Following notification Friday of the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) reclassification of glyphosate herbicide, the American Soybean Association issued the following statement from President Wade Cowan, a soybean farmer in Brownfield, Texas:

“Soybean farmers are concerned first and foremost about the safety of their employees, their customers and neighbors in their communities, which is why this notification from the IARC is so confounding. From the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to its counterparts in Germany, Australia, Canada and elsewhere, we’ve seen risk assessment and safety agencies confirm the safety of glyphosate herbicide. Glyphosate has a 40-year track record of completely safe use in American fields, and we’ve been able to make great strides in reducing herbicide use in a sustainable manner during this period.

“The reclassification is particularly troubling because the IARC is not a testing body, nor is this reclassification a study of its own. It is a subjective and limited review of previously existing research. The same research that, interestingly enough, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment reviewed and determined to prove ‘no evidence of carcinogenicity’ just last year.

“We are concerned about this issue because, while we are businessmen and women, we are also neighbors and members of our community. We depend on tools like glyphosate and other herbicides that have been proven absolutely safe by the world’s leading scientific and regulatory bodies. And because after all, we don’t just farm our land, we live on it, and work alongside our own families in the fields on which we use these products.”