"Inconvenient Data Buried As 'Confidential Business Information.'"

"After the European Parliament obtains the release of Monsanto's data, a very different picture emerges about the safety of its product."

"The key ingredient in the most widely used herbicide in the world, Roundup, is stirring up controversy again.

A new analysis of previously confidential data has revealed serious errors in the supposedly scientific justification that glyphosate is safe.

The analysis comes from a real silverback in the environmental health field: Dr. Chris Portier, retired Director of the US National Center for Environmental Health and formerly the director of the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. He finds that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Chemical Agency (EChA) missed eight instances where statistically significant increases in tumors occurred in animals exposed to glyphosate.

Portier was only able to obtain access to these data, which had been submitted for review by Monsanto, because in 2016 members of the European Parliament requested that the data be made available for public scrutiny. This request—and the delayed release of the data in the first place—was necessary because the data had been considered confidential information by EFSA and EChA."

Pete Myers reports for Environmental Health News June 4, 2017.

Source: EHN, 06/05/2017