sale and use of any product containing the chemical illegal.
“Farmworker women and their families have experienced the damaging health effects of pesticides for far too long”said Mily Treviño-Sauceda, Executive Director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas. “EPA must protect the nation’s farmworkers and our environment by immediately suspending and cancelling all glyphosate registrations.”
Background
The last time glyphosate was subject to a comprehensive re-evaluation was 1993, right before the explosion in use that accompanied Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops that are genetically engineered to resist glyphosate. Under federal law, EPA must review pesticide registrations every 15 years to determine whether they continue to meet the required safety standard—no unreasonable adverse effects on the environment—considering new science and current use patterns. EPA only began this registration review process for glyphosate in 2009, issuing an interim decision in 2020.
Despite spending eleven years on its review, EPA’s pesticide division was unable to reach a conclusion as to whether glyphosate causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). The agency nevertheless dismissed glyphosate’s overall cancer risk, deeming it “not likely” to cause cancer. NHL is the cancer linked to glyphosate in many epidemiology studies of farmers, and in assessments by scientists with EPA’s science division. It is also the cancer associated with glyphosate by the world’s foremost authority on carcinogens, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. Many NHL sufferers who attributed their cancer to use of Roundup have won lawsuits against Monsanto/Bayer.
In 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down EPA’s cancer and broader human health assessment of glyphosate, in a lawsuit brought by Center for Food Safety on behalf of the same petitioners. The court found EPA’s cancer assessment of glyphosate internally contradictory and violative of EPA’s own guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment. Similar criticisms were levied by an EPA-appointed expert Scientific Advisory Panel, and EPA scientists from outside the pesticide division.
As a result of the court’s decision, EPA lacks a legal human health assessment of glyphosate to support its current use. The court also remanded the ecological risk assessment of glyphosate to EPA, with a deadline to complete it. EPA failed to meet this deadline, and instead chose to withdraw the entire interim registration review decision. Congress subsequently extended EPA’s deadline for completing registration reviews of glyphosate and all other pesticides previously due for completion by October 2022 to October 2026.
Today, glyphosate remains registered based entirely on a three-decades old, 1993 assessment. This outdated assessment takes no account of the exponentially increased use of glyphosate that began with the mid-1990s introduction of glyphosate-resistant corn, soybeans, cotton, and other major crops; it also predates the thousands of incriminating scientific studies on glyphosate that have accumulated since 1993. Neither does this antiquated assessment account for the enormous costs imposed on farmers by this century’s glyphosate-resistant weed outbreak. For all of these reasons, EPA cannot meet the required safety standard for glyphosate’s currently approved uses, and must cancel its registration.
(5 votes, average: 4.80 out of 5)
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I cheer and salute everyone involved in getting this case heard. I often feel very alone in my concerns about agri-chemicals of all kinds, and of course, about glyphosate. But I know what they did to my own health and are doing to the lives of others. Only a handful of my family and friends actually believe me and I seriously doubt they read articles like this one that I post on my Facebook page. I will, however, continue to share this kind of information. Thank you once again Sustainable Pulse for the wonderful work you do.
I agree with you 100%. Its hard to get people to understand the enormity of this problem. We are being poisoned everyday all day and yet it is still being sprayed by the 1000’s of tons on crops. Destroying everything in its path. Just like tobacco, professional marketers are able to lie and convince the public that its safe. I will also continue to spread the truth and hopefully get people to understand how devastating this and other chemicals truly are. Thanks for all you are doing to help
Congress is to be blamed for extending the deadline for registration review of this deadly pesticide. Good luck to all the people trying to fight for the health f the American people.
Vote independent for RFK.
I’m in Sacramento, California, where I buy from Certified Organic farmers. At farmers markets, before buying, I ask the farmer or the farmer’s representative if the rep actually works on the farm, how the farmer controls weeds and other pests and diseases. If all such questions are answered to my satisfaction, with no evasiveness, omissions, or vagueness, then I ask about the farmer’s neighbors. One farmer’s rep admitted that he has a drift problem from the neighboring farms, after extensive questioning from me. Another farmer told me that his farm is surrounded by vineyards. I know that there are no organic vineyards among his neighboring farms. The farmer didn’t know because he hadn’t cared enough to ask his neighbors. I’ve seen a time-lapse video of an aerial view of a slow-moving plume of pesticide spray drifting across multiple fields. The pilot of any crop duster aircraft or operator of a tractor isn’t supposed to spray on a windy day, but drift happens, not only as dust or liquid, but later as vapor or through movement in rain or runoff. Neighbors can make you or break you. It isn’t just farmers. Ranchers also have problems. Many ranchers refuse to communicate any further when I ask, via email so it’s in writing, when I ask how they control internal and external parasites. You must be brave and do your homework so you know more than the minimum. You must also realize that your government might not have the consumers’ health as its actual most important priority. Many organic certifiers are corrupt. Please visit and donate to the Real Organic Project and of course the Center for Food Safety.