Months after suspending work, the Food and Drug Administration “has resumed its first-ever endeavor to evaluate how much of a controversial chemical is making its way into the U.S. food supply,” says a blog post by Carey Gillam of U.S. Right to Know. The FDA began the “special assignment” last year but stopped the work because of a disagreement over a standard methodology for the agency’s laboratories to use.
“Sources inside the FDA said agency glyphosate testing resumed in early June and FDA spokeswoman Megan McSeveney confirmed the news this week,” wrote Gillam. Besides glyphosate, the most widely used weedkiller in the world and the main ingredient in Roundup, the FDA is analyzing foods for residue of 2,4-D and other “acid herbicides.” FDA has divulged few details of the testing program.
Environmental regulators in California held a public hearing on Wednesday on their plans to add glyphosate to the state’s list of carcinogens and the EPA’s inspector general “is initiating a probe into possible collusion between Monsanto and a former top EPA official who provided favorable assessments of the safety of glyphosate while at the EPA,” said Gillam. The EPA official chaired an EPA committee that decided glyphosate is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans”; the WHO cancer agency says it is “probably carcinogenic to humans.”