Tag: Glyphosate

White House Has “Monsanto’s Back on Pesticides,” Newly Revealed Document Says

(URSTK by Carey Gillam) Internal Monsanto records just filed in court show that a corporate intelligence group hired to “to take the temperature on current regulatory attitudes for glyphosate” reported that the White House could be counted on to defend the company’s Roundup herbicides.

In a report attached to a July 2018 email to Monsanto global strategy official Todd Rands, the strategic intelligence and advisory firm Hakluyt  reported to Monsanto the following:

“A domestic policy adviser at the White House said, for instance: ‘We have Monsanto’s back on pesticides regulation. We are prepared to go toe-to-toe on any disputes they may have with, for example, the EU. Monsanto need not fear any additional regulation from this administration.”

In the email accompanying the report, Hakluyt’s Nick Banner told Rands the information related to issues both for the United States and for China. The report notes that “professional” staff has “sharp” disagreement with “political” staff on some areas, but that the concerns of some of the professional staffers would not get in the way.

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

“We heard a unanimous view from senior levels of the EPA (and USDA) that glyphosate is not seen as carcinogenic, and that this is highly unlikely to change under this administration – whatever the level of disconnect between political and professional staffers.”

The report said that a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lawyer and a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) official confirmed that both agencies see the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classification of glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen as “flawed” and incomplete.

“There is little doubt that the EPA supports the use of glyphosate,” the report says. It quotes a current EPA lawyer as saying: “We have made a determination regarding glyphosate and feel very confident of the facts around it. Other international bodies… have reached different conclusions, but in our view the data is just not clear and their decision is mistaken.”

Related: How to Avoid GMOs – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

The report also suggests similarities between the Trump Administration’s support for glyphosate and its actions around a pesticide called chlorpyrifos that is the active ingredient in an insecticide made by Dow Chemical, now DowDupont. There is a large body of science showing that chlorpyrifos is very damaging to children’s brain development and that children are most often exposed through the food and water they consume. Chlorpyrifos was due to be banned from agricultural use in 2017 because of its dangers but the Trump administration postponed the ban at the request of Dow and continues to allow its use in food production.  The Hakluyt reports says:

“The way the EPA under the Trump administration has handled Chlorpyrifos might be instructive in how it would handle new science or new developments related to glyphosate.”

At the time the report was delivered to Monsanto last July, Monsanto had just been acquired by the German company Bayer AG and was in the midst of defending itself in the first Roundup cancer trial. That San Francisco case, brought by cancer victim Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, resulted in a unanimous jury verdict handed down in August ordering Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages to Johnson. The judge in the case later lowered the amount to $78 million. A second trial, also held in San Francisco in a separate case, resulted in an $80.2 million verdict for plaintiff Edwin Hardeman.

A third trial is underway now in Oakland, California. Closing arguments are scheduled for tomorrow in that case, brought by a husband and wife who both have non-Hodgkin lymphoma they allege is due to their decades of using Roundup.

The documents that include the Hakluyt report were filed in Alameda County Superior Court by lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the current case – Alva and Alberta Pilliod.

The filing is in response to Monsanto’s effort to tell jurors about a recently released EPA glyphosate assessment in which the agency reaffirmed its finding that glyphosate does not cause cancer. The Pilliod lawyers say the Hakluyt communications with Monsanto speak “directly to the credibility of the 2019 EPA glyphosate evaluation, issued by an administration which holds itself out as favoring Monsanto’s business interests.”

Widening rift reported between political and professional staffers in regulatory agencies

The Hakluyt report to Monsanto also notes that increasingly professional staffers inside “most” federal agencies are feeling at odds with political staffers on issues such as pesticide regulation, climate science and other matters.

“While this appears to be true of various agencies – Health and Human Services, Commerce, Education, Interior, the Food and Drug Administration, and so on- the EPA may be the leading example of this phenomenon.”

The report quotes a prominent Washington DC law firm partner who has “extensive contacts at the EPA as saying:

“In essence, the political leadership favors deregulation and dismisses the expert risk analysis. It is especially averse to theoretical risk analysis, for example, on the risks of glyphosate, about which a scientific consensus is yet to form… With regard to glyphosate, in particular, the differences between political and professional staff are sharp.” 

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

The professional staffers, those scientists and others who typically have been within an agency for many years through multiple administrations.

Within the EPA, professional staffers are said to have “doubts about glyphosate,” but those doubts “are not shared by the EPA’s leadership.”

The report also provides feedback on Monsanto’s reputation and provides a cautionary note to Bayer, which had just closed the purchase of Monsanto a few weeks before the July 2018 communications:

“Developments in California on glyphosate are striking a chord with the public… The company regularly goes to ‘DEFCON 1’ on the slightest challenge from the environmental, academic or scientific community.”

“Even within the EPA there is unease about your ‘scientific intransigence.’” 

According to the Hakluyt report, an official with the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs said: “There is growing unease in this office at what seems like scientific intransigence by Monsanto to give credibility to any evidence that doesn’t fit their view. We would agree with them that such evidence is non-conclusive, but that does not mean that it is without basis.”

For more information and updates follow @careygillam on Twitter.

Journal Admits Monsanto Role In Reviews Of Glyphosate Cancer Risks

(Natural Blaze) The scientific journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology has issued a rare “Expression of Concern” and requested corrections to articles it published that failed to fully disclose Monsanto’s role in reviews of glyphosate’s cancer risks.

The journal said all five articles it published in a 2016 supplemental issue titled “An Independent Review of the Carcinogenic Potential of Glyphosate” failed to include an accurate disclosure of the pesticide-maker’s involvement.

The five articles at issue were all highly critical of the 2015 finding by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer that glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen.

“It’s deplorable that Monsanto was the puppet master behind the supposedly ‘independent’ reviews of glyphosate’s safety,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These papers were manufactured as a way to counteract the World Health Organization’s findings on glyphosate’s cancer risks. They could mislead the public in dangerous ways and should be completely retracted.”

Recommended: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

The documents revealing Monsanto’s role in the reviews came to light during a trial that culminated last month when a jury found that exposure to glyphosate products was a “substantial” contributing factor to the terminal cancer of a California groundskeeper, who was subsequently awarded $289 million in damages.

Those documents exposed that Monsanto improperly edited the articles and directly paid some of the authors a consulting fee for their work.

In an October 2017 letter to the publisher, the Center for Biological Diversity and three other national environmental health groups demanded the articles be retracted.

Recommended: New Study Shows Glyphosate Does Cause Tumors and Birth Defects, and More

The Declaration of Interest statement that was originally published with the papers:

  • Failed to disclose that at least two panelists who authored the review worked as consultants for, and were directly paid by, Monsanto for their work on the paper;
  • Failed to disclose that at least one Monsanto employee extensively edited the manuscript and was adamant about retaining inflammatory language critical of the IARC assessment — against some of the authors’ wishes; the disclosure falsely stated that no Monsanto employee reviewed the manuscript.

Additionally, multiple internal emails from Monsanto indicated the pesticide maker’s willingness to ghostwrite or compile information for the authors of the reviews, dictate the scope of one of the reviews, and identify which scientists to engage or list as authors of the reviews.

In an email sent yesterday to the Center, a representative from the publisher of the articles, Taylor and Francis, wrote: “We note that, despite requests for full disclosure, the original Acknowledgements and Declaration of Interest statements provided to the journal did not fully represent the involvement of Monsanto or its employees or contractors in the authorship of the articles.”

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Several of the authors issued apologies in the updated Declaration of Interest sections of three of the five review papers, including:

  • Keith R. Solomon (has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • David Brusick (has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • Marilyn Aardema
  • Larry Kier (has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • David Kirkland (has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • Gary Williams (has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • John Acquavella (former Monsanto employee, has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • David Garabrant
  • Gary Marsh
  • Tom Sorahan (former Monsanto employee, has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • Douglas L. Weed (has worked as consultant for Monsanto)

Some of the details of the corrections include:

  • Another correction states that Monsanto scientist William Heydens “pointed out some typographical errors.” Based on the documents we have, Heydens was far more involved in drafting, editing and organizing the reviews than the correction indicates. In an email correspondence with Dr. Ashley Roberts of Intertek, Heydens admits to writing “a draft introduction chapter” for the series of reviews, then asks Roberts “who should be the ultimate author” of the introduction chapter he ghostwrote. Dr. Heydens’ full involvement in these reviews remains uncorrected despite the fact that many of his edits and revisions can be found in the published final manuscript.
  • The reviews were conceived as part of a company plan to discredit IARC well before the agency came to its conclusion that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. One of the plan’s stated goals was to “orchestrate outcry with IARC decision, ”while another plan made clear that the company sought a “WHO Retraction” and made it a priority to “invalidate relevance of IARC.” A Monsanto “Post-IARC Meeting” details several scientists that Monsanto pegged as potential authors. The meeting presentation also asks the question, “How much writing can be done by Monsanto scientists to help keep costs down?” In an email under the subject “Post-IARC Activities to Support Glyphosate,” Monsanto executive Michael Koch wrote that the review on animal data cited by IARC should be “initiated by MON as ghost writers,” and “this would be more powerful if authored by non-Monsanto scientists (e.g., Kirkland, Kier, Williams, Greim and maybe Keith Solomon.)
  • The authors of these papers cited previous reviews that were ghostwritten by Monsanto. In an email discussing the plan for the review papers, Heydens wrote, “An option would be to add Greim and Kier or Kirkland to have their names on the publication, but we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak. Recall that is how we handled Williams, Kroes & Munro, 2000.”

Despite the misconduct that Taylor and Francis acknowledged in the Expression of Concern, the publisher has refused to issue a retraction for the papers, in contradiction to its own Corrections Policy, and has allowed the title of the supplemental issue to retain the phrase “an independent review.”

“This peek behind the Monsanto curtain raises serious questions about the safety of glyphosate,” said Donley. “Monsanto’s unethical behavior and the publisher’s response undermine scientific integrity and ultimately public health.”

Evidence continues to mount about the toxicity of glyphosate, not only to humans, but to the broader environment. Glyphosate was recently found to make honeybees more susceptible to infection from pathogens, implicating it as a contributing factor in worldwide bee declines.

Glyphosate Box [No Naturalblaze affiliation]

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Bob’s Red Mill Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Glyphosate Weedkiller Contamination

Tractor spray fertilize green field with pesticide insecticide herbicide chemicals in agriculture field in evening sunlight. Farmer care plants.

(NaturalBlaze) Citing a recent report by the Environmental Working Group finding traces of the ‘known carcinogen’ glyphosate in Cheerios, Quaker Oats and other oat-based breakfast foods, plaintiffs Tamara Frankel and Natasha Paracha said Friday that Bob’s Red Mill knew its oat products contain or likely contain the chemical, but didn’t disclose it on the label.

Instead, they say, the Oregon-based company labeled the products with phrases such as “gluten free,” “wheat free” and “purity tested,” leading consumers to believe them to be healthy.

“Consumers have a reasonable expectation that material product information, such as the presence of a probable carcinogen like glyphosate, will be provided by a product manufacturer, especially when the manufacturer affirmatively identifies the health-related attributes of its products such as “Gluten Free”, “Whole Grain”, and “Friend of the Heart,” the complaint states, adding that the labeling amounts to “misleading half-truths.”

Related: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

Frankel and Paracha say Bob’s Red Mill had a duty to disclose the presence of glyphosate in its oats and that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen, because consumers don’t have easy access to the information. They want a court order blocking the company from continuing to advertise the products as healthy.

They seek to certify classes of consumers in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Washington. In the alternative, they seek to certify a California-only class.

Patricia Syverson with Bonnett, Fairbourn, Friedman & Balint in San Diego represents Frankel and Paracha.

In late August, it was also announced that General Mills is facing a potentially damaging class action lawsuit after a Florida woman accused it of engaging in deceptive business practices, by not alerting the public that their Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios cereals contain glyphosate.

Related: Gluten Intolerance, Wheat Allergies, and Celiac Disease – It’s More Complicated Than You Think

A 2016 testing project on glyphosate residues in popular American foods by Sustainable Pulse’s partner The Detox Project and Food Democracy Now! is one of the main pieces of evidence being used in the case, according to the court documents, after it found levels of glyphosate in both Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios as well as many other products.

This wave of class actions against food companies has caused many food brands to start seeking The Detox Project’s Glyphosate Free certification, according to their Director, Henry Rowlands;  “The Detox Project has received a massive rise in enquiries from food brands regarding Glyphosate Residue Free certification, ranging from baby food to honey to supplement brands. So far we have 15 brands from around the world fully certified but over 50 brands have been in touch during the last week.”

The lawsuits against food brands also follow the landmark cancer trial verdict in San Francisco very closely, in which Monsanto was ordered by a jury to pay over USD $289 Million in total damages to the former school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, a California father who has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which was caused by Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup.

Does Monsanto’s Roundup cause cancer? Trial highlights the difficulty of proving a link

In this June 1, 2010 photo, central Illinois corn farmer Jerry McCulley sprays the weed killer glyphosate across his cornfield in Auburn, Ill. A handful of hardy weeds have adapted to survive glyphosate _ sold as Roundup and a variety of other brands _ which many scientists say threatens to make the ubiquitous herbicide far less useful to farmers. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

(The Conversation) Does glyphosate, the active ingredient in the widely used weedkiller Roundup, cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma? This question is at issue now in a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court. Hundreds more claims have been cleared to proceed in a federal multi-district lawsuit.

Illinois corn farmer Jerry McCulley sprays glyphosate across his cornfield in Auburn, June 1, 2010.AP Photo/Seth Perlman

Much of this litigation is based on a 2015 determination by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. This report has come under heavy criticism, which is not surprising because there’s a lot of money at stake.

The IARC classification relied in part on experiments in mice. But is that enough to conclude the weed killer causes cancer in humans? Mice are not people, so probably not.

If it was simple to determine the cause of cancer in humans, scientists would do the right experiment and we’d know the answer pretty quickly.

But it’s not simple.

Related: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

Proving causation in product liability lawsuits

Epidemiology is one of the sciences that provides evidence needed to prove cause and effect in medicine and public health. It is the most important tool for determining whether exposure to a given substance increases the risk of disease. The problem is that it is easy to do it badly, and a bad study is worse than no study at all.

In fact, after a special hearing examining the science on both sides of the glyphosate argument, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria called epidemiology “loosey-goosey” and a “highly subjective field.” Nonetheless, he concluded that the views on both sides were reasonable and should be heard in court, with the verdict up to a jury.

I have spent much of my working life trying to help figure out why people get cancer. To illustrate how hard it is to prove causality, consider the question: Does smoking cause lung cancer?

Innumerable epidemiological studies since the 1940s have shown a strong association between smoking and lung cancer. But there has never been a randomized trial in humans. In addition, we know from experimental studies that smoking rats don’t get lung cancer.

For years, Big Tobacco dismissed observational studies in people (epidemiology) with the mantra that “association is not causation,” and avoided regulation. The scientific community was intimidated by this strategy for far too long. Eventually, the studies accumulated to the point that the association was overwhelming, and cause and effect could not be denied.

There are two main types of epidemiological study designs: cohort and case-control. In a cohort study, a large group of people – some smokers, some not – are followed over the years to see who gets sick. In a case-control study, a group of lung cancer patients (perhaps several hundred) are asked about their smoking history, along with an equal number of people without lung cancer.

Invariably, in cohort study after cohort study, smokers got sicker from heart disease, lung cancer and many other maladies over time. In most of these studies, scientists did their best to take account of other differences between smokers and non-smokers, so as to isolate the effect of smoking. Also invariably, in case-control studies patients with lung cancer were much more likely to have been smokers than people in the general population.

In the first case of its kind to reach trial, Dewayne Johnson is suing Monsanto, the maker of Roundup. The 46-year-old blames his 2014 cancer diagnosis on Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate.

Defining ‘proof’

When scientists are asked for a definition of proof, most of them use criteria such as “reproducibility” and “statistical significance” and “plausibility.” But who decides whether each of these criteria has been met? The answer is a panel of experts. It is unsettling to most scientists to hear that “proof” can only be defined as “a consensus of experts,” but this is true from physics to bird-watching. And what has been proven can later be unproven with new experts and/or new evidence.

Who chooses the experts? They include panels convened by the National Academies of Sciences, or advisory boards of professional societies such as the American College of Cardiology. The makeup of these panels can be challenged, and of course, people can choose to ignore the “experts” and believe what they want.

In health research, “causing” disease is defined as “increasing risk.” This does not mean that exposure to something like cigarettes is both necessary and sufficient to cause disease. Most heavy smokers never get lung cancer, and some lifelong non-smokers do. However, experts agree that smoking causes lung cancer because hundreds of observational epidemiological studies show that a heavy smoker has a risk of lung cancer 10 to 20 times higher than a non-smoker. This agreement among experts is the proof that smoking causes lung cancer.

U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry holds the report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service on the relationship of smoking to health, January 11, 1964. The report led to laws requiring warning labels on cigarette packages and a ban on broadcast cigarette ads. AP Photo/hwg

For many other potential hazards, the epidemiology is either inadequate or contradictory. One study may show an association between exposure and disease, while another shows no relationship. This can happen because the exposure does not cause the disease, and studies that do show a relationship are due to chance, bias and/or confounding – in other words, they are false positive results. It also can happen because the true exposure has not been accurately measured, so existing research is masking a real causative effect – also known as a false negative result.The process of proving cause in science is quite similar to a jury trial. Evidence is presented to a jury (the expert panel or committee), which renders a verdict. To a “reasonable” person, does the evidence rise to the level of guilt – or, in science, proof of cause and effect?

A health scientist sees proof of causation when evidence from epidemiology (observational studies in people) and toxicology (experiments in rats), and, to some extent basic science (does a chemical damage DNA in a test tube?) accumulates to the point where there is no other viable explanation for the evidence than cause and effect. Epidemiology is paramount, because it is a direct assessment of risk in human beings. It is analogous to circumstantial evidence in a jury trial.

Glyphosate is widely used on field crops, including corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat. USGS

Is circumstantial evidence enough?

The fact that smoking causes lung cancer is accepted beyond a reasonable doubt based on the circumstantial evidence of numerous observational epidemiological studies. A convincing case for guilt can rest entirely on circumstantial evidence when that evidence is extensive and strong enough to convince a panel of experts.

It will be harder for jurors in the Roundup trials to weigh epidemiological evidence that glyphosate caused plaintiffs’ cancer, because jurors are rarely experts and successful trial lawyers are exceptionally persuasive.

In my view, there are two crucial requirements for an equitable assessment of proof of causation from products like glyphosate or cigarettes. First, were the epidemiological studies well done? Second, how objective are the jurors and the expert witnesses?

Both science and the judicial system are highly imperfect. The verdicts in these trials could be wrong, and could be appealed. This happens as often in the worlds of science and medicine as it does in the courtroom.

It took many years to develop a broad consensus on cigarettes. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs in the Roundup litigation, the same maybe true for glyphosate.

French Beekeepers Go After Bayer After Glyphosate Found In Honey

“I’m not going to be like everyone else, I’m going to file suit against Monsanto”

(Natural Blaze by Brandon Turbeville) A beekeeping cooperative in northern France has filed a legal complaint against Bayer, the German chemical giant that recently merged with Monsanto after finding traces of glyphosate in their honey.

The herbicide was detected by Famille Michaud, one of France’s largest honey marketers, in three batches of honey provided by its members.

The head of the cooperative in the region of Aisne, Jean-Marie Camus, said “They systematically analyse the honey shipments they receive, and they found glyphosate.”
Glyphosate, also known as Roundup, is the most widely used in France, though French President Emmanuel Macron has agreed to attempt to ban it by 2021.

While evidence has repeatedly shown that links glyphosate to cancer, liver disease, and a host of other negative health effects, it has also been linked to the decline in the bee population, making the discovery of glyphosate in honey all the more concerning since it is clearly reaching bees.

Related: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

The new European Soviet, the EU, renewed the license for glyphosate weedkillers last November despite many Europeans and even European governments having deep reservations and intense opposition.

A lawyer for the cooperative, Emmanuel Ludot, says the contaminated honey came from a producer whose hives are located near sunflower fields, beets, and rapeseed.

But Ludot warned not to dismiss the idea that the contamination was also coming from gardeners who use Roundup on their properties.

The complaint came right as the merger between Monsanto and Bayer took place, which has created a agrochemical monster the likes of which has never been seen before, at least not since IG Farben, which Bayer was very much a part of, being engaged in the facilitation of Hitler’s Nazi atrocities and the extermination of Jews in Germany’s network of concentration camps.

Ludot hopes that the complaint will inspire and inquiry that will determine the amount of glyphosate in honey batches and the health consequences it may have for humans.

“It’s also a matter of knowing how widespread this might be. Famille Michaud tells me this isn’t an isolated case,” he said.

The President of Famille Michaud, Vincent Michaud, told AFP that “we regularly detect foreign substances, including glyphosate.”

If glyphosate is found, the organization rejects the entire shipment.

“Usually, beekeepers will say ‘In that case I’ll sell the honey at a roadside stand or a market’, where there’s no quality control,” Michaud said.

“But this beekeeper had the courage to say ‘I’m not going to be like everyone else, I’m going to file suit against Monsanto’,” he said.

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