Tag: Herbicide

Court Orders Monsanto Roundup Safety Documents to be Disclosed

Monsanto is catching a lot of heat now that a court has unsealed documents that cast the company in a negative light and suggest that it was responsible for providing false assertions to the government and public regarding the safety of Roundup. As the most popular herbicide in the world, Roundup and similar products produced by Monsanto are used across the globe for the elimination of pests from lawns, crops, gardens and nurseries. It has provided research that opposes the belief Roundup’s main active ingredient can cause cancer, but the documents unsealed by the court show that these accounts were misleading and, in some cases, false.

Ghostwritten Research

The research that was presented to defend the safety of its products was in fact, ghostwritten and attributed to academics. It also claimed that a senior EPA official attempted to dismiss a report from the United States Department of Health and Human Services that the product could in fact be linked to the deaths of numerous people who suffered from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The evidence tells a story of arguments within the Environmental Protection Agency and conflicting beliefs over whether Roundup and similar products were safe to use.

Emails between Monsanto executives and Jess Rowland of the EPA discuss an effort to disrupt the efforts of the Department of Health and Human Services to make its own determination and review of the product. Rowland states in the emails that he should receive a medal if he is able to succeed in his interference.

World Health Organization Classifies Products as Carcinogenic

The growing litigation over Roundup was sparked off by the classification of Roundup as a carcinogen, due to the discovery of a link between glyphosate and cancer in animals and the destruction of DNA and chromosomes in human cells. Despite the research provided by the WHO, Monsanto went to great lengths to continue the defense of its product and to assert that it was as safe to consume as salt.

While Monsanto claims that glyphosate is safe, those who have come forward with claims against the company allege that Monsanto has repeatedly falsified research and information in order to fool the government and the public. In its defense, Monsanto has claimed that the unsealed documents are being presented out of context and that they provide isolated information. Numerous health agencies around the world have presented conflicting arguments over the safety of these products, so the science has not been settled just yet.

This post was written by Jonathan Rosenfeld of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers, Copyright © 2017
For more legal analysis go to The National Law Review

EPA OIG Will Evaluate EPA’s Management of Resistance Issues Related to Herbicide Tolerant GE Crops

EPAOn March 25, 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) sent a memorandum to Jim Jones, Assistant Administrator, Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP), announcing that it plans to begin preliminary research to assess EPA’s management and oversight of resistance issues related to herbicide tolerant genetically engineered (GE) crops.  OIG states that its review will include the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP), as well as other applicable headquarters and regional offices.  OIG’s objectives are to determine:

  1. What processes and practices, including alternatives, EPA has provided to delay herbicide resistance;

  2. What steps EPA has taken to determine and validate the accurate risk to human health and the environment for approved pesticides to be used to combat herbicide resistant weeds; and

  3. Whether EPA independently collects and assesses data on, and mitigates actual occurrences of, herbicide resistance in the field.

OIG states that the anticipated benefit of the project “is a greater understanding of herbicide resistance[,] which will lead to an enhancement of EPA’s herbicide resistance management and oversight.”

Commentary

Pesticide resistance is not a new issue and is one that EPA has affirmatively addressed when granting registrations for new products, GE or not, for some time.  In fact, that newer chemistries often have a more niche mode of action to reduce potential toxicity concerns has led some observers to speculate that greater resistance is one potential trade-off for the development of less toxic materials.

This “investigation” may appear to some to be a response to concerns raised by critics of GE crops generally and to a recent EPA decision to approve Enlist Duo herbicide, a new formulation of 2,4,D- and glyphosate designed to address the problem of weed resistance to glyphosate-tolerant crops.  Glyphosate tolerant crops were first approved some years ago, and their use was so broadly and readily adopted that issues have arisen with regard to potential resistance to some weed species.  EPA is currently expected to approve another GE strain, Dicamba-tolerant crops, to control glyphosate tolerant weeds.

To critics of GE crops, using more herbicides to control problems caused by what they claim is overuse of another herbicide is evidence of a troubling “pesticide treadmill,” which they believe should not have been allowed to occur in the first place.  Rebutting this criticism, others assert that resistance is a problem for all pesticides, not only genetically modified ones, and that with sufficient controls, resistance can be delayed, if not avoided.  Registrants point out that it is very much in their self-interest to take steps to avoid resistance to their products — once that occurs, the market viability of the product is significantly reduced.

ARTICLE BY Lisa M. Campbell, James V. Aidala & Carla N. Hutton of Bergeson & Campbell, P.C.
©2016 Bergeson & Campbell, P.C.