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Disputing IARC’s claim on glyphosate safety

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Monsanto is disputing the International Agency for Research’s classification of glyphosate as a 2A rating, probable carcinogen, a cancer causing agent.  IARC is a specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization that promotes international collaboration in cancer research based in France.

Donna Farmer, product protection and nutrition lead at Monsanto says IARC’s classification is not supported by scientific evidence.  “This is in striking conclusion compared to our regulatory agencies like the US EPA, authoritative and scientific bodies, and other third party experts who have actually been looking at this product for the last several decades,” she says.

She tells Brownfield, most recently, glyphosate was reevaluated by German authorities.  “They concluded there was no evidence of genotoxic potential,” she says.  And glyphosate was unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans.”

Farmer says IARC reviewed no new information before making this decision.  “It doesn’t make any sense to us how they could have come up with such a very different conclusion than all the other regulatory agencies, specifically the Germans in 2015,” she says.

Ultimately, Farmer says, glyphosate is a safe product for farmers to use.  “Everyone should have high confidence in the safety of the product,” she says.  “And again – why am I so confident in the safety of glyphosate?  I’ve been a scientist for Monsanto for over 20 years and I’ve looked at all the data that supports the safety of this product.”

Donna Farmer, product protection and nutrition lead at Monsanto

In a blog post, Dr. Val Giddings, a science and biotechnology policy specialist, says the IARC has used flawed methodology before to advance unsupportable conclusions and adds, “IARC’s assault on glyphosate breaks new ground and that glyphosate lacks the chemical structural characteristics of known carcinogens.”

In a statement released Friday afternoon, the Organic Consumers Association says IARC’s finding is “Not the first to make these links, but the strongest indictments of glyphosate.” And with glyphosate up for review this year by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the OCA is calling on EPA to ban the herbicide.

 

  • Just kidding, I doubt tobacco juice actually kills weeds. However, it sometimes reminds me of the whole tobacco/carcinogen debate, and how the tobacco industry’s paid scientists endeavored to cast doubt on the science behind ‘smoking causes cancer’ research for decades too. I say it just reminds me, not that its the same… but it may be. Why in the world would the average layperson trust a paid spokes-scientist from the company whose product is in question? I get that its possible for an interested party to get the science right, but for those not adept in seeing through any possible scientific bluster, the intuition to distrust seems more wise.

    Perhaps the Monsanto scientists should spend their time convincing other scientists that their science is good, rather than spend time doing public relations to us laypeople. Let the disinterested scientists (there are such things, right?) do the final judging.

    One last thought: Perhaps getting a PR scientist with a last name other than “Farmer” would also go a long way toward setting our suspicious minds at ease… Are we that easily cowed (no pun intended, maybe)?

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