A Grassroots Win in California!

Grassroots advocacy groups won an important victory in the fight for transparent and organic farming practices last night in Sacramento. In a win for California Jam’s home state, glyphosate (the main chemical in Roundup) will now be added to a list of chemicals that are linked to cancer. By next year, products containing glyphosate will require a warning label.

This ruling will not take glyphosate off of our state’s farms or keep it off the shelves of your local Home Depot since the ruling doesn’t dictate how chemicals are used - just how they’re labeled. However, it should be noted that the school districts in Irvine, Burbank, and Glendale have banned glyphosate from their properties.

Many advocates for organic farming believe this ruling is a positive step in the fight for labeling - which has been a hard fought issue in the state for years. This is an especially powerful win after the EPA concluded, last year, that glyphosate is not carcinogenic.

Victories like the one we saw last night in California are small, but they show the power of grassroots movements and encourage us to keep up the fight against corporations and powerful special interest groups. When grassroots movements like California Jam, The Center for Biological Diversity, and Millions Against Monsanto come together - change is possible. As noted by Nathan Donley, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, “California’s decision makes it the national leader in protecting people from cancer-causing pesticides…the U.S. EPA now needs to step up and acknowledge that the world’s most transparent and science-based assessment has linked glyphosate to cancer.” [1]