Argentina’s 30,000-Member Health Union Called for a Glyphosate Ban

In late April 2015, Fesprosa, an Argentine federation of health workers that says it represents more than 30,000 doctors and health professionals, asked the national government to ban glyphosate, the weedkiller best known as the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup. The trigger was a new assessment from the World Health Organization's cancer agency, published the previous month, which classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans". Viral headlines at the time turned this into "30,000 doctors across Latin America want Monsanto banned". The real story is narrower, but also more interesting.

Here is what the union asked for and why, what scientists and regulators have concluded since, how the legal battles over Roundup played out, and what the debate means for ordinary people.

What Fesprosa demanded in 2015

Fesprosa (the Federación Sindical de Profesionales de la Salud de la República Argentina) is a union of medical and health professionals in Argentina, not a Latin America-wide body. Its statement, reported by the TeleSUR network on 29–30 April 2015, made three main requests:

a national ban on glyphosate and on Monsanto's products in Argentina;
restrictions in the short term on purchasing, spraying and packaging the herbicide;
a restructuring of agribusiness so that farming would no longer depend on agrochemicals, including an end to genetically modified crops.

The union cited figures from the Physicians Network of Sprayed Peoples (Red de Médicos de Pueblos Fumigados), a group of doctors in farming areas: glyphosate was being applied to more than 28 million hectares of Argentine land, with over 320 million litres sprayed a year, putting an estimated 13 million people at risk of exposure. Fesprosa also linked glyphosate to miscarriages, birth defects and skin, respiratory and neurological illness. Those wider health claims came from local doctors' observations and were disputed at the time.

Other groups across the region joined the call, including the Latin American pesticide action network RAP-AL and Greenpeace, whose campaigners argued that governments should apply the precautionary principle and support organic farming rather than wait for more studies.

Why Argentina became a flashpoint

Argentina is one of the world's largest producers of soybeans, and since the late 1990s much of that crop has been genetically modified to tolerate glyphosate. Farmers can spray whole fields to kill weeds without harming the soy, which made the system cheap and efficient and caused glyphosate use to soar. In many provinces, fields reach right up to the edge of small towns and schools, and aerial spraying was common. That closeness is what led rural doctors to organise and raise alarms about the health of people living near the fields.

Heavy reliance on one chemical also brought an agronomic problem: weeds that resist it. Glyphosate-resistant Johnson grass, for example, has been documented in Argentina, pushing farmers toward stronger doses or additional herbicides.

What glyphosate is and how it works

Monsanto first sold glyphosate in 1974 under the Roundup brand. It kills plants by blocking an enzyme called EPSPS, which plants need to make three essential amino acids. Without them the plant starves over several days. Animals and humans do not have this pathway, which is one reason the chemical was long considered low in toxicity for people. Glyphosate went off patent in 2000 and is now made by many companies under numerous brand names, so a ban on "Monsanto's products" would never have removed it from the market by itself.

What the science says about cancer risk

The March 2015 classification came from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the WHO. IARC placed glyphosate in Group 2A, "probably carcinogenic", based on limited evidence in humans (mainly studies of farm workers and non-Hodgkin lymphoma), stronger evidence in animal experiments and laboratory signs of DNA damage.

It is important to understand what that label means. IARC assesses hazard, whether something could cause cancer under some conditions, not risk, how likely it is to do so at real-world exposures. The same category includes red meat and very hot drinks.

Other expert bodies, which assess risk, reached different conclusions:

The European Food Safety Authority concluded in 2015 that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a cancer hazard to humans, and its 2023 review found no critical area of concern. The European Commission renewed the herbicide's approval for ten years in November 2023.
The US Environmental Protection Agency classifies glyphosate as "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans" when used according to the label.
A joint WHO and UN Food and Agriculture Organization panel on pesticide residues concluded in 2016 that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a cancer risk through diet.

The disagreement is real, and debate continues over the weight given to industry-funded studies and the effects on heavily exposed workers. What the evidence does not support is the claim, common in 2015 headlines, that Roundup had been "confirmed" to cause cancer.

Bayer, Monsanto and the Roundup lawsuits

The German company Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 and inherited a wave of lawsuits. From 2018 to 2019, juries in three California trials found that Roundup had contributed to plaintiffs' cancers and awarded large damages, later reduced on appeal. In June 2020, Bayer announced it would pay up to $10.9 billion to resolve about 125,000 filed and unfiled claims, while continuing to maintain that Roundup is safe. Litigation has continued since then, and in February 2026 Bayer announced a proposed class settlement of about $7.25 billion intended to cover remaining and future claims.

Several countries have also restricted glyphosate in various ways: the Netherlands banned sales for private home use in 2014, France withdrew some formulations in 2019, and Vietnam banned it in 2019. Others reversed course; Sri Lanka's 2015 ban was fully lifted by 2022. Argentina did not adopt the national ban Fesprosa demanded.

What this means for you

For most people, the main exposure to glyphosate is tiny residues on food, which regulators say are well below safety limits. The people with real reason to pay attention are those who handle it directly, such as farm workers, landscapers and keen home gardeners, and families living right next to sprayed fields.

If you use a glyphosate product, follow the label: wear gloves and long sleeves, avoid spraying in wind, and keep children and pets away until it dries.
Consider alternatives for small areas, such as mulching, hand weeding or boiling water on paving cracks.
Washing fruit and vegetables removes some surface residues; buying organic is an option if you prefer to avoid synthetic pesticides altogether.
If you have been heavily exposed and are worried about your health, talk to a doctor.

The 2015 Argentine campaign did not end glyphosate use, but it was part of a broader shift. A once little-noticed weedkiller became a subject of court cases, national bans and scientific reviews, and the question rural doctors raised, how to protect people who live closest to the fields, remains a fair one.

Sources: NextBillion / TeleSUR (30 April 2015): Latin American Organizations Campaign to Ban Monsanto; Wikipedia: Glyphosate (IARC, EFSA, EPA, JMPR, national restrictions, 2026 settlement); KTVU / AP (24 June 2020): Bayer paying up to $10.9B to settle Monsanto weedkiller case; original 2015 report by John Vibes for True Activist.

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