11 ms·

Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

160 points by mikhael 6mo ago

dralley 6mo ago
Still probably the safest herbicide, mainly because the competition (organophosphates, etc.) is so much worse.
- philips 6mo ago
  What point are you trying to illuminate with this comment? A 22 caliber is safer than a 40 caliber. But, I still wouldn’t a hole made in me from either.
  - Der_Einzige 6mo ago
    The alternative is mass starvation.
    - yxhuvud 6mo ago
      No, mass starvation would not ensue from having to fight weeds using mechanical means. It would take more work and more fuel, but it is eminently doable if the need is there. Especially if the change would be gradual. Making do without artificial fertilizer would be a lot harder.
      - gustavus 6mo ago
        Increased work and fuel means increased costs, increased costs means increased prices, increased prices means less food available for purchase by those on the margins, less food means starvation.
        jayd16 6mo ago
        So anything that effects food prices, regardless of magnitude, causes mass starvation?
        victorbjorklund 6mo ago
        No, not regardless of magnitude. But anything that have a large impact on food prices will decrease the ability of poor people to pay for it. It’s not rocket science.
        jayd16 6mo ago
        Then it's a discussion about magnitude and jumping to starvation is unfounded.
        XorNot 6mo ago
        Price increases due to disruption of Ukrainian grain shipments from the war substantially threatened African food stability. Despite their being plenty of capacity elsewhere because the smaller redirects of trucking into the European markets crashed prices enough that it led to protests in Poland and discontent elsewhere (though probably with significant Russian psyops involvement).
        victorbjorklund 6mo ago
        People are already starving in the world. With higher prices the amount of people starving would be more. It's gonna be ten thousand more or a million more? That's up for debate.
        HDThoreaun 6mo ago
        Anything that causes food prices to rise a lot causes starvation yea, when prices go up people consume less.
        conductr 6mo ago
        We have resources for plenty of nonessential expenditures that could be diverted if avoiding starvation was our collective goal. I’m not always sure it would be, but the constraint isn’t a death sentence on its own.
      - bluGill 6mo ago
        Increased fuel means a lot more CO2. That is a very significant factor you cannot ignore.
        nozzlegear 6mo ago
        Perhaps if herbicides weren't viable, more work would've gone into developing the mechanical alternatives and we'd have had solar-powered machines removing weeds from fields.
        bluGill 6mo ago
        Soil resistance is worse than air resistance, but similar concept. It needs a lot of energy to overcome.
        yxhuvud 6mo ago
        More CO2 compared to what tractors use today, yes. But that is not a lot compared to the rest of the human civilization spend on transportation. So no, it is not a very significant factor.
    - luigibosco 6mo ago
      I don't think that is the only alternative. If the end goal is to preserve life for humans, completely nuking the soil into a wasteland, treating it with carcinogens and then allowing a company to genetically modify seeds and copyright them is a pretty bad and short sighted strategy. Allowing a known carcinogen to make crops "easier to harvest" has to do with profit margin not food supply. People literally use this to kill dandelions in their yards. I have known many people who have died from cancer. I have eaten dandelions, while bitter, are actually healthy. A good start would be to work with nature instead of trying to out engineer it. If roundup is your alternative to starvation you're probably just delaying the inevitable.
      - tptacek 6mo ago
        You both have premises that are too far apart to debate productively; what you're really debating is naturalism vs. technology, scale vs. degrowth, humanism vs. environmentalism. All worthwhile philosophical debates, but you won't get anywhere sniping at each other about them.
      - 0xbadcafebee 6mo ago
        > If roundup is your alternative to starvation you're probably just delaying the inevitable. Yes. That is literally exactly what we're doing. You can't sustain the current human population without fertilizers and pesticides made from fossil fuels. Half the people on the planet would die. If we don't want half the planet to die, we need pesticides. So do you choose a pesticide that's more harmful, or less? If you said "less", then you want glyphosate.
        criddell 6mo ago
        I think you meant to write herbicide rather than pesticide.
        0xbadcafebee 6mo ago
        Ah you're right, glyphosate is the herbicide. We also need the pesticides to keep the yields up.
  - tptacek 6mo ago
    That people would be on the whole less healthy had glyphosate not been on the market, because other herbicides, all of which were and are in common use, are worse. It's not a complicated argument.
- whyenot 6mo ago
  From an environmental perspective you are probably right. One of the nice things is that glyphosate, unlike most herbicides, is broken down quickly by soil bacteria. The longer term issue is evolved weed resistance due to its over use with "Roundup Ready" crops and for end of the season dry down.
  - saalweachter 6mo ago
    I think the fears about glyphosate resistance owes too much to antibiotic resistance, but I am not really sure it makes sense. I suppose there's some regimen where you carefully monitor every plant sprayed with a weedkiller is monitored for survival and killed with fire if it survives, or some other extreme measure to be sure there are no survivors to develop resistance, but realistically the weeds are going to develop resistances over time. And ... so what? The value of a weedkiller like glyphosate is using it to kill a lot of weeds in wide-scale agriculture. If the weeds develop a resistance to it, and we stop using it because it's no longer effective, we're not really in a worse position than if we never used it at all. It's not like there are some really bad weeds we need to save it to be able to combat.
    - XorNot 6mo ago
      I have no idea why this is downvoted because it's exactly right. Unlike antibiotic resistance where the consequences can be measured in human lives, it just doesn't matter for weed killers: and the iteration time on new compounds is much faster. It's also inevitable: there are weeds which have substantially changed their appearance to more closely resemble crops as an adaptive strategy just to human driven control measures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry Which is a problem which mechanical weed control measures will exacerbate probably in bizarre ways (e.g. the weed is no longer selecting against the human vision system but instead a machine vision model) Edit: though probably worth noting that encouraging weeds to compete against a machine vision model opens up interesting possibilities - e.g. encoding a failure mode for something which the active model can't spot, then running it competitively against a model trained to sport the adaptation and then switching back over when your hit rate falls below a certain level - trap the weed in a controlled local minima. You can't replace human image recognition and new compounds are hard, but updating software is easy.
- pfdietz 6mo ago
  The one I'm seeing now for crops (along with GMO crops to resist it) is Liberty, generic name glufosinate. What's interesting about it is that it's a natural product (although obtained in bulk by synthesis) produced by several species of Streptomyces soil bacteria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glufosinate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glufosinate
natebc 6mo ago
Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/26/climate/supreme-court-bayer-monsanto-roundup-glyphosate.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eFA.0Ff7.nJ-fHGpQz7HP&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/26/climate/supreme-court-bay...
zulux 6mo ago
[dead]
chromacity 6mo ago
It's striking how many of these "product safety" cases are decided in the court of public opinion, independent of actual scientific merit. The case of DDT was pretty interesting. More recently, we have microplastics - no one has really shown they're dangerous to humans, but there's enough hand-waving that "everyone knows" they're killing us. And aspartame, etc... Glyphosate is probably the safest of the things people spray their lawns with. I don't think we should - the worst you get on a typical suburban lawn if you mow but don't spray are dandelions and clover - but it's probably not giving you cancer. As for food... again, there are far worse, more persistent pesticides that escape this kind of scrutiny.
- tptacek 6mo ago
  Worth noting here that the trier of fact in this case mostly agrees with you about this stuff; the issue is that the state statutes in question created strict liability conditions for failure to comply with warning label regimes. The plaintiff brought substantive charges about Roundup to the case, and the jury rejected them.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- thayne 6mo ago
  > the worst you get on a typical suburban lawn if you mow but don't spray are dandelions and clover I also get a lot of morning glory AKA bindweed that kills my grass. But spraying doesn't really help with that anyway, so :shrug:.
  - EvanAnderson 6mo ago
    Bindweed is evil incarnate in plant form. Wouldn't wish that on anybody.
    - jay_kyburz 6mo ago
      We hand some log droughts here about 10 years ago where you were not allowed to water the lawn at all. I would have expected a single dominate weed to take over, but instead, if I let the grass grow for 6-8 weeks in summer I get this amazing field of different knee length plants. And it alive with bee's and butterflies. I much prefer it to lawn.
tptacek 6mo ago
As is so often the case for controversies before the Supreme Court, this case isn't so much about glyphosate as it is about the interface between federal and state law. Since 1991, the EPA has held that glyphosate is not carcinogenic; it was (at the time) categorized "Group E", which means that not only is there not evidence for it being carcinogenic, but that there is material evidence that it is not. Later, IARC (in a decision that was controversial among global public health agencies) listed glyphosate as a 2A probable carcinogen, alongside red meat, potatoes, deep fryer oil, and a slew of scary chemicals that includes many other insecticides and herbicides. States like California enacted labeling-law regimes that key in part off IARC's classification, which meant that in those states Roundup products required labeling. Monsanto/Bayer lost civil cases based on failure to label. That's the domain-specific stuff. What the court likely cares about is the preemption doctrine. In a variety of different situations, competing state and federal statutes are by explicit or implicit preemption rules. In many cases, federal preemption is a result of bargains with industry: for instance, we got programs like Energy Star after negotiations where industry (and the states dependent on those industries) made concessions to the federal government in exchange for exemptions from state regulation, which is why there's controversy over local municipal ordinances that attempt to ban gas ranges (apropos nothing, but: combustion products of gas ranges: also IARC carcinogens). There's a weird backstory to public opposition to glyphosate which has very little to do with glyphosate itself (as someone else on this thread pointed out, glyphosate is relatively benign and relatively inert compared other common crop and landscape treatments), but rather with the idea that glyphosate is part of the technology stack of GM crops. For those people it's worth knowing that the civil liability Monsanto/Bayer is trying to avoid here is approximately the same as the reason Jays Potato Chips bags sometimes have "Not For Sale In California" labeling. Nobody has declared that Roundup is categorically unsafe. Some states have declared that you have to label it the same way you would a gas station or Disneyland ride.
- rpmisms 6mo ago
  The best-reasoned criticism of glyphosate is that it disrupts the gut biome (this is a fact). I suspect that many "gluten allergies" are actually gut biome problems from glyphosate-desiccated wheat.
matthest 6mo ago
Goats > glyphosate
- tptacek 6mo ago
  They definitely taste better.
- conductr 6mo ago
  If you found a way to train them to only eat the weeds I think you’d be onto something
acosmism 6mo ago
Only a matter of time before japanese knotwood takes over north america. Glyphosate seems to be the only thing that stops this aggressive weed
cmiles8 6mo ago
The evidence on glyphosphate causing cancer isn’t particularly strong. I wouldn’t bathe in the stuff, but the data strongly indicates it’s one of the more benign compounds used in agriculture and landscaping.
- perrygeo 6mo ago
  WHO classifies it as "Probably carcinogenic to humans". But it's important to talk about the exposure model. Glyphosate in our food supply - almost no evidence of cancer risk. (The gut microbiome is affected though). Direct and sustained contact to glyphosate as an agricultural worker - potentially very severe risks, particularly non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The data is strong but epidemiological. So yeah, I think your conclusion is roughly correct. Don't bathe in it. Probably avoid using it at home or work. But otherwise, its not a serious risk to consumers.
  - parineum 6mo ago
    Included in this list under the same classification (2A)[1]: > Night shift work > Red meat (consumption of) > Very hot beverages at above 65 °C (drinking) Defined as[2]: > Group 2A: The agent is probably carcinogenic to humans > This category is used when there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and either sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals or strong mechanistic evidence, showing that the agent exhibits key characteristics of human carcinogens. Limited evidence of carcinogenicity means that a positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer but that other explanations for the observations (technically termed “chance”, “bias”, or “confounding”) could not be ruled out with reasonable confidence. This category may also be used when there is inadequate evidence regarding carcinogenicity in humans but both sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals and strong mechanistic evidence in human cells or tissues. [1] https://monographs.iarc.who.int/list-of-classifications https://monographs.iarc.who.int/list-of-classifications [2] https://monographs.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/IARCMonographs-QA.pdf https://monographs.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/I...
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  > The evidence on glyphosphate causing cancer isn’t particularly strong. This may be the case. But I remember tobacco execs testifying under oath in the mid 90s that nicotine wasn't addictive and that there wasn't strong evidence smoking directly caused cancer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Berkshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Berkshire https://senate.ucsf.edu/tobacco-ceo-statement-to-congress https://senate.ucsf.edu/tobacco-ceo-statement-to-congress https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/15/us/tobacco-chiefs-say-cigarettes-aren-t-addictive.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/15/us/tobacco-chiefs-say-cig... > The executives also made a number of other notable admissions, including these: > * Cigarettes may cause lung cancer, heart disease and other health problems, but the evidence is not conclusive. > * Despite earlier denials, a Philip Morris study that suggested that animals could become addicted to nicotine was suppressed in 1983 and 1985.
nemo44x 6mo ago
Roundup has saved far more lives than it may have cut short, if any.
burnt-resistor 6mo ago
A reminder that most US non-organic oats contain high levels of glyphosate residues because farmers use it as a desiccant to reduce harvest fuel consumption. And also almost all bread in the US including organic contain 10-1000 ppb of glyphosate. America's food supply is fucked because of rampant greed, a lack of proper regulation, and a lack of application of the precautionary principle.
munk-a 6mo ago
Isn't there some bureaucratic way to just tie up the Supreme Court for three years? Their rulings have been extremely damaging and we need a sane balance to return before important stuff like this ends up being decided.
- cosmicgadget 6mo ago
  Alito and Thomas are retiring while Trump is in office.
  - ceejayoz 6mo ago
    Don't underestimate the power of "this is my seat!" in decision making. See, for example, Justice Ginsburg.
amanaplanacanal 6mo ago
My personal interest in this case is that I have used Roundup for years. What are the odds that the new formulation without glyphosate is safer than the old one? Are we replacing it with something worse? A note: It appears that the picture in the article is if the new formulation for tonight, not the one containing glyphosate.
wslh 6mo ago
I am really very confused because I have seen documentaries related to this[1] and would like to understand where are the errors when there are more cancer cases close to these areas. [1] Cancer incidence and death rates in Argentine rural towns surrounded by pesticide-treated agricultural land: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221339842300026X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221339842...
21asdffdsa12 6mo ago
If all of agriculture went fully organic tomorrow, no fertilizer, no fungicide, no insecitizide, no herbicide- billions would starve. Organic advocates who do not present viable alternatives are monsterous. We almost saw that played out in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_economic_crisis_(2019%E2%80%932024) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_economic_crisis_(20... - and its a call for genocide on the economic less prosperous by economic means. It should be treated as that - regardless of the appeal of the ideology pushing for such measures. And that is coming from someone rooting for weeding robots to remove parts of the pressure to use herbicides.
- acmotifs 6mo ago
  ? There are organic fertilizers, and natural methods of pest control. Sure they cost more than modern chemicals. If you get sick from the modern chemicals, the costs incurred from treatment might be higher than the organic premium. https://www.organicvalley.coop/blog/organic-farming-from-the-ground-up-a-look-at-spring-planting https://www.organicvalley.coop/blog/organic-farming-from-the... https://www.arbico-organics.com/category/aphid-control-prevention-ipm https://www.arbico-organics.com/category/aphid-control-preve...
  - 21asdffdsa12 6mo ago
    Its not whether you get sick or not. Its about having something available- anything. You treat a matter of survival like a luxury problem - which it is not. Without fertilizer human civilization is over. Just because you can engage in a "hobby" version of something as a luxury, does not mean you can have any valid contribution to the discussion for those unable to afford the luxury. And if you contribute anyway- you are naive or mercilessly willing to sacrifice millions in the 3 digits. Which makes this one of the more murderous ideologies- that ever roamed the earth- just because it has spots on the apples on the flyers does not make it so.
    - acmotifs 6mo ago
      You may not be aware, modern fertilizer is not as cheap and accessible as you believe. Closing Hormuz affects everyone’s food access, not sure that’s a great system. https://apple.news/AQ4nHcV41Qd6azTmXaEDHPg https://apple.news/AQ4nHcV41Qd6azTmXaEDHPg https://www.npr.org/2026/04/25/nx-s1-5795674/farmers-tariffs-iran-trump-mississippi https://www.npr.org/2026/04/25/nx-s1-5795674/farmers-tariffs... https://apple.news/AMiKpZ2bAS6Os1h7C2gl7_w https://apple.news/AMiKpZ2bAS6Os1h7C2gl7_w https://apple.news/A9S4aFHoiQw-Tl1Q9TsQbeg https://apple.news/A9S4aFHoiQw-Tl1Q9TsQbeg ? Organic Valley is not a hobby, over a billion in revenues. ? Seems like the current way of doing things leads to a lot of externalities that aren’t accounted for… https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate- https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-
keernan 6mo ago
[dead]
fmajid 6mo ago
I'm assuming Clarence Thomas, formerly a lawyer for Monsanto, will again not recuse himself, just as he did not for General Electric Co. v. Joiner (1997), Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms (2010) or Bowman v. Monsanto Co. (2013), and purely coincidentally no doubt, ruled for Monsanto. The rule of law is well and truly dead in the United States.
fallingfrog 6mo ago
They'll rule in favor of whoever has the most money.

160 points by mikhael 6mo ago

dralley 6mo ago

Still probably the safest herbicide, mainly because the competition (organophosphates, etc.) is so much worse.

philips 6mo ago
What point are you trying to illuminate with this comment? A 22 caliber is safer than a 40 caliber. But, I still wouldn’t a hole made in me from either.
- Der_Einzige 6mo ago
  The alternative is mass starvation.
  - yxhuvud 6mo ago
    No, mass starvation would not ensue from having to fight weeds using mechanical means. It would take more work and more fuel, but it is eminently doable if the need is there. Especially if the change would be gradual. Making do without artificial fertilizer would be a lot harder.
    - gustavus 6mo ago
      Increased work and fuel means increased costs, increased costs means increased prices, increased prices means less food available for purchase by those on the margins, less food means starvation.
      - jayd16 6mo ago
        So anything that effects food prices, regardless of magnitude, causes mass starvation?
        victorbjorklund 6mo ago
        No, not regardless of magnitude. But anything that have a large impact on food prices will decrease the ability of poor people to pay for it. It’s not rocket science.
        jayd16 6mo ago
        Then it's a discussion about magnitude and jumping to starvation is unfounded.
        XorNot 6mo ago
        Price increases due to disruption of Ukrainian grain shipments from the war substantially threatened African food stability. Despite their being plenty of capacity elsewhere because the smaller redirects of trucking into the European markets crashed prices enough that it led to protests in Poland and discontent elsewhere (though probably with significant Russian psyops involvement).
        victorbjorklund 6mo ago
        People are already starving in the world. With higher prices the amount of people starving would be more. It's gonna be ten thousand more or a million more? That's up for debate.
        HDThoreaun 6mo ago
        Anything that causes food prices to rise a lot causes starvation yea, when prices go up people consume less.
      - conductr 6mo ago
        We have resources for plenty of nonessential expenditures that could be diverted if avoiding starvation was our collective goal. I’m not always sure it would be, but the constraint isn’t a death sentence on its own.
    - bluGill 6mo ago
      Increased fuel means a lot more CO2. That is a very significant factor you cannot ignore.
      - nozzlegear 6mo ago
        Perhaps if herbicides weren't viable, more work would've gone into developing the mechanical alternatives and we'd have had solar-powered machines removing weeds from fields.
        bluGill 6mo ago
        Soil resistance is worse than air resistance, but similar concept. It needs a lot of energy to overcome.
      - yxhuvud 6mo ago
        More CO2 compared to what tractors use today, yes. But that is not a lot compared to the rest of the human civilization spend on transportation. So no, it is not a very significant factor.
  - luigibosco 6mo ago
    I don't think that is the only alternative. If the end goal is to preserve life for humans, completely nuking the soil into a wasteland, treating it with carcinogens and then allowing a company to genetically modify seeds and copyright them is a pretty bad and short sighted strategy. Allowing a known carcinogen to make crops "easier to harvest" has to do with profit margin not food supply. People literally use this to kill dandelions in their yards. I have known many people who have died from cancer. I have eaten dandelions, while bitter, are actually healthy. A good start would be to work with nature instead of trying to out engineer it. If roundup is your alternative to starvation you're probably just delaying the inevitable.
    - tptacek 6mo ago
      You both have premises that are too far apart to debate productively; what you're really debating is naturalism vs. technology, scale vs. degrowth, humanism vs. environmentalism. All worthwhile philosophical debates, but you won't get anywhere sniping at each other about them.
    - 0xbadcafebee 6mo ago
      > If roundup is your alternative to starvation you're probably just delaying the inevitable. Yes. That is literally exactly what we're doing. You can't sustain the current human population without fertilizers and pesticides made from fossil fuels. Half the people on the planet would die. If we don't want half the planet to die, we need pesticides. So do you choose a pesticide that's more harmful, or less? If you said "less", then you want glyphosate.
      - criddell 6mo ago
        I think you meant to write herbicide rather than pesticide.
        0xbadcafebee 6mo ago
        Ah you're right, glyphosate is the herbicide. We also need the pesticides to keep the yields up.
- tptacek 6mo ago
  That people would be on the whole less healthy had glyphosate not been on the market, because other herbicides, all of which were and are in common use, are worse. It's not a complicated argument.
whyenot 6mo ago
From an environmental perspective you are probably right. One of the nice things is that glyphosate, unlike most herbicides, is broken down quickly by soil bacteria. The longer term issue is evolved weed resistance due to its over use with "Roundup Ready" crops and for end of the season dry down.
- saalweachter 6mo ago
  I think the fears about glyphosate resistance owes too much to antibiotic resistance, but I am not really sure it makes sense. I suppose there's some regimen where you carefully monitor every plant sprayed with a weedkiller is monitored for survival and killed with fire if it survives, or some other extreme measure to be sure there are no survivors to develop resistance, but realistically the weeds are going to develop resistances over time. And ... so what? The value of a weedkiller like glyphosate is using it to kill a lot of weeds in wide-scale agriculture. If the weeds develop a resistance to it, and we stop using it because it's no longer effective, we're not really in a worse position than if we never used it at all. It's not like there are some really bad weeds we need to save it to be able to combat.
  - XorNot 6mo ago
    I have no idea why this is downvoted because it's exactly right. Unlike antibiotic resistance where the consequences can be measured in human lives, it just doesn't matter for weed killers: and the iteration time on new compounds is much faster. It's also inevitable: there are weeds which have substantially changed their appearance to more closely resemble crops as an adaptive strategy just to human driven control measures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry Which is a problem which mechanical weed control measures will exacerbate probably in bizarre ways (e.g. the weed is no longer selecting against the human vision system but instead a machine vision model) Edit: though probably worth noting that encouraging weeds to compete against a machine vision model opens up interesting possibilities - e.g. encoding a failure mode for something which the active model can't spot, then running it competitively against a model trained to sport the adaptation and then switching back over when your hit rate falls below a certain level - trap the weed in a controlled local minima. You can't replace human image recognition and new compounds are hard, but updating software is easy.
pfdietz 6mo ago
The one I'm seeing now for crops (along with GMO crops to resist it) is Liberty, generic name glufosinate. What's interesting about it is that it's a natural product (although obtained in bulk by synthesis) produced by several species of Streptomyces soil bacteria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glufosinate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glufosinate

natebc 6mo ago

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/26/climate/supreme-court-bayer-monsanto-roundup-glyphosate.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eFA.0Ff7.nJ-fHGpQz7HP&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/26/climate/supreme-court-bay...

zulux 6mo ago

[dead]

chromacity 6mo ago

It's striking how many of these "product safety" cases are decided in the court of public opinion, independent of actual scientific merit. The case of DDT was pretty interesting. More recently, we have microplastics - no one has really shown they're dangerous to humans, but there's enough hand-waving that "everyone knows" they're killing us. And aspartame, etc... Glyphosate is probably the safest of the things people spray their lawns with. I don't think we should - the worst you get on a typical suburban lawn if you mow but don't spray are dandelions and clover - but it's probably not giving you cancer. As for food... again, there are far worse, more persistent pesticides that escape this kind of scrutiny.

tptacek 6mo ago
Worth noting here that the trier of fact in this case mostly agrees with you about this stuff; the issue is that the state statutes in question created strict liability conditions for failure to comply with warning label regimes. The plaintiff brought substantive charges about Roundup to the case, and the jury rejected them.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
thayne 6mo ago
> the worst you get on a typical suburban lawn if you mow but don't spray are dandelions and clover I also get a lot of morning glory AKA bindweed that kills my grass. But spraying doesn't really help with that anyway, so :shrug:.
- EvanAnderson 6mo ago
  Bindweed is evil incarnate in plant form. Wouldn't wish that on anybody.
  - jay_kyburz 6mo ago
    We hand some log droughts here about 10 years ago where you were not allowed to water the lawn at all. I would have expected a single dominate weed to take over, but instead, if I let the grass grow for 6-8 weeks in summer I get this amazing field of different knee length plants. And it alive with bee's and butterflies. I much prefer it to lawn.

tptacek 6mo ago

As is so often the case for controversies before the Supreme Court, this case isn't so much about glyphosate as it is about the interface between federal and state law. Since 1991, the EPA has held that glyphosate is not carcinogenic; it was (at the time) categorized "Group E", which means that not only is there not evidence for it being carcinogenic, but that there is material evidence that it is not. Later, IARC (in a decision that was controversial among global public health agencies) listed glyphosate as a 2A probable carcinogen, alongside red meat, potatoes, deep fryer oil, and a slew of scary chemicals that includes many other insecticides and herbicides. States like California enacted labeling-law regimes that key in part off IARC's classification, which meant that in those states Roundup products required labeling. Monsanto/Bayer lost civil cases based on failure to label. That's the domain-specific stuff. What the court likely cares about is the preemption doctrine. In a variety of different situations, competing state and federal statutes are by explicit or implicit preemption rules. In many cases, federal preemption is a result of bargains with industry: for instance, we got programs like Energy Star after negotiations where industry (and the states dependent on those industries) made concessions to the federal government in exchange for exemptions from state regulation, which is why there's controversy over local municipal ordinances that attempt to ban gas ranges (apropos nothing, but: combustion products of gas ranges: also IARC carcinogens). There's a weird backstory to public opposition to glyphosate which has very little to do with glyphosate itself (as someone else on this thread pointed out, glyphosate is relatively benign and relatively inert compared other common crop and landscape treatments), but rather with the idea that glyphosate is part of the technology stack of GM crops. For those people it's worth knowing that the civil liability Monsanto/Bayer is trying to avoid here is approximately the same as the reason Jays Potato Chips bags sometimes have "Not For Sale In California" labeling. Nobody has declared that Roundup is categorically unsafe. Some states have declared that you have to label it the same way you would a gas station or Disneyland ride.

rpmisms 6mo ago
The best-reasoned criticism of glyphosate is that it disrupts the gut biome (this is a fact). I suspect that many "gluten allergies" are actually gut biome problems from glyphosate-desiccated wheat.

matthest 6mo ago

Goats > glyphosate

tptacek 6mo ago
They definitely taste better.
conductr 6mo ago
If you found a way to train them to only eat the weeds I think you’d be onto something

acosmism 6mo ago

Only a matter of time before japanese knotwood takes over north america. Glyphosate seems to be the only thing that stops this aggressive weed

cmiles8 6mo ago

The evidence on glyphosphate causing cancer isn’t particularly strong. I wouldn’t bathe in the stuff, but the data strongly indicates it’s one of the more benign compounds used in agriculture and landscaping.

perrygeo 6mo ago
WHO classifies it as "Probably carcinogenic to humans". But it's important to talk about the exposure model. Glyphosate in our food supply - almost no evidence of cancer risk. (The gut microbiome is affected though). Direct and sustained contact to glyphosate as an agricultural worker - potentially very severe risks, particularly non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The data is strong but epidemiological. So yeah, I think your conclusion is roughly correct. Don't bathe in it. Probably avoid using it at home or work. But otherwise, its not a serious risk to consumers.
- parineum 6mo ago
  Included in this list under the same classification (2A)[1]: > Night shift work > Red meat (consumption of) > Very hot beverages at above 65 °C (drinking) Defined as[2]: > Group 2A: The agent is probably carcinogenic to humans > This category is used when there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and either sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals or strong mechanistic evidence, showing that the agent exhibits key characteristics of human carcinogens. Limited evidence of carcinogenicity means that a positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer but that other explanations for the observations (technically termed “chance”, “bias”, or “confounding”) could not be ruled out with reasonable confidence. This category may also be used when there is inadequate evidence regarding carcinogenicity in humans but both sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals and strong mechanistic evidence in human cells or tissues. [1] https://monographs.iarc.who.int/list-of-classifications https://monographs.iarc.who.int/list-of-classifications [2] https://monographs.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/IARCMonographs-QA.pdf https://monographs.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/I...
ceejayoz 6mo ago
> The evidence on glyphosphate causing cancer isn’t particularly strong. This may be the case. But I remember tobacco execs testifying under oath in the mid 90s that nicotine wasn't addictive and that there wasn't strong evidence smoking directly caused cancer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Berkshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Berkshire https://senate.ucsf.edu/tobacco-ceo-statement-to-congress https://senate.ucsf.edu/tobacco-ceo-statement-to-congress https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/15/us/tobacco-chiefs-say-cigarettes-aren-t-addictive.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/15/us/tobacco-chiefs-say-cig... > The executives also made a number of other notable admissions, including these: > * Cigarettes may cause lung cancer, heart disease and other health problems, but the evidence is not conclusive. > * Despite earlier denials, a Philip Morris study that suggested that animals could become addicted to nicotine was suppressed in 1983 and 1985.

nemo44x 6mo ago

Roundup has saved far more lives than it may have cut short, if any.

burnt-resistor 6mo ago

A reminder that most US non-organic oats contain high levels of glyphosate residues because farmers use it as a desiccant to reduce harvest fuel consumption. And also almost all bread in the US including organic contain 10-1000 ppb of glyphosate. America's food supply is fucked because of rampant greed, a lack of proper regulation, and a lack of application of the precautionary principle.

munk-a 6mo ago

Isn't there some bureaucratic way to just tie up the Supreme Court for three years? Their rulings have been extremely damaging and we need a sane balance to return before important stuff like this ends up being decided.

cosmicgadget 6mo ago
Alito and Thomas are retiring while Trump is in office.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  Don't underestimate the power of "this is my seat!" in decision making. See, for example, Justice Ginsburg.

amanaplanacanal 6mo ago

My personal interest in this case is that I have used Roundup for years. What are the odds that the new formulation without glyphosate is safer than the old one? Are we replacing it with something worse? A note: It appears that the picture in the article is if the new formulation for tonight, not the one containing glyphosate.

wslh 6mo ago

I am really very confused because I have seen documentaries related to this[1] and would like to understand where are the errors when there are more cancer cases close to these areas. [1] Cancer incidence and death rates in Argentine rural towns surrounded by pesticide-treated agricultural land: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221339842300026X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221339842...

21asdffdsa12 6mo ago

If all of agriculture went fully organic tomorrow, no fertilizer, no fungicide, no insecitizide, no herbicide- billions would starve. Organic advocates who do not present viable alternatives are monsterous. We almost saw that played out in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_economic_crisis_(2019%E2%80%932024) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_economic_crisis_(20... - and its a call for genocide on the economic less prosperous by economic means. It should be treated as that - regardless of the appeal of the ideology pushing for such measures. And that is coming from someone rooting for weeding robots to remove parts of the pressure to use herbicides.

acmotifs 6mo ago
? There are organic fertilizers, and natural methods of pest control. Sure they cost more than modern chemicals. If you get sick from the modern chemicals, the costs incurred from treatment might be higher than the organic premium. https://www.organicvalley.coop/blog/organic-farming-from-the-ground-up-a-look-at-spring-planting https://www.organicvalley.coop/blog/organic-farming-from-the... https://www.arbico-organics.com/category/aphid-control-prevention-ipm https://www.arbico-organics.com/category/aphid-control-preve...
- 21asdffdsa12 6mo ago
  Its not whether you get sick or not. Its about having something available- anything. You treat a matter of survival like a luxury problem - which it is not. Without fertilizer human civilization is over. Just because you can engage in a "hobby" version of something as a luxury, does not mean you can have any valid contribution to the discussion for those unable to afford the luxury. And if you contribute anyway- you are naive or mercilessly willing to sacrifice millions in the 3 digits. Which makes this one of the more murderous ideologies- that ever roamed the earth- just because it has spots on the apples on the flyers does not make it so.
  - acmotifs 6mo ago
    You may not be aware, modern fertilizer is not as cheap and accessible as you believe. Closing Hormuz affects everyone’s food access, not sure that’s a great system. https://apple.news/AQ4nHcV41Qd6azTmXaEDHPg https://apple.news/AQ4nHcV41Qd6azTmXaEDHPg https://www.npr.org/2026/04/25/nx-s1-5795674/farmers-tariffs-iran-trump-mississippi https://www.npr.org/2026/04/25/nx-s1-5795674/farmers-tariffs... https://apple.news/AMiKpZ2bAS6Os1h7C2gl7_w https://apple.news/AMiKpZ2bAS6Os1h7C2gl7_w https://apple.news/A9S4aFHoiQw-Tl1Q9TsQbeg https://apple.news/A9S4aFHoiQw-Tl1Q9TsQbeg ? Organic Valley is not a hobby, over a billion in revenues. ? Seems like the current way of doing things leads to a lot of externalities that aren’t accounted for… https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate- https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-

keernan 6mo ago

[dead]

fmajid 6mo ago

I'm assuming Clarence Thomas, formerly a lawyer for Monsanto, will again not recuse himself, just as he did not for General Electric Co. v. Joiner (1997), Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms (2010) or Bowman v. Monsanto Co. (2013), and purely coincidentally no doubt, ruled for Monsanto. The rule of law is well and truly dead in the United States.

fallingfrog 6mo ago

They'll rule in favor of whoever has the most money.