Commentary: IARC Monographs Program and public health under siege by corporate interests

Abstract

and for developing strategies to control and prevent cancer.Institution at which the work was performed: The work was not performed at an institution.Am J Ind Med. 2018;61:277-281. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ajim

Re-registration Challenges of Glyphosate in the European Union

“…Moreover, in its additional position regarding risk assessment on the potential endocrine activity of glyphosate as a follow-up assessment to its previous conclusion in 2015, EFSA stated that glyphosate does not have endocrine disrupting properties through estrogen, androgen, thyroid, or steroidogenesis mode of action, based on a comprehensive toxicology database (European Food Safety Authority, 2017a). In connection to hazard identification, an IARC expert has stressed that causal relationships need to be empirically tested; prior assumptions may affect conclusions; and conflicts of interest have to be avoided (Saracci, 2016), another statement claimed that the IARC classification of glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen was the result of a flawed and incomplete summary of the experimental evidence (Tarone, 2018), while others voice the opinion that such accusations against IARC and its Monographs Program evaluation process are driven by economic interests, and are intimidating to IARC (Infante et al, 2018). The debate over glyphosate even caused the Netherlands to ban non-agricultural uses of glyphosate as of November, 2015, as well as a conflict between the EC and the European Parliament.…”

“…In retrospect, the Executive Director of EFSA warns not to entangle broader societal issues e.g., the role of modern agricultural practices and multinational biotech firms in our food supply with evidencebased risk assessment of regulated products (Url, 2018). Others express concern regarding the expertise used by the regulatory agencies to evaluate the safety of glyphosate and point out that toxicologists at Monsanto Corp. anticipated the carcinogenicity classification of glyphosate by IARC (Foucart and Horel, 2018;Infante et al, 2018).…”

Public health and evidence-informed policy-making: The case of a commonly used herbicide

“…Monsanto has been careful to ensure that the US EPA is on board (25). Ominously, EPA staff has been accused of collusion with Monsanto to downgrade the health hazards of glyphosate (26).…”