December, 13 2023, 01:18pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Pegga Mosavi, pmosavi@centerforfoodsafety.org
Bill Freese, bfreese@centerforfoodsafety.org
Farmworkers, Environmental Groups File Legal Action Demanding Roundup Ban
A groundbreaking legal action today calls on EPA to immediately suspend and cancel the dangerous herbicide glyphosate.
A groundbreaking legal action today calls on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to immediately suspend and cancel the dangerous herbicide glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup.
Glyphosate's registration is illegal, says the petition filed by Center for Food Safety on behalf of itself, Beyond Pesticides, and four farmworker advocacy groups. Last year, in a lawsuit by the same nonprofits, a federal court of appeals struck down EPA's human health assessment because the agency wrongfully dismissed glyphosate's cancer risk. Today's petition, calling for the cancellation and suspension of glyphosate's registration, runs over 70 pages and includes more than 200 scientific citations.
"This petition is a blueprint for the Biden administration to do what the law and science require and finally cancel glyphosate's registration," said Pegga Mosavi, an attorney at the Center for Food Safety and counsel for the petitioners. "There is a wealth of scientific evidence demonstrating that glyphosate endangers public health, and poses cancer risks to farmers and other Roundup users. Glyphosate formulations are also an environmental hazard and have driven an epidemic of resistant weeds that plague farmers. After last year's court decision, EPA has no legal legs to stand on. EPA must take action now."
Glyphosate is the most widely used pesticide in the world, with approximately 300 million pounds applied annually in the U.S. Yet EPA has declined to act despite the damage inflicted by glyphosate's pervasive use. Numerous studies—including many sponsored by Monsanto—show that glyphosate has harmful effects on the liver, kidney, and reproductive system, and is a probable carcinogen linked specifically with the immune system cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Bill Freese, science director at Center for Food Safety, noted, "EPA once acknowledged that glyphosate has adverse effects on the mammalian liver, kidney, and reproductive system, and might even cause cancer—effects that were first revealed in decades-old registrant studies. But as Monsanto sought ever wider uses for its blockbuster herbicide, EPA consigned those incriminating studies to regulatory oblivion, thus facilitating greater use, even as independent scientists confirmed the harms EPA now denies."
Glyphosate formulations have also ravaged the environment, causing considerable drift damage to crops and wild plants. By decimating milkweed, glyphosate has been a major factor in the decline of the monarch butterfly, and many Roundup formulations are extremely toxic to amphibians. EPA itself has found that glyphosate is likely to adversely affect an incredible 93% of threatened and endangered species, and 96% of the critical habitat that supports them.
Today's petition calls on the EPA to suspend glyphosate use until the agency can conclude the cancellation process or can demonstrate that glyphosate meets the required safety standards in the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Cancellation would make the sale and use of any product containing the chemical illegal.
"Farmworker women and their families have experienced the damaging health effects of pesticides for far too long" said Mily Treviño-Sauceda, Executive Director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas. "EPA must protect the nation's farmworkers and our environment by immediately suspending and cancelling all glyphosate registrations."
Background
The last time glyphosate was subject to a comprehensive re-evaluation was 1993, right before the explosion in use that accompanied Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops that are genetically engineered to resist glyphosate. Under federal law, EPA must review pesticide registrations every 15 years to determine whether they continue to meet the required safety standard—no unreasonable adverse effects on the environment—considering new science and current use patterns. EPA only began this registration review process for glyphosate in 2009, issuing an interim decision in 2020.
Despite spending eleven years on its review, EPA's pesticide division was unable to reach a conclusion as to whether glyphosate causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). The agency nevertheless dismissed glyphosate's overall cancer risk, deeming it "not likely" to cause cancer. NHL is the cancer linked to glyphosate in many epidemiology studies of farmers, and in assessments by scientists with EPA's science division. It is also the cancer associated with glyphosate by the world's foremost authority on carcinogens, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer. Many NHL sufferers who attributed their cancer to use of Roundup have won lawsuits against Monsanto/Bayer.
In 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down EPA's cancer and broader human health assessment of glyphosate, in a lawsuit brought by Center for Food Safety on behalf of the same petitioners. The court found EPA's cancer assessment of glyphosate internally contradictory and violative of EPA's own guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment. Similar criticisms were levied by an EPA-appointed expert Scientific Advisory Panel, and EPA scientists from outside the pesticide division.
As a result of the court's decision, EPA lacks a legal human health assessment of glyphosate to support its current use. The court also remanded the ecological risk assessment of glyphosate to EPA, with a deadline to complete it. EPA failed to meet this deadline, and instead chose to withdraw the entire interim registration review decision. Congress subsequently extended EPA's deadline for completing registration reviews of glyphosate and all other pesticides previously due for completion by October 2022 to October 2026.
Today, glyphosate remains registered based entirely on a three-decades old, 1993 assessment. This outdated assessment takes no account of the exponentially increased use of glyphosate that began with the mid-1990s introduction of glyphosate-resistant corn, soybeans, cotton, and other major crops; it also predates the thousands of incriminating scientific studies on glyphosate that have accumulated since 1993. Neither does this antiquated assessment account for the enormous costs imposed on farmers by this century's glyphosate-resistant weed outbreak. For all of these reasons, EPA cannot meet the required safety standard for glyphosate's currently approved uses, and must cancel its registration.
Resources
Center for Food Safety's mission is to empower people, support farmers, and protect the earth from the harmful impacts of industrial agriculture. Through groundbreaking legal, scientific, and grassroots action, we protect and promote your right to safe food and the environment. CFS's successful legal cases collectively represent a landmark body of case law on food and agricultural issues.
(202) 547-9359LATEST NEWS
'An Attempt to Silence the Public's Voice': Trump Moves to Accelerate Oil Project Approvals
"The announcement is another giveaway to the fossil fuel billionaires who spent millions to put Trump back in the White House, justified by a fake 'energy emergency.'"
Apr 24, 2025
The Trump administration announced late Wednesday that it is moving to implement new permitting procedures designed to speed up reviews and approvals of oil and gas development, a plan that environmentalists called an attack on the public's right to weigh in on projects that would directly impact communities across the United States.
The U.S. Department of the Interior, led by billionaire oil industry ally Doug Burgum, said the new permitting measures would "take a multi-year process down to just 28 days at most," citing President Donald Trump's declaration of a "national energy emergency" at the start of his second term.
"In response, the Department will utilize emergency authorities under existing regulations for the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act," the agency said.
The expedited permitting procedures will apply to crude oil, fracked gas, coal, and other energy sources favored by the president, according to the Interior Department.
Notably absent from Interior's list are wind and solar, which accounted for a record 17% of U.S. electricity generation last year. As it has moved to boost the fossil fuel industry—the primary driver of the global climate emergency—the Trump administration has canceled grants and halted construction for renewable energy projects.
"The real national emergency is the cabal of oil and gas CEOs harming working people and wrecking the climate to line their pockets."
Collin Rees, U.S. campaign manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement that the Interior Department's announcement of accelerated permitting procedures for dirty energy "is an attempt to silence the public's voice in decision-making, taking away tools that ensure our communities have a say in the fossil fuel project proposals that threaten our water, land, and public health."
"The announcement is another giveaway to the fossil fuel billionaires who spent millions to put Trump back in the White House, justified by a fake 'energy emergency,'" said Rees. "The U.S. is the largest oil and gas producer and is expanding extraction faster than any other nation. The real national emergency is the cabal of oil and gas CEOs harming working people and wrecking the climate to line their pockets."
Alejandro Camacho, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Irvine, wrote on social media that the Trump administration is "once again disregarding the law, environment, and even market data. Ignoring environmental laws to approve dirty projects claiming an energy emergency that does not exist."
"Meanwhile, he's killing massive private wind power projects," Camacho added. "Sounds like an emergency to me."
The permitting announcement comes days after an internal document, leaked on Earth Day, showed that Trump's Interior Department intends to prioritize weakening environmental protections and opening federal lands to fossil fuel extraction.
The department is also "looking at whether to scale back" national monuments, including Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Bears Ears, and Grand Staircase-Escalante, The Washington Postreported Thursday.
"Interior Department officials are poring over geological maps to analyze the monuments' potential for mining and oil production and assess whether to revise their boundaries," according to the Post.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Michigan's Democratic AG Under Fire After Armed Agents Raid Homes of Palestine Defenders
"We are totally convinced that, but for their viewpoints, these students would not have been targeted," said one attorney.
Apr 23, 2025
Federal and local law enforcement officers smashed their way into the Michigan homes of pro-Palestine student organizers on Wednesday in what the state attorney general's office said was a vandalism probe—but critics called an attack on dissent against Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.
Backed by FBI agents, officers broke into homes in Ypsilanti, Canton, and Ann Arbor on Wednesday morning. Video uploaded to social media by Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, showed officers battering down the door to a Ypsilanti house before others rushed into the home barking commands with guns drawn and pointed at the residents.
"No search warrant was provided," someone says in the video as the invaders crashed through the homes' locked front door. People in the house said their phones and other electronic devices and possessions, including vehicles, were taken.
🚨BREAKING | Officials Confirms Raids in Multiple Cities; TAHRIR Coalition Says FBI Agents, Michigan State Police, and Local Officers Targeted Pro-Palestine Organizers
[image or embed]
— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) April 23, 2025 at 12:44 PM
MLivereported that people inside the home were handcuffed and moved to the porch outside before being released about 15 minutes later.
The pro-Palestine advocacy group TAHRIR Coalition rallied supporters to two of the homes. Video posted on YouTube shows members of a crowd that gathered outside the Ypsilanti house taunting the agents as they came in and out of the home.
According toDrop Site News, Ann Arbor police said that the investigation involves "reported crimes" committed in the city and other jurisdictions.
An FBI spokesperson confirmed bureau agents took part in the raids, which he described vaguely as "law enforcement activities."
Danny Wimmer, a spokesperson for Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, told the Detroit Free Press that the raids "were not related to protest activity on the campus of the University of Michigan," but were "in furtherance of our investigation into multijurisdictional acts of vandalism."
"There is no immigration enforcement angle to the execution of these search warrants," Wimmer added.
However, Liz Jacob, an attorney with the Sugar Law Center in Detroit, noted that "everyone who was raided has taken part in protest and has some relationship to the University of Michigan."
"We are totally convinced that, but for their viewpoints, these students would not have been targeted," Jacob added.
Jacob said seven people were targeted in Wednesday's raids. No arrests were made. The attorney also noted that the warrants were signed by Judge Michelle Friedman Appel, whose jurisdiction includes Huntington Woods, where vandals painted graffiti and inflicted other damage at the home of University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker while the Jewish man and his family slept inside last December.
Last month, vandals also damaged the Ann Arbor home of Provost Laurie McCauley.
The Graduate Employees' Organization, a union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, said one of its members was detained during Wednesday's raids.
"We strongly condemn the actions taken today and all past and present repression of political activism," the group said. "We urge University of Michigan administrators, the regents of the University of Michigan, and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to end their campaign against students and stop putting graduate workers in harm's way."
Dawud Walid, the Michigan director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement that "we call into question the aggressive nature of this morning's raids of activists' homes, which follows the recent misuse of prosecutorial power in Michigan and throughout our country against pro-Palestinian activists."
"In any other context, such minor infractions would be handled by local law enforcement or referred to local, elected prosecutors—not escalated to federal intervention," Walid added. "This disproportionate response further fuels the perception that Muslim and Arab students, and those who stand in solidarity with them, are being treated overly hostile by law enforcement compared to those who commit harm toward American Muslims."
According to CAIR:
This recent escalation comes on the heels of prior arrests and charges brought by the Michigan attorney general's office against University of Michigan student protesters for minor, nonviolent infractions—including misdemeanor trespassing—during peaceful demonstrations advocating for Palestinian human rights, an end to the genocide in Gaza, and for the University of Michigan to divest from companies complicit in the occupation and violence.
After Nessel announced criminal charges—some of them felonies—for 11 University of Michigan Palestine defenders last September, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress, said the attorney general was "going to set a precedent, and it's unfortunate that a Democrat made that move."
"We've had the right to dissent, the right to protest. We've done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs," Tlaib said. "But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs."
At the federal level, the Trump administration has been arresting and initiating deportation proceedings against international students who have taken part in pro-Palestine campus protests. Although the government admits the targeted individuals have committed no crimes, immigration law allows the removal of foreign nationals deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy objectives.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Abrego Garcia Family Flees to Safe House After Trump DHS Posts Home Address on Social Media
"The Trump administration doxxed an American citizen, endangering her and her children. This is completely unacceptable and flat-out wrong."
Apr 23, 2025
The Trump administration has not only sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a Salvadoran megaprison due to an "administrative error" and so far refused to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate his return to the United States, but also shared on social media the home address of his family in Maryland, forcing them to relocate.
The news that Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and her children were "moved to a safe house by supporters" after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted to X a 2021 order of protection petition that Vasquez Sura filed but soon abandoned was reported early Tuesday by The Washington Post.
"I don't feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions," said Vasquez Sura. "So, this is definitely a bit terrifying. I'm scared for my kids."
A DHS spokesperson did not respond Monday to a request for a comment about not redacting the family's address, according to the newspaper's lengthy story about Vasquez Sura—who shares a 5-year-old nonverbal, autistic son with Abrego Garcia and has a 9-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship that was abusive.
On Wednesday, The New Republicpublished a short article highlighting the safe house detail and noting that "the government has not commented on the decision to leave the family's address in the document it posted online," sparking a fresh wave of outrage over the Trump administration endangering the family.
He was "mistakenly" deported to prison camp, and it was just a "slip-up" that they then posted his wife's address. Bullshit. If these are all accidents, who's getting fired?
[image or embed]
— Ezra Levin (@ezralevin.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 12:29 PM
"The Trump administration doxxed an American citizen, endangering her and her children," MSNBC contributor Rotimi Adeoye wrote on X Wednesday. "This is completely unacceptable and flat-out wrong."
Several others responded on the social media platform Bluesky.
"These fascists didn't stop at abducting Abrego Garcia, they've now doxxed his wife, forcing her into hiding," said Dean Preston, the leader of a renters' rights organization. "The Trump administration is terrorizing this family. Speak up, show up, resist."
Jonathan Cohn, political director for the group Progressive Mass, similarly declared, "The Trump administration is terrorizing this woman."
Katherine Hawkins, senior legal analyst for the Project On Government Oversight's Constitution Project, openly wondered "if publishing Abrego Garcia and his wife's home address violates federal or (particularly) Maryland laws."
"Definitely unconscionable and further demonstration of bad faith/intimidation," Hawkins added.
While Abrego Garcia's family seeks refuge in a U.S. safe house, he remains behind bars in his native El Salvador—despite the Supreme Court order from earlier this month and an immigration judge's 2019 decision that was supposed to prevent his deportation. Multiple congressional Democrats have flown to the country in recent days to support demands for his freedom.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular