{"id":43033,"date":"2019-01-21T08:11:13","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T13:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43033"},"modified":"2019-01-21T08:11:16","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T13:11:16","slug":"complaint-lodged-with-european-ombudsman-regulatory-authorities-colluding-with-agrochemicals-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43033","title":{"rendered":"Complaint Lodged with European Ombudsman: Regulatory Authorities Colluding with Agrochemicals Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2019\/01\/21\/complaint-lodged-with-european-ombudsman-regulatory-authorities-colluding-with-agrochemicals-industry\/\">Complaint Lodged with European Ombudsman: Regulatory Authorities Colluding with Agrochemicals Industry<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Back in 2016, I posed the question in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/theecologist.org\/2016\/may\/17\/glyphosate-eu-product-promoters-masquerading-regulators-cesspool-corruption\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Ecologist<\/a>&nbsp;whether regulators in the EU were acting as product promoters when it came to the relicensing of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto\u2019s herbicide Roundup. The renewal of the license for glyphosate in the EU was being debated at the time and much evidence pointed to collusion between regulators and corporate interests whose sales of the herbicide add up to many billions of dollars a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In that article, I referred to evidence presented in various documents written by environmentalist and campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason. Now, in the wake of a new, important&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/enveurope.springeropen.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s12302-018-0184-7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">paper by Charles Benbrook<\/a>&nbsp;(14 January) in the journal \u2018Environmental Sciences Europe\u2019, Dr Mason has lodged a complaint with the European Ombudsman accusing European regulatory agencies of collusion with the agrochemicals industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mason has been writing to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the EU Commission over a period of 18 months, challenging them about ECHA\u2019s classification of glyphosate. She notes that many people around the world have struggled to understand how and why the&nbsp;US Environmental Protection Agency and the EFSA concluded that glyphosate is not genotoxic (damaging to DNA) or carcinogenic, whereas the World Health Organisation\u2019s cancer agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), came to the opposite conclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The IARC stated that the evidence for glyphosate\u2019s genotoxic potential is \u201c<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/monographs.iarc.fr\/iarc-monographs-on-the-evaluation-of-carcinogenic-risks-to-humans-4\/\" target=\"_blank\">strong<\/a>\u201d and that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen.\u00a0While IARC referenced only peer-reviewed studies and reports available in the public literature, the EPA relied heavily on unpublished regulatory studies commissioned by pesticide manufacturers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Complaint Lodged with European Ombudsman: Regulatory Authorities Colluding with Agrochemicals Industry Back in 2016, I posed the question in&nbsp;The Ecologist&nbsp;whether regulators in the EU were acting as product promoters when it came to the relicensing of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto\u2019s herbicide Roundup. The renewal of the license for glyphosate in the EU was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18310,13900,5493,8709,284,4473,4131,24072],"class_list":["post-43033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-agrochemical-industry","tag-colin-todhunter","tag-counterpunch","tag-european-ombudsman","tag-european-union","tag-glyphosate","tag-monsanto","tag-regulatory-authorities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43034,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43033\/revisions\/43034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}