Agrochemicals - The Cesspool Of Corruption And Regulation of Glyphosate - TruePublica
By Colin Todhunter
– In her recent open letter to the United States Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason documents what
amounts to a cesspool of corruption surrounding sections of the
agrochemicals industry and the regulation of glyphosate (as found in
Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup).
As with all her previous ‘open
letters’ to officials, Mason cites ample sources to support her
arguments and claims, not least those about the health- and
environment-damaging impacts of glyphosate, a highly financially lucrative product for Monsanto. Readers may access these sources by consulting her original 15-page letter to the EPA here: open-letter-to-us-enviro nmental-protection-agency- about-glyphosate-and-the- international-monsanto-tribuna l
Mason notes that CropLife America, the agribusiness lobby
association, put pressure on the EPA to exclude individuals who had in
the past expressed a negative opinion of glyphosate from sitting on the
Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) Scientific
Advisory Panel (SAP). EPA immediately bowed to that request and delayed
the date of the SAP to find further figures approved by industry. She
documents in some detail how Croplife America pressured the FIFRA SAP to
rely on assessments of glyphosate tainted by conflicts of interest and
wanted to have excluded specific scientists from the International
Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) (whose negative evaluation of
glyphosate had upset the industry) and the Consensus Statement on
Glyphosate written by 16 scientists.
