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Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

nytimes.com

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Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#51

Post by victorbjorklund »

yosamino wrote: post #32
quickthrowman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

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…

There are IP protections for non-GMO seeds as well.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#52

Post by nekusar »

tptacek wrote: post #43
nekusar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, a…

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.)

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 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.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#53

Post by victorbjorklund »

tptacek wrote: post #33
yosamino wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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).

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.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#54

Post by titzer »

chromacity wrote: post #13

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…

Well I don't know of people claiming that microplastics are "killing us", there are dozens of papers that implicate microplastics in negative health effects from hearts to intestines, to sperm.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c09524

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c03924

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-39...

There are a lot of studies that find correlations, and then are studies like this one that show that the direct introduction of microplastics alters cell functions negatively:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12692081/

I think at this point we should stop talking about how "there's no data" or "no studies" and "no one has shown" and graduate to "oh, maybe should figure out the extent of the damage."

Microplastic pollution is a global problem amongst a whole host of global pollution problems. We'd do well to try to figure out how bad it is, because it isn't going away. Oh, and we should probably work on fixing all of our pollution problems, especially cumulative ones like this.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#55

Post by victorbjorklund »

jayd16 wrote: post #9
gustavus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So anything that effects food prices, regardless of magnitude, causes mass starvation?

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.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#56

Post by tptacek »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #49
tptacek wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

haha look i'll vote for you if you run for something, but you've run a campaign, you'll agree: all the activism in the world, and the people who win student council elections have won more elections than you and i have

I'm not interested in running for office; I'm very interested in helping other people run. My theory of change doesn't involve me holding office. In fact: my theory of change is heavily dependent on posting comments! It seems to be working out for me.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#57

Post by keane »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #30
tptacek wrote: post #14

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 (i…

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…

A key paper on its safety from 2000 was retracted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46161125

Like the tobacco industry before them, a Monsanto employee proposed producing a scientific paper with outside scientists: “by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak” — see https://retractionwatch.com/2025/12/04/glyphosate-safety-art...

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#58

Post by parineum »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #50
parineum wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

> 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.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#59

Post by tptacek »

nekusar wrote: post #52
tptacek wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

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 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…

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".

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#60

Post by tptacek »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #53
tptacek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

No in fact you do not. This is an Internet/activist myth.
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