The world’s largest seed company, Monsanto, is counting the EPA as the third major regulator to determine that glyphosate, the weedkiller used in combination with its GMO hybrids, is safe for humans. The herbicide has been under scrutiny since the WHO’s cancer agency classified it in March 2015 as probably carcinogenic to humans. Since then, the European Food Safety Authority and Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency completed reviews of the chemical and said it was non-carcinogenic. Now, Monsanto says a long-running EPA review also reached a favorable conclusion. The agency responded with the bureaucratic equivalent of “oops.”
That’s because the agency posted a series of documents on the Internet at the end of last week about its glyphosate review, including an internal memo from its cancer-assessment review committee saying glyphosate is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans,” reported The Huffington Post. EPA pulled the documents on Monday and told HuffPost they were posted in error and “our review is not final … Our assessment will be peer reviewed and completed by end of 2016.” The agency said it still had to resolve “some important science issues on glyphosate.”
Nonetheless, Monsanto trumpeted the memo from the cancer assessment panel in a news release that included a link to the memo. “No pesticide regulator in the world considers glyphosate to be a carcinogen,” said chief executive Hugh Grant.