In California, a useless ‘warning’ about cancer

Afederal judge has issued a preliminary injunction in a California case, ruling that businesses shouldn’t have to warn consumers a product may cause cancer when there’s no real evidence the product causes cancer. It says much about the excesses of the regulatory state that this ruling is necessary.

Under a California law established in 1986 via Proposition 65, warning labels must be placed on any item believed to have a link to cancer. Since then, the label has been slapped almost haphazardly on everything in sight, including firewood. More than 900 chemicals are now on the list of those allegedly known to cause cancer, birth defects or reproductive harm.

The state recently added glyphosate, a commonly used herbicide, to the list. As a result, a cancer warning label will soon be required for any product made from crops that may have been exposed to glyphosate, including staples like Cheerios. Agriculture producers from across the nation sued, arguing the label violated free-speech rights by compelling them to make statements that aren’t true.

California relies on the findings of several entities, including the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, which declared glyphosate is “probably” carcinogenic. But that finding is an extreme outlier, which isn’t unusual for the IARC. As The Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial, the IARC has reviewed 1,067 products and only once concluded something was “probably not” carcinogenic.

Meanwhile, numerous entities have examined glyphosate without finding a cancer link, including more than 800 scientific studies, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health, and even other agencies within the World Health Organization.

In his order agreeing to an injunction, U.S. District Judge William Shubb wrote that the state “has the burden of demonstrating that a disclosure requirement is purely factual and uncontroversial, not unduly burdensome, and reasonably related to a substantial government interest.”

“Ordinary consumers do not interpret warnings in accordance with a complex web of statutes, regulations, and court decisions, and the most obvious reading of the Proposition 65 cancer warning is that exposure to glyphosate in fact causes cancer,” Shubb wrote.

He wrote that “a reasonable consumer” would not think a mandatory cancer warning indicated only one health organization believes a cancer link exists while “virtually all other government agencies and health organizations that have reviewed studies on the chemical” found otherwise.

“On the evidence before the court, the required warning for glyphosate does not appear to be factually accurate and uncontroversial because it conveys the message that glyphosate’s carcinogenicity is an undisputed fact, when almost all other regulators have concluded that there is insufficient evidence that glyphosate causes cancer,” Shubb wrote.

The judge’s reasoning is sound. His conclusion that glyphosate cancer warnings are “false and misleading” should be upheld upon appeal.