Wednesday, June 28, 2017

California to list herbicide as cancer-causing; Monsanto vows fight

Glyphosate, an herbicide and the active ingredient in Monsanto Co"s popular Roundup weed killer, will be added to California"s list of chemicals known to cause cancer effective July 7, the state"s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) said on Monday.


Monsanto vowed to continue its legal fight against the designation, required under a state law known as Proposition 65, and called the decision "unwarranted on the basis of science and the law."


The listing is the latest legal setback for the seeds and chemicals company, which has faced increasing litigation over glyphosate since the World Health Organization"s International Agency for Research on Cancer said that it is "probably carcinogenic" in a controversial ruling in 2015.


Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the scientist leading the IARC’s review knew of fresh data showing no link between glyphosate and cancer. But he never mentioned it, and the agency did not take the information into account because it had yet to be published in a scientific journal. The IARC classed glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen,”  the only major health regulator to do so.


Dicamba, a weed killer designed for use with Monsanto"s next generation of biotech crops, is under scrutiny in Arkansas after the state"s plant board voted last week to ban the chemical.


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