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EU agency says glyphosate not carcinogenic

The European Chemicals Agency says the herbicide glyphosate is not carcinogenic, opening the way for its continued use in the European Union.  A Bloomberg report says the panel’s conclusion is that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, can potentially cause serious eye damage and is toxic to aquatic life.  But the agency says there’s no evidence that it’s carcinogenic, or that it’s toxic to reproduction or that it causes changes to genetic material.

In addition to Roundup, glyphosate is also in products registered by BASF, DuPont, FMC and Syngenta.

The European determination is important because it could end a reauthorization holdup triggered by a 2015 finding from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.  That finding was that glyphosate was probably carcinogenic.  The same year, the European Food Safety Authority found glyphosate was unlikely to be carcinogenic, leading the European Commission to extend glyphosate authorization through the end of 2017.