European commission plans to relicense controversial weedkiller
Source: The Guardian
European commission plans to relicense controversial weedkiller
Glyphosate was deemed ‘probably carcinogenic’ by WHO but draft law has been
drawn up to grant new 15-year lease
Arthur Neslen
Wednesday 24 February 2016 19.27 GMT
The European commission plans to give a new 15-year lease to a controversial weedkiller that was deemed “probably carcinogenic to humans” by the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
A draft implementing law seen by the Guardian says the commission has decided it is appropriate to renew the licence for glyphosate after a lengthy review, which sparked a scientific storm.
Glyphosate is a key ingredient in bestselling herbicides such as Monsanto’s Roundup brand and is so widely used that traces of its residues are routinely found in British breads.
The EU’s food watchdog, the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) ruled in November that the substance was unlikely to be carcinogenic, in a move welcomed by the agricultural industry.
But that advice triggered a backlash, with 96 prominent experts, including almost the whole IARC team, taking the unusual step of calling for the Efsa decision to be disregarded.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/24/weedkiller-glyphosate-controversial-european-commission-plans-relicense
= new reply since forum marked as read
>> The Efsa ruling had relied on six industry-funded and partly unpublished studies and
>> was “not credible because it is not supported by the evidence”, the scientists wrote in
>> a letter to the EU’s health commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis.
>> Earlier this week, another 14 scientists signed a consensus statement in the Environmental
>> Health journal, saying regulatory estimates of tolerable exposure levels for glyphosate
>> were based on outdated science.
Bastards.
Money-grubbing corrupt bastards.
