Page 70 - summer2016

Farm and Ranch

IS GLYPHOSATE LEGAL?
By Donald Sutherland

This year It is springtime and farmers are applying Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986). 1
the U.S. millions of pounds of the world's most com- So far, the EPA hasn't agreed with the

Environmental mon herbicide to the agricultural land in the California OEHHA and World Health Organi-
United States. This year the U.S. Environmental zation's IARC assessment of glyphosate and its
Protection Protection Agency (EPA), which licenses and products as a human carcinogenic health risk.
Agency (EPA), regulates Roundup and the seven hundred fifty Clinical, peer-reviewed studies by science,
which licenses other products containing glyphosate (and the industry and government bodies show that
many adjuvants and surfactants added to it), glyphosate kills plants and bacteria by interfer-
and regulates must decide whether the herbicide is safe for ing with an enzyme producing aromatic amino
Roundup . . . prenatal, infant, child and adult consumption acids, which are essential for life in plants,
must decide in food crops and products—and the agency is bacteria and humans. The EPA and glyphosate
stalling.
manufacturers admit that consumers absorb
whether the The European Commission is also stalling, glyphosate in minute amounts from food and
herbicide is safe delaying a reauthorization of glyphosate under drinking water, but assure us that it harms only
for prenatal, a peer review re-evaluation of the EU's list of plant life and passes harmlessly through the
approved active substances. Currently, France, body in urination.
infant, child Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands are opposed “All labeled uses of glyphosate are safe for
and adult to the relicensing of glyphosate, while Germany human health and supported by one of the most

consumption is abstaining. extensive worldwide human health databases

In the U.S., the EPA is under a federal ever compiled on an agricultural product,” states
in food crops mandate requiring the agency to re-evaluate Dr. Philip Miller, vice president global regula-
and products— all pesticides on a fifteen-year cycle. The fed- tory affairs for Monsanto, the manufacturer of
and the agency eral regulatory agencies (EPA, USDA, FDA) Roundup.
Not so, says an international contingent of
that establish food safety regulations claim the
is stalling. world's most commonly used herbicide is as safe scientists. These scientists, using peer-reviewed
as table salt if used according to the directions. clinical data, defend the IARC assessment that
glyphosate poses a human health risk. They
CONFLICTING ASSESSMENTS argue that the U.S. EPA and the European Food
So why doesn't the EPA just go ahead and Safety Authority (EFSA) have cited biased
reregister the license for glyphosate use in ag- industry-sponsored clinical data to argue that
riculture? glyphosate is safe, and didn't consider the low-
One reason is that in 2015 the World Health dose effects in prenatal, infants and children.
Organization's International Agency for Re- “The science consisted solely of toxico-
search on Cancer (IARC) assessed glyphosate logic studies commissioned by the herbicide
and its products as a probable human carcino- manufacturers in the 1980s and 1990s and never
genic health risk, and this year the California published, not an uncommon practice in U.S.
state government intends to list the herbicide as pesticide regulation,” say Philip J. Landrigan,
a carcinogen. MD, and Charles Benbrook, PhD in their New
The California Office of Environmental England Journal of Medicine report “GMOs,
Health Assessment (OEHHA) intends to list Herbicides, and Public Health.” 2
glyphosate as a carcinogen under the mandates “These studies predated current knowledge
of state law Proposition 65 (the Safe Drinking of low-dose, endocrine-mediated and epigenetic
70 Wise Traditions SUMMER 2016 Wise Traditions