Monsanto, the world’s largest seed and ag-chemical company, planned for months ahead of time to generate a storm of protest and disagreement over the 2015 finding by the WHO cancer agency that the weedkiller glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans,” says EcoWatch. “The timing was critical because in 2015 both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the European Commission were evaluating re-authorizations of Monsanto’s weed killer.”
“The plan was to create enough controversy to thoroughly discredit IARC’s [International Agency for Research on Cancer] evaluation because Monsanto officials knew that regulators would be influenced by IARC, and continued widespread use of the top-selling chemical could be at risk,” says EcoWatch, which based its report on Monsanto documents obtained as part of litigation against company, freedom of information requests and state records. “Monsanto did not wait for the actual IARC decision before acting. It enlisted teams of PR and lobbying experts, scientists and others in a plan aimed at creating what was designed to appear as a storm of ‘outcry” and ‘outrage’ to follow the IARC classification.”
Private consultant Peter Infante, a former Labor Department epidemiologist, told EcoWatch, “What this indicates to me is that it was obvious to Monsanto that there was evidence of carcinogenicity.” The story, by journalist Carey Gillam, author of a book about glyphosate, says, “Internal company records show not just the level of fear Monsanto had over the impending review, but notably that company officials fully expected IARC scientists would find at least some cancer connections to glyphosate.”