6 ms·

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 st

by tptacek 7mo 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 7mo 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.
- tptacek 7mo ago
  Anything that reaches the gut intact disrupts (ie: manipulates, interacts with, alters, stimulates or suppresses, selects) the gut biome. I'm not pushing back on you except to say that as a mechanistic axiomatic claim of harm, it's missing most of the evidence. You could be right, but you could also be wrong; what you've said so far can't possibly be dispositive.
  - rpmisms 7mo ago
    The mechanism of action of glyphosate inhibits several important amino acid production processes in the gut. I'm simplifying here, but not having glyphosate in the food supply would be a good thing for the gut, and the science agrees on this. Glyphosate for field prep also doesn't really come through in food, it's much worse with the pre-harvest desiccation.
    - mapt 7mo ago
      You are inferring from our crude understanding of processes in general. Evidence is more specific. Do you have an exclusion trial comparing glyphosate vs non-glyphosate diets? This is amenable to natural experiments where one country bans it on a specific date and the neighbor does not.
      - bigbadfeline 7mo ago
        > Do you have an exclusion trial comparing glyphosate vs non-glyphosate diets? That's a rather sneaky way to invert the issue. It's fishing for random luck when you ask for more and harder to obtain evidence given existing facts pointing to possible harm. A single study that doesn't show harm doesn't refute those that do. You have to provide hard evidence that glyphosate (or another non-essential ingredient) does not cause adverse effects, and thoroughly explain the differences with the studies that show the opposite - until you do that, any in-vitro or other studies that show harmful effects count against the use of the product and you cannot ask for more evidence, you can only accept the remedies. In this case, the appropriate remedies can be different: banning it altogether, limiting it to specific usage (e.g. no pre-harvest spraying), labeling using LARGE PRINT and scary language or some combination of the above.
doctorpangloss 7mo ago
So what do you think?
- tptacek 7mo ago
  I think that this will be material to me in the sense in which it resolves some questions about whether Oak Park, the ultra-blue inner-ring suburb suburb in which I live, can ban gas ranges, which I enjoy cooking on. I guess I think Bayer has the better case here. In the message board controversy over glyphosate itself, I don't think this case has much to say. The state labeling regime was either preempted or not; that's a technicality of state and federal statutory evaluation. If the labeling regime is enforceable, it doesn't much matter whether it was about IARC classification or midichlorian counts. Strict liability is strict liability. The substantive part of this case, whether glyphosate is an inherently dangerous or flawed product, was resolved by the trier of fact in favor of Monsanto. A simpler way to say all of this: "the safety of glyphosate is not before this court".
  - doctorpangloss 7mo ago
    > whether glyphosate is an inherently dangerous or flawed product, was resolved by the trier of fact in favor of Monsanto. You: "Courtrooms are the appropriate final venue to determine if something is inherently dangerous, using the word inherently purposefully, as I do not misuse words, as long as the result is something I agree with." > Oak Park, the ultra-blue inner-ring suburb suburb in which I live, can ban gas ranges, which I enjoy cooking on I guess this is why you and I write on random social media forums instead of getting elected.
    - tptacek 7mo ago
      In the past several years I've proposed, help draft, and gotten passed one law (making us the first municipality in Illinois with an anti-surveillance ordinance), co-wrote our municipality's police general order on ALPRs limiting them to violent crime, and created the transparency regime that allowed us to cancel our Flock contract. I've spent the last 3 years working on eliminating single family zoning, which we are likely to accomplish in just a couple months. I've funded and run two campaigns, one of which succeeded. I'm an appointed commissioner in the muni. I got all of this done by... posting on random forums.
quickthrowman 7mo ago
> 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. I still don’t understand why people seem to care about genetically modified glyphosate tolerant soybeans and corn, they’re mostly fed to animals anyways. Crossbreeding plants is genetic modification.
- yosamino 7mo ago
  Apart from the health aspect, there is the thing were these GMOs are patented and the business model is one where farmers are not allowed to keep a portion of this years yield to use to seed for next year, but essentially get roped into a subscription model for the crops they plant. Essentially turning > You wouldn't download a car into > You wouldn't plant your seed for your crop. Which is obviously absurd. So while GM has enabled some pretty good things, it also comes with the same sort of intellectual property baggage that plagues many different areas of society, which on the face of it make some sense, but always seem to skew towards concentrating money towards those who already live a comfortable life, squeezing from those who have less to begin with.
  - tptacek 7mo ago
    I don't think the case law supports this argument that farmers got roped into subscription crops. Farmers use this system because it has value, and is economically superior to the systems that preceded it (or they don't use it).
    - victorbjorklund 7mo ago
      There is a problem though. If you opt out of it and just use seeds without any IP and your neighbor uses IP seeds and some of the seeds are blowing into your field from your neighbour you risk trouble.
mindslight 7mo ago
It sounds like this would actually be good to decide now if the court were truly a "conservative" court - there is no legitimate reason for preemption to apply to labeling laws (even as broken as California's labeling law is), as labeling a product a certain way is not a mutually-exclusive action. But I expect the rank hypocrisy will win out, especially with the "culture war" backdrop of California delenda est.
- AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
  > there is no legitimate reason for preemption to apply to labeling laws (even as broken as California's labeling law is), as labeling a product a certain way is not a mutually-exclusive action. That's not really what preemption is about. A major point of having "interstate commerce" -- actual products crossing state lines -- at the federal level, is to prevent states from enacting trade barriers. Suppose California disproportionately has more organic food producers and other states make higher proportions of food products grown with glyphosate. California then passes a law requiring the latter (i.e. disproportionately out-of-state) products to carry a scary warning label based on inconclusive evidence. Are they trying to enact a trade barrier? It sure looks like one. Meanwhile if the stuff is actually dangerous then it's dangerous in all 50 states, so the warning label should either be everywhere or nowhere according to the evidence, right? Relatedly, having dozens or (at the city level) hundreds of different sets of rules is also a kind of trade barrier. Some small business in Ohio is willing to ship nationwide but every state has different rules, they might be inclined to cut off everyone who isn't in the local area since that's where they get most of their current sales, but that's bad. So then there is a legitimate interest in being able to say the rules have to be uniform if the states start trying to micromanage too much. The better way to do this would be to only apply the interstate commerce rules to actual interstate commerce. So they could preempt California from requiring labeling on products shipped from Ohio, or require specific federal labeling on the things that are, but only California gets to decide about the things that never leave California. A lot of states would then say you have to follow the federal interstate rules even if you don't cross state lines, but it would be their decision and some might not.
  - tptacek 7mo ago
0xbadcafebee 7mo ago
Important to note it's not Glyphosate on trial, it's Roundup. There is a huge gulf between studies and conclusions on Glyphosate, and studies and conclusions on Roundup. Glyphosate is the safest and most effective herbicide known to mankind. Roundup - which includes Glyphosate, in addition to other additives - may be unnecessarily dangerous. Also worth noting that Monsanto could stop selling Roundup entirely, and it wouldn't really matter. Monsanto's Glyphosate patent expired, so you can get cheaper Glyphosate from many different manufacturers. Which is great, because it means we can avoid the potentially-more-dangerous Roundup, and use the simpler base chemical instead. Distancing the pesticide from the "evil corporation" might actually make people less afraid of it.
- parineum 7mo ago
  > you can get cheaper Glyphosate from many different manufacturers. Which is great, because it means we can avoid the potentially-more-dangerous Roundup, and use the simpler base chemical instead. Unspecified Glyphosate product isn't better because it's not Roundup. If some ingredient in Roundup is dangerous, let's drop the Glyphosate conversation and look for herbicides without that other mystery chemical. It really seems like you're looking for a reason to justify Roundup as uniquely bad, in the face of evidence, with extremely vague statements.
  - victorbjorklund 7mo ago
    They literally said that Roundup is bad because of the OTHER chemicals that it contains in addition to Glyphosate which is not dangerous. Then it makes total sense to use pure Glyphosate instead of Roundup. Of course you can claim that they are wrong about their claim. But that is another point.
    - parineum 7mo ago
      > Unspecified Glyphosate product isn't better because it's not Roundup. If some ingredient in Roundup is dangerous, let's drop the Glyphosate conversation and look for herbicides without that other mystery chemical.
MostlyStable 7mo 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. It was mentioned on a podcast recently that in many cases, the SC is not making a decision on what should/shouldn't happen/be the policy/is correct or whatever. They are deciding which layer of government gets to decide a given question. The Executive Branch? Legislation? Constitution? Who is the controlling entity? Now, in a practical sense, by the time it gets to the SC, making a decision on who gets to decide, is, functionally, picking what the outcome is, since the various layers of government have already made their positions clear. But the upshot is, if one is upset with what happens with a given policy after a SC decision, in many cases (although not all), the proper target of one's ire should not be the SC; since what they are usually saying is something like "this is something that is controlled by statute. If the statute is dumb/bad/poorly written, that is not our fault nor within our control, take it up with Congress to rewrite the statue", and instead one should be upset with whoever the controlling entity is for doing a bad job (in recent years: most commonly congress, not so much for doing a bad job so much as not doing any job)
- coolkewlcuil 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - gzread 7mo ago
    IMO SCOTUS should retain the power to interpret vagaries of law; Congress still holds ultimate power, as it can pass a more specific law overriding their interpretation. What about striking down unconstitutional laws, though? That has to be up to SCOTUS, nobody else can do it.
    - coolkewlcuil 7mo ago
      SCOTUS granted itself that power. Their originalist powers are extremely limited. So do not listen to justices that claim to be "originalist". SCOTUS authority to strike laws is self dealing and not at all an originalist power. The original expectation was the public would demand such change via elections every 2-6 years and remove the corrupted Senator or Representative. SCOTUS is not supposed to have power over theoretical cases yet it operates on concepts all the time. Just another way in which the system is rigged; the appeals of originalists who have clearly read the words, they're plain English, are just more self dealing power away from the public to the elites
nekusar 7mo ago
> 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. Excuse me if I dont believe "this stuff isnt harmful". And Arsenic was once safe. Asbestos was the most amazing fireproof wonder material. Thalidomide was a wonder drug with no side effects. Tetraethyl lead was perfectly safe everywhere. Fen-phen was a great diet drug. Id also add "consumption of fluoride in water supply" (topical/toothpaste makes sense, consumption does not).
- tptacek 7mo ago
  I mean, you can believe whatever you want to believe, and the EPA can be wrong, but "the EPA has been claiming X since 1991" is not a very powerful argument for "not X". (There are mechanistic reasons to believe glyphosate is less harmful than other landscaping treatments; it has a fairly elegant mode of action.)
  - nekusar 7mo ago
    Part of that is that I've seen enough evidence between the FDA and EPA that regulatory capture is a thing, and more stuff that we are exposed to and consume are more poisonous than they let on. Ive also seen that with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ractopamine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ractopamine which is banned in most of the world. Decent countries straight up banned it, since it doesnt degrade with slaughter or cooking. My SO is also allergic to it as well - thats evidenced by not being able to eat US/Canadian pork, but being able to eat Spanish/European pork. Tl;dr. Regulatory capture has made most of US food not good, potentially toxic, and full of nasty shit we dont want to eat. But hey, selling toxic food makes money for someone.
    - tptacek 7mo ago
      I'm not arguing that the EPA is right or trustworthy. I'm saying that if you want to argue the opposite of what they claim, you need evidence beyond "the EPA disagrees with me".
themafia 7mo ago
> a weird backstory to public opposition to glyphosate which has very little to do with glyphosate itself Is it required that the public have a "good reason" for wanting something? > glyphosate is relatively benign and relatively inert compared other common crop and landscape treatments We used to spray DDT everywhere. This isn't exactly a resounding recommendation. Perhaps there's a case for using as little additives in farming as is possible.
- tptacek 7mo ago
  No, it isn't. What's your point?
  - themafia 7mo ago
    Your quip follows a trope: "There's a weird reason the public wants this and it has little to do with the thing itself." Very often the implication being: "Therefore the public is wrong and should be ignored."
    - tptacek 7mo ago
      I think the public is in fact wrong, but that has nothing to do with my argument.
- parineum 7mo ago
  > Is it required that the public have a "good reason" for wanting something? Not required but it's a nice to have, especially if the thing they want done is to have the desired outcome.
  - themafia 7mo ago
    The desired outcome is simply not using Glyphosate. I'm not seeing how "reasonability" of this idea impacts it's implementation. If you find someone using it you severely fine them and/or put them in jail.
saghm 7mo 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. I know what you meant, and I suspect everyone reading it does too, but this is the type of sentence where the ambiguity amuses me. It's certainly true that most of the controversies before the Supreme Court aren't about glyphosate!
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
windexh8er 7mo ago
These aren't labeling cases. Durnell is the one the Supreme Court took, but it's one of tens of thousands. John Durnell sued Monsanto in Missouri state court after getting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from twenty years of spraying Roundup as the "spray guy" for his neighborhood, and the jury gave him $1.25 million for his cancer, not a fine for a missing sticker. The legal theory is "failure to warn," but that's a tort claim about whether Monsanto adequately communicated the risk to users who then got hurt, not a regulatory question about what text has to appear on the bottle. Earlier California verdicts followed suit. Juries found Monsanto liable for the plaintiffs' cancer under regular product liability law. But, none of these are Prop 65 enforcement actions. [0] The Jays chips comparison cuts the other way. CA's Prop 65 warning for glyphosate got blocked by a federal court in 2020, the Ninth Circuit upheld the block in 2023, and Prop 65 warnings for acrylamide in food were permanently shut down last May. So... California isn't actually making Roundup carry a Prop 65 warning, which is what your chips comparison assumes. The real question in Durnell is whether federal pesticide law stops a Missouri jury from finding Bayer liable for a specific person's cancer. Pretty different from whether you slap a warning sticker on a bag of chips (and Jay's doesn't carry a "Not for Sale" in CA -that's generally smaller companies who couldn't afford reformulation but the reality is they likely just didn't sell there). [1] [0] https://legal-planet.org/2026/02/03/pesticides-cancer-and-failure-to-warn-at-the-supreme-court https://legal-planet.org/2026/02/03/pesticides-cancer-and-fa... [1] https://www.greenbergglusker.com/publications/court-finds-requiring-prop-65-warnings-for-acrylamide-in-food-is-unconstitutional https://www.greenbergglusker.com/publications/court-finds-re...
- tptacek 7mo ago
  I didn't say they had to pay a fine; I said they lost the strict-liability duty to warn claim, one of three, which requires Monsanto in that state to warn of any potential risks known at the time of manufacture. I think we're all clear it's a tort claim!
  - windexh8er 6mo ago
    But you did imply they were labeling cases. That is not the case and the basis of my response.
JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
> the idea that glyphosate is part of the technology stack of GM crops Is this true? Can't we we give in on glyphosphate without losing GMOs?
- tptacek 7mo ago
  We can, but why would we? Without GM in the background, nobody would be talking about glyphosate. It's just an herbicide. People have comfortable priors about herbicides already; the only interesting thing about glyphosate is that it's less gnarly than those priors.
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    > why would we? They’re annoying and might go home with a symbolic win.
- hinkley 7mo ago
  Roundup-Ready is a subset of GMO crops. I don't know how profitable they are but it's one of the more loudly announced groups.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

by tptacek 7mo ago

rpmisms 7mo 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.

tptacek 7mo ago
Anything that reaches the gut intact disrupts (ie: manipulates, interacts with, alters, stimulates or suppresses, selects) the gut biome. I'm not pushing back on you except to say that as a mechanistic axiomatic claim of harm, it's missing most of the evidence. You could be right, but you could also be wrong; what you've said so far can't possibly be dispositive.
- rpmisms 7mo ago
  The mechanism of action of glyphosate inhibits several important amino acid production processes in the gut. I'm simplifying here, but not having glyphosate in the food supply would be a good thing for the gut, and the science agrees on this. Glyphosate for field prep also doesn't really come through in food, it's much worse with the pre-harvest desiccation.
  - mapt 7mo ago
    You are inferring from our crude understanding of processes in general. Evidence is more specific. Do you have an exclusion trial comparing glyphosate vs non-glyphosate diets? This is amenable to natural experiments where one country bans it on a specific date and the neighbor does not.
    - bigbadfeline 7mo ago
      > Do you have an exclusion trial comparing glyphosate vs non-glyphosate diets? That's a rather sneaky way to invert the issue. It's fishing for random luck when you ask for more and harder to obtain evidence given existing facts pointing to possible harm. A single study that doesn't show harm doesn't refute those that do. You have to provide hard evidence that glyphosate (or another non-essential ingredient) does not cause adverse effects, and thoroughly explain the differences with the studies that show the opposite - until you do that, any in-vitro or other studies that show harmful effects count against the use of the product and you cannot ask for more evidence, you can only accept the remedies. In this case, the appropriate remedies can be different: banning it altogether, limiting it to specific usage (e.g. no pre-harvest spraying), labeling using LARGE PRINT and scary language or some combination of the above.

doctorpangloss 7mo ago

So what do you think?

tptacek 7mo ago
I think that this will be material to me in the sense in which it resolves some questions about whether Oak Park, the ultra-blue inner-ring suburb suburb in which I live, can ban gas ranges, which I enjoy cooking on. I guess I think Bayer has the better case here. In the message board controversy over glyphosate itself, I don't think this case has much to say. The state labeling regime was either preempted or not; that's a technicality of state and federal statutory evaluation. If the labeling regime is enforceable, it doesn't much matter whether it was about IARC classification or midichlorian counts. Strict liability is strict liability. The substantive part of this case, whether glyphosate is an inherently dangerous or flawed product, was resolved by the trier of fact in favor of Monsanto. A simpler way to say all of this: "the safety of glyphosate is not before this court".
- doctorpangloss 7mo ago
  > whether glyphosate is an inherently dangerous or flawed product, was resolved by the trier of fact in favor of Monsanto. You: "Courtrooms are the appropriate final venue to determine if something is inherently dangerous, using the word inherently purposefully, as I do not misuse words, as long as the result is something I agree with." > Oak Park, the ultra-blue inner-ring suburb suburb in which I live, can ban gas ranges, which I enjoy cooking on I guess this is why you and I write on random social media forums instead of getting elected.
  - tptacek 7mo ago
    In the past several years I've proposed, help draft, and gotten passed one law (making us the first municipality in Illinois with an anti-surveillance ordinance), co-wrote our municipality's police general order on ALPRs limiting them to violent crime, and created the transparency regime that allowed us to cancel our Flock contract. I've spent the last 3 years working on eliminating single family zoning, which we are likely to accomplish in just a couple months. I've funded and run two campaigns, one of which succeeded. I'm an appointed commissioner in the muni. I got all of this done by... posting on random forums.

quickthrowman 7mo ago

> 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. I still don’t understand why people seem to care about genetically modified glyphosate tolerant soybeans and corn, they’re mostly fed to animals anyways. Crossbreeding plants is genetic modification.

yosamino 7mo ago
Apart from the health aspect, there is the thing were these GMOs are patented and the business model is one where farmers are not allowed to keep a portion of this years yield to use to seed for next year, but essentially get roped into a subscription model for the crops they plant. Essentially turning > You wouldn't download a car into > You wouldn't plant your seed for your crop. Which is obviously absurd. So while GM has enabled some pretty good things, it also comes with the same sort of intellectual property baggage that plagues many different areas of society, which on the face of it make some sense, but always seem to skew towards concentrating money towards those who already live a comfortable life, squeezing from those who have less to begin with.
- tptacek 7mo ago
  I don't think the case law supports this argument that farmers got roped into subscription crops. Farmers use this system because it has value, and is economically superior to the systems that preceded it (or they don't use it).
  - victorbjorklund 7mo ago
    There is a problem though. If you opt out of it and just use seeds without any IP and your neighbor uses IP seeds and some of the seeds are blowing into your field from your neighbour you risk trouble.

mindslight 7mo ago

It sounds like this would actually be good to decide now if the court were truly a "conservative" court - there is no legitimate reason for preemption to apply to labeling laws (even as broken as California's labeling law is), as labeling a product a certain way is not a mutually-exclusive action. But I expect the rank hypocrisy will win out, especially with the "culture war" backdrop of California delenda est.

AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
> there is no legitimate reason for preemption to apply to labeling laws (even as broken as California's labeling law is), as labeling a product a certain way is not a mutually-exclusive action. That's not really what preemption is about. A major point of having "interstate commerce" -- actual products crossing state lines -- at the federal level, is to prevent states from enacting trade barriers. Suppose California disproportionately has more organic food producers and other states make higher proportions of food products grown with glyphosate. California then passes a law requiring the latter (i.e. disproportionately out-of-state) products to carry a scary warning label based on inconclusive evidence. Are they trying to enact a trade barrier? It sure looks like one. Meanwhile if the stuff is actually dangerous then it's dangerous in all 50 states, so the warning label should either be everywhere or nowhere according to the evidence, right? Relatedly, having dozens or (at the city level) hundreds of different sets of rules is also a kind of trade barrier. Some small business in Ohio is willing to ship nationwide but every state has different rules, they might be inclined to cut off everyone who isn't in the local area since that's where they get most of their current sales, but that's bad. So then there is a legitimate interest in being able to say the rules have to be uniform if the states start trying to micromanage too much. The better way to do this would be to only apply the interstate commerce rules to actual interstate commerce. So they could preempt California from requiring labeling on products shipped from Ohio, or require specific federal labeling on the things that are, but only California gets to decide about the things that never leave California. A lot of states would then say you have to follow the federal interstate rules even if you don't cross state lines, but it would be their decision and some might not.
- tptacek 7mo ago

0xbadcafebee 7mo ago

Important to note it's not Glyphosate on trial, it's Roundup. There is a huge gulf between studies and conclusions on Glyphosate, and studies and conclusions on Roundup. Glyphosate is the safest and most effective herbicide known to mankind. Roundup - which includes Glyphosate, in addition to other additives - may be unnecessarily dangerous. Also worth noting that Monsanto could stop selling Roundup entirely, and it wouldn't really matter. Monsanto's Glyphosate patent expired, so you can get cheaper Glyphosate from many different manufacturers. Which is great, because it means we can avoid the potentially-more-dangerous Roundup, and use the simpler base chemical instead. Distancing the pesticide from the "evil corporation" might actually make people less afraid of it.

parineum 7mo ago
> you can get cheaper Glyphosate from many different manufacturers. Which is great, because it means we can avoid the potentially-more-dangerous Roundup, and use the simpler base chemical instead. Unspecified Glyphosate product isn't better because it's not Roundup. If some ingredient in Roundup is dangerous, let's drop the Glyphosate conversation and look for herbicides without that other mystery chemical. It really seems like you're looking for a reason to justify Roundup as uniquely bad, in the face of evidence, with extremely vague statements.
- victorbjorklund 7mo ago
  They literally said that Roundup is bad because of the OTHER chemicals that it contains in addition to Glyphosate which is not dangerous. Then it makes total sense to use pure Glyphosate instead of Roundup. Of course you can claim that they are wrong about their claim. But that is another point.
  - parineum 7mo ago
    > Unspecified Glyphosate product isn't better because it's not Roundup. If some ingredient in Roundup is dangerous, let's drop the Glyphosate conversation and look for herbicides without that other mystery chemical.

MostlyStable 7mo 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. It was mentioned on a podcast recently that in many cases, the SC is not making a decision on what should/shouldn't happen/be the policy/is correct or whatever. They are deciding which layer of government gets to decide a given question. The Executive Branch? Legislation? Constitution? Who is the controlling entity? Now, in a practical sense, by the time it gets to the SC, making a decision on who gets to decide, is, functionally, picking what the outcome is, since the various layers of government have already made their positions clear. But the upshot is, if one is upset with what happens with a given policy after a SC decision, in many cases (although not all), the proper target of one's ire should not be the SC; since what they are usually saying is something like "this is something that is controlled by statute. If the statute is dumb/bad/poorly written, that is not our fault nor within our control, take it up with Congress to rewrite the statue", and instead one should be upset with whoever the controlling entity is for doing a bad job (in recent years: most commonly congress, not so much for doing a bad job so much as not doing any job)

coolkewlcuil 7mo ago
[flagged]
- gzread 7mo ago
  IMO SCOTUS should retain the power to interpret vagaries of law; Congress still holds ultimate power, as it can pass a more specific law overriding their interpretation. What about striking down unconstitutional laws, though? That has to be up to SCOTUS, nobody else can do it.
  - coolkewlcuil 7mo ago
    SCOTUS granted itself that power. Their originalist powers are extremely limited. So do not listen to justices that claim to be "originalist". SCOTUS authority to strike laws is self dealing and not at all an originalist power. The original expectation was the public would demand such change via elections every 2-6 years and remove the corrupted Senator or Representative. SCOTUS is not supposed to have power over theoretical cases yet it operates on concepts all the time. Just another way in which the system is rigged; the appeals of originalists who have clearly read the words, they're plain English, are just more self dealing power away from the public to the elites

nekusar 7mo ago

> 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. Excuse me if I dont believe "this stuff isnt harmful". And Arsenic was once safe. Asbestos was the most amazing fireproof wonder material. Thalidomide was a wonder drug with no side effects. Tetraethyl lead was perfectly safe everywhere. Fen-phen was a great diet drug. Id also add "consumption of fluoride in water supply" (topical/toothpaste makes sense, consumption does not).

tptacek 7mo ago
I mean, you can believe whatever you want to believe, and the EPA can be wrong, but "the EPA has been claiming X since 1991" is not a very powerful argument for "not X". (There are mechanistic reasons to believe glyphosate is less harmful than other landscaping treatments; it has a fairly elegant mode of action.)
- nekusar 7mo ago
  Part of that is that I've seen enough evidence between the FDA and EPA that regulatory capture is a thing, and more stuff that we are exposed to and consume are more poisonous than they let on. Ive also seen that with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ractopamine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ractopamine which is banned in most of the world. Decent countries straight up banned it, since it doesnt degrade with slaughter or cooking. My SO is also allergic to it as well - thats evidenced by not being able to eat US/Canadian pork, but being able to eat Spanish/European pork. Tl;dr. Regulatory capture has made most of US food not good, potentially toxic, and full of nasty shit we dont want to eat. But hey, selling toxic food makes money for someone.
  - tptacek 7mo ago
    I'm not arguing that the EPA is right or trustworthy. I'm saying that if you want to argue the opposite of what they claim, you need evidence beyond "the EPA disagrees with me".

themafia 7mo ago

> a weird backstory to public opposition to glyphosate which has very little to do with glyphosate itself Is it required that the public have a "good reason" for wanting something? > glyphosate is relatively benign and relatively inert compared other common crop and landscape treatments We used to spray DDT everywhere. This isn't exactly a resounding recommendation. Perhaps there's a case for using as little additives in farming as is possible.

tptacek 7mo ago
No, it isn't. What's your point?
- themafia 7mo ago
  Your quip follows a trope: "There's a weird reason the public wants this and it has little to do with the thing itself." Very often the implication being: "Therefore the public is wrong and should be ignored."
  - tptacek 7mo ago
    I think the public is in fact wrong, but that has nothing to do with my argument.
parineum 7mo ago
> Is it required that the public have a "good reason" for wanting something? Not required but it's a nice to have, especially if the thing they want done is to have the desired outcome.
- themafia 7mo ago
  The desired outcome is simply not using Glyphosate. I'm not seeing how "reasonability" of this idea impacts it's implementation. If you find someone using it you severely fine them and/or put them in jail.

saghm 7mo 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. I know what you meant, and I suspect everyone reading it does too, but this is the type of sentence where the ambiguity amuses me. It's certainly true that most of the controversies before the Supreme Court aren't about glyphosate!

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windexh8er 7mo ago

These aren't labeling cases. Durnell is the one the Supreme Court took, but it's one of tens of thousands. John Durnell sued Monsanto in Missouri state court after getting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from twenty years of spraying Roundup as the "spray guy" for his neighborhood, and the jury gave him $1.25 million for his cancer, not a fine for a missing sticker. The legal theory is "failure to warn," but that's a tort claim about whether Monsanto adequately communicated the risk to users who then got hurt, not a regulatory question about what text has to appear on the bottle. Earlier California verdicts followed suit. Juries found Monsanto liable for the plaintiffs' cancer under regular product liability law. But, none of these are Prop 65 enforcement actions. [0] The Jays chips comparison cuts the other way. CA's Prop 65 warning for glyphosate got blocked by a federal court in 2020, the Ninth Circuit upheld the block in 2023, and Prop 65 warnings for acrylamide in food were permanently shut down last May. So... California isn't actually making Roundup carry a Prop 65 warning, which is what your chips comparison assumes. The real question in Durnell is whether federal pesticide law stops a Missouri jury from finding Bayer liable for a specific person's cancer. Pretty different from whether you slap a warning sticker on a bag of chips (and Jay's doesn't carry a "Not for Sale" in CA -that's generally smaller companies who couldn't afford reformulation but the reality is they likely just didn't sell there). [1] [0] https://legal-planet.org/2026/02/03/pesticides-cancer-and-failure-to-warn-at-the-supreme-court https://legal-planet.org/2026/02/03/pesticides-cancer-and-fa... [1] https://www.greenbergglusker.com/publications/court-finds-requiring-prop-65-warnings-for-acrylamide-in-food-is-unconstitutional https://www.greenbergglusker.com/publications/court-finds-re...

tptacek 7mo ago
I didn't say they had to pay a fine; I said they lost the strict-liability duty to warn claim, one of three, which requires Monsanto in that state to warn of any potential risks known at the time of manufacture. I think we're all clear it's a tort claim!
- windexh8er 6mo ago
  But you did imply they were labeling cases. That is not the case and the basis of my response.

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago

> the idea that glyphosate is part of the technology stack of GM crops Is this true? Can't we we give in on glyphosphate without losing GMOs?

tptacek 7mo ago
We can, but why would we? Without GM in the background, nobody would be talking about glyphosate. It's just an herbicide. People have comfortable priors about herbicides already; the only interesting thing about glyphosate is that it's less gnarly than those priors.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > why would we? They’re annoying and might go home with a symbolic win.
hinkley 7mo ago
Roundup-Ready is a subset of GMO crops. I don't know how profitable they are but it's one of the more loudly announced groups.

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