By SUSAN BLOWER

Indiana Correspondent

ANAHEIM, Calif. — In an historic move, California has been prohibited from requiring a warning label about the herbicide glyphosate on agricultural products, by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.

In a preliminary injunction, Judge William Shubb said that the warning label stating glyphosate was known to the state of California to cause cancer was “false and misleading.” This was the first time a federal court has enjoined a Proposition 65 warning requirement on First Amendment grounds.

The injunction was sought by more than a dozen leading ag industry groups and supported by 11 attorneys general from across the country on the basis it would violate First Amendment free speech protections by compelling retailers to post “false, misleading and highly controversial statements” on their products. The injunction will halt California’s labeling requirement until a final ruling on the matter is issued by the court.

“Farmers work tirelessly to put food on America’s tables, and glyphosate is a vital tool that growers have trusted to provide safe, affordable food,” said Chandler Goule, CEO for the National Wheat Growers Assoc., the lead plaintiff in the case. About 1.1 million tons of wheat are harvested annually from California.

“Every regulatory body in the world that has reviewed glyphosate has found it safe for use and no available product matches glyphosate with a comparable health and environmental safety profile. We are pleased Judge Shubb granted our request, which is the first step in our efforts to prevent California from forcing farmers, growers and manufacturers to place false and misleading labels on agricultural products.

“California’s erroneous Prop 65 listing of glyphosate is not based on data, facts or science, and we look forward to continuing to make our case to the court,” Goule said.

Shubb said the requirement to add the warning label to ag products containing trace amounts of glyphosate potentially violates the First Amendment rights of plaintiffs in the case: “(Given) the heavy weight of evidence in the record that glyphosate is not in fact known to cause cancer, the required warning is factually inaccurate and controversial.”

An ingredient in Monsanto’s patented Roundup, glyphosate is the most-used herbicide in the world. In the United States, where it is approved for use on more than 250 crops, growers have applied an estimated 1.8 million tons of the chemical since it was introduced in the mid-1970s. Most of that was sprayed for Midwest corn and soybeans.

California growers also have used glyphosate on more than 200 crops on 4 million acres, according to the state Department of Pesticide Regulation.

The judge did not preclude California from listing glyphosate as a toxic substance under its Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (Prop 65). The court found that listing does not violate the First Amendment, while the forced labeling of ag products does.

Monsanto is not satisfied with the entire ruling. “This ruling is the first step toward overturning California’s unjustified listing of glyphosate under Prop 65. More than 800 scientific studies, the U.S. EPA, the National Institutes of Health and every regulatory body in the world agree that glyphosate can be used safely.

“In the end, we hope the Court will take the side of science and American farmers and overturn this flawed listing,” said Scott Partridge, vice president of Global Strategy at Monsanto.

California officials are not ready to concede the fight. Its Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment plans to set a minimum threshold for glyphosate traces in food and food products later this year, thus resolving the warning issue in the state’s favor.

“We are pleased that the listing of glyphosate remains in effect, and we believe our actions were lawful,” the office said in a written statement.

In the case before the district court, California environmental officials based their assessment of glyphosate on the controversial 2015 conclusion by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a part of the World Health Organization, that glyphosate is a “probable carcinogen.”

The EPA in December reaffirmed its approval of glyphosate, saying there was no evidence that glyphosate is a human carcinogen. European pesticide regulators also have approved the use of glyphosate.

Shubb wrote in his ruling that IARC’s conclusion was not sufficient grounds for a public health warning label. “However, a reasonable consumer would not understand that a substance is ‘known to cause cancer,’ where only one health organization had found that the substance in question causes cancer and virtually all other government agencies and health organizations that have reviewed studies on the chemical had found there was no evidence that it caused cancer. Under these facts, the message that glyphosate is known to cause cancer is misleading at best.”

Other plaintiffs in this case include the Agribusiness Assoc. of Iowa, the Agricultural Retailers Assoc., Associated Industries of Missouri, Iowa Soybean Assoc., Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, CropLife America, Missouri Farm Bureau, National Corn Growers Assoc., North Dakota Grain Growers Assoc., South Dakota Agri-Business Assoc. and United States Durum Growers Assoc.

An amicus brief was filed in support of the plaintiffs by attorneys general from Missouri, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin.