Nov 9, 2015
When the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organization that reviews scientific papers about substances for their likelihood to cause cancer in humans, reported that glyphosate probably causes cancer, there were many voices calling for its removal from use in the U.S. Yet when the same organization recently came out with a report that ranked processed meat (like bacon) even higher, there was not the same outcry even though I suggest that people (including children) are exposed to processed meat at a much higher rate than glyphosate.
I do not want to get on the bandwagon that the data the IARC used does not support the "probably causes cancer" ranking but it would be a good idea for people to actually read that report before jumping up and down about glyphosate definitely causing cancer (which the report does not say but the newspapers picked it as that). The summary is here: http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/pdf/MonographVolume112.pdf
and the monograph is here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmonographs.iarc.fr%2FENG%2FMonographs%2Fvol112%2Fmono112-02.pdf
In that report, there were many papers cited where exposure (in farming and by applicators) to glyphosate was not a causal effect of the cancers they looked at. However, there were a handful (often with very small sample sizes) where it did [note- they specifically called out that in residential areas exposure is low and therefore unlikely that glyphosate would be carcinogenic at those exposure rates]. Thus the "Probably" ranking. Also be aware that the the ranking the IARC uses is pretty cut and dry: no, probably/possibly, and definitely (see the video I reference below) so there is not the opportunity to rank something based on the situation. For the meat issue, the calming voices are saying, "We get it, just don't eat so much meat" not "We have to ban meat from the school cafeteria!!" but for some reason we did hear not a similar response about glyphosate use.
vs 
Here is a balanced article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/widely-used-herbicide-linked-to-cancer/ and just the facts: http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/glyphogen.html
Finally, this is a very good video that shows how IARC decides where to rank things they evaluate:
Enjoy your breakfast...
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