Link to the Opinion of the Court in NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF WHEAT GROWERS, ET. AL. v ROB BONTA, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CALIFORNIA, ET. AL.
This concerns the application of Proposition 65 warnings to glyphosate, the key ingredient of Roundup.
Because the status of glyphosate as a carcinogen is very much in doubt, requiring a Proposition 65 warning is subject to intermediate scrutiny. The 9th Circuit found that the State of California’s position fails intermediate scrutiny and Roundup may remove the Proposition 65 warning from its product container.
A long overdue smackdown. Proposition 65 has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous with its warnings, which ironically devalue warnings on items that are truly dangerous.
The lengths to which the Courts are willing to bow to Monsanto is stunning. Roundup is a very product regardless of whether it is “known” to cause cancer, or is “suspected” of doing so is unquestioned. Yet consumers are not entitled to know if it has been used to grow crops, nor whether the crops have been modified to be roundup ready, and farmers who have not planted roundup ready seeds are still required to pay royalties to Monsanto because the neighboring farm did use them, and the wind blew seeds into their farm. Yet the Court struck down any iteration of a warning.
The dissent is correct. Maybe more success for consumers on en banc review, but I doubt it.
Monsanto’s in regard to terminator seeds and their bullying, while bad, are NOT at issue here.
The ONLY issue is glyphosate’s carcinogenic potential. ONLY one organization, (the International Agency for Research on Cancer), has made a determination of carcinogenic potential.
The European Food Safety Authority and the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/World Health Organization (WHO) Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR), have determined that it is unlikely to be a carcinogen. As has the FDA. I will go with the strong majority, which includes both United States and European agencies.
California has no case to make Monsanto put their retarded Prop 65 warning on Roundup packages. The Government of California is violating the First Amendment, by compelling speech of doubtful veracity.
Which is why Virginia State Pharmacy Board was correctly decided and Bigelow and Zauderer were not. Commercial speech is simply not deserving of anything in excess of rational basis scrutiny. I also won’t discount the clout that Bayer/Monsanto and the like have.
If I store a bottle of Saccharin in my cupboard,
and six months later I store some potato chips there,
will get cancer from eating the chips?
No way.
.
.
.
Glyphosate, the primary ingredient is round up is an herbicide
it is sprayed on fields in spring before many rainfalls and before things like wheat kernels even begin to grow.
The idea that you can get cancer from glyphosate because you ate a twinkies and Christmas cookies made from that wheat nearly a year later is quite a a stretch.
That has nothing to do with it. That’s more the issue addressed in Citizens United of whether corporations have free speech rights. The issue I have, the way the law worked before the 1980’s, is that commercial speech (ie. Advertising) has very minimal protection, and can be regulated. Here the issue is whether a business can be compelled to speak in a way that it disagrees with. We know it can be, because warnings required by the FDA such as cigarette pack warnings are constitutional. The tobacco industry just lost another case on this issue a few weeks ago.
Here, the Ninth Circuit could have stopped with a holding that the warning required under Prop 65 could not require Monsanto to say “causes cancer” (an admittedly disputed point) but it went beyond that and denied a modified warning that did not say causes. That was a bridge too far for me.
most oof the food you eat may cause cancer, maybe we should brand cows with an FDA warning. Also you should get a warning put on your grill and frying pans. Potatoes, rice, white bread, baked products, all need a warning.
