A perfectly useful herbicide could be banned in Europe thanks to a tangled network of lobbyists, lawyers and activists.
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The entire case against glyphosate is one “monograph” from an obscure World Health Organisation body called the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which concluded that glyphosate might cause cancer at very high doses. It admitted that by the same criteria, sausages and sawdust should also be classified as carcinogens.
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How did the IARC paper come to its alarmist conclusion? Well, we now know, thanks to Reuters, which reported that IARC prepared a draft which somebody altered in ten different places. “In each case, a negative conclusion about glyphosate leading to tumors was either deleted or replaced with a neutral or positive one.”
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Last week, it was reported how the scientist who advised the IARC to classify glyphosate as carcinogenic received $160,000 from law firms suing Monsanto on behalf of cancer victims. Christopher Portier began advising one of the firms about two months before IARC’s decision on glyphosate. He said that he had been hired to advise on an unrelated matter and his contract to advise on glyphosate was dated nine days after the IARC announcement in 2015.
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The Corporate European Observatory, which claims that it is in the business of “exposing the power of corporate lobbying in the EU”, rushed to the defence of Dr Portier. It argued that reports about the scientist should be seen as “outright attempts at character assassination”.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: War against chemicals is a shame on science