It is springtime and farmers are applying millions of pounds of the world’s most common herbicide to the agricultural land in the United States. This year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which licenses and regulates Roundup and the seven hundred fifty other products containing glyphosate (and the many adjuvants and surfactants added to it), must decide whether the herbicide is safe for prenatal, infant, child and adult consumption in food crops and products—and the agency is stalling.

The European Commission is also stalling, delaying a reauthorization of glyphosate under a peer review re-evaluation of the EU’s list of approved active substances. Currently, France, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands are opposed to the relicensing of glyphosate, while Germany is abstaining.

In the U.S., the EPA is under a federal mandate requiring the agency to re-evaluate all pesticides on a fifteen-year cycle. The federal regulatory agencies (EPA, USDA, FDA) that establish food safety regulations claim the world’s most commonly used herbicide is as safe as table salt if used according to the directions.

CONFLICTING ASSESSMENTS
So why doesn’t the EPA just go ahead and reregister the license for glyphosate use in agriculture?

One reason is that in 2015 the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) assessed glyphosate and its products as a probable human carcinogenic health risk, and this year the California state government intends to list the herbicide as a carcinogen.