{"id":73836,"date":"2016-05-23T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=73836"},"modified":"2016-05-20T11:39:58","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T10:39:58","slug":"monsanto-and-the-poisoning-of-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/05\/monsanto-and-the-poisoning-of-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"Monsanto and the Poisoning of Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"NeydtStock<\/a>

NeydtStock | Shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n

18 May 2016 – <\/em>This week, a Standing Committee of plant scientists from 28 member states in Europe is likely to endorse the European Food Safety Authority\u2019s (EFSA) findings so that the European Commission (under pressure from Monsanto, Glyphosate Task Force and others) can re-authorise glyphosate for another nine years. This is despite the WHO classifying glyphosate as being \u201cprobably carcinogenic\u201d to humans.<\/p>\n

An open letter from campaigner Rosemary Mason to Dirk Detken, Chief Attorney to the EFSA, follows the brief background article you are about to read. In the letter, Mason highlights the regulatory delinquency concerning the oversight of glyphosate in the EU. The evidence provided by Mason might lead many to agree that processes surrounding glyphosate \u2018regulation\u2019 in Europe amount to little more than a \u201ccesspool of corruption<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are around 500 million people in the EU. They want EU officials to uphold the public interest and to be independent from commercial influence. They do not want them to serve and profit from commercial interests at cost to the public\u2019s health and safety. However, what they too often get are\u00a0massive conflicts of interest: see\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0about the \u2018revolving door\u2019 problem within official EU bodies,\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0about \u2018the European Food and Safety Authority\u2019s independence problem\u2019 and\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0about \u2018chemical conflicts\u2019 in the EC\u2019s scientific committees for consumer issues.<\/p>\n

And they get governing bodies that are beholden to\u00a0massive corporate lobbying: see\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0about \u2018the fire power of the financial lobby\u2019 and\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0about \u2018who lobbies most\u2019 for TTIP, with agribusiness being the\u00a0biggest lobby group<\/a>\u00a0behing this secretive and corrupt trade deal that is attempting\u00a0drive a policy agenda<\/a>\u00a0above the heads of the European people and contrary to their wishes (see\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0on TTIP as well).<\/p>\n

Regulators turn a blind eye\u00a0to the deleterious effects of products that pose a serious systemic risk to the public: see\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0about \u2018the glyphosate toxicity studies you\u2019re not allowed to see\u2019 and\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0\u2018case closed by EFSA on Roundup, despite new evidence\u2019.<\/p>\n

And they also give the nod to products based not on independent research but on a company\u2019s statements or secretive studies taken at face value and then\u00a0deliberately keep the public in the dark: for example, see\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0about \u2018Roundup and birth defects\u2019.<\/p>\n

What people get are public institutions that serve a corporate agenda: see\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0about \u2018the black book on the corporate agenda of the EC\u2019.<\/p>\n

Last year,\u00a0Arthur Nelson<\/a>\u00a0noted that as many as 31 pesticides with a value running into billions of pounds could have been banned in the EU because of potential health risks, if a blocked EU paper on hormone-mimicking chemicals had been acted upon.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Sebastian Stehle\u00a0and Ralph Schultz found that 44.7 % of the 1,566 cases of measured insecticide concentrations (MICs) in EU surface waters exceeded their respective regulatory acceptable concentrations. The meta-analysis challenges the efficacy of the regulatory environmental risk assessment conducted for pesticide authorisation in the EU.<\/p>\n

Our food and agriculture system is in big trouble. It\u2019s in big trouble because the global agritech\/agribusiness sector is poisoning it, us and the environment with its pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and various other chemical inputs.\u00a0This is made possible because of the agro-chemical industry\u2019s lavish funds, massive lobbying, slick PR, compliant politicians and scientists and its undermining and capture of regulatory and policy decision-making bodies that supposedly serve the public interest.<\/p>\n

The situation in the US is possibly even worse and with TTIP on the horizon, Europeans could be in line for exposure to even more chemicals. Some 34,000\u00a0pesticides\u00a0are currently\u00a0registered\u00a0for\u00a0use\u00a0in the US. Drinking water is\u00a0often contaminated by pesticides<\/a>, and more babies are being born with\u00a0preventable birth defects<\/a>\u00a0due to pesticide exposure. Chemicals show up\u00a0in breast milk of mothers. Illnesses are on the rise too, including asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson\u2019s and Alzheimer\u2019s diseases and several types of cancer. The link with\u00a0pesticide exposure<\/a>\u00a0is becoming increasingly evident.<\/p>\n

Elected politicians and \u2018public servants\u2019 are allowing this to happen.\u00a0In 2014, the authors of the report \u2018The record of a Captive Commission<\/a>\u2019 concluded that the outgoing Barraso II EC\u2019s trade and investment policy revealed a bunch of unelected technocrats who cared little about what ordinary people want and negotiate on behalf of big business.<\/p>\n

The report state that the European Commission had a one-sided relationship with agribusiness on GMOs and pesticides. Far from shifting\u00a0Europe\u00a0to a more sustainable food and agriculture system, the opposite had happened, as agribusiness and its lobbyists continued to dominate the Brussels\u00a0scene. The report noted that the industry had been exerting strong pressure to prevent action by the EU on endocrine disruptors and pesticides.<\/p>\n

Failure to expose and challenge the corruption, lobbying, back-room \u2018free trade\u2019 deals and revolving door that exists between agribusiness and decision-making\/regulatory bodies will result in these corporations continuing to prosper at everyone else\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n

Open Letter from Rosemary Mason to Dirk Detken,\u00a0Chief Attorney to the European Food Safety Authority<\/strong><\/p>\n

(For the sake of convenience, this is an edited version of the original letter and has been reformatted in places)<\/p>\n

Dear Dirk Detken,<\/p>\n

Humans and the environment are being poisoned by thousands of chemicals of that have never been tested by regulators in the combinations in which farmers use them today. Regulation of pesticides is controlled by the agrochemical industry. It has a financial interest in advising farmers to use as much and as many pesticides as possible. This week a Standing Committee of plant scientists from 28 member states in Europe is likely to endorse EFSA\u2019s findings so that the European Commission (under pressure from Monsanto, Glyphosate Task Force and Crop Protection Organisations) can re-authorise glyphosate for another nine years.<\/p>\n

1)<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Glyphosate is toxic to humans<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pesticide regulators and Monsanto maintain that glyphosate only affects plants, fungi and\u00a0bacteria, not humans. Regulators claim it is non-toxic to humans because of the enzyme that glyphosate affects is only present in plants, fungi and bacteria and not in animals and humans.\u00a0This is scientific nonsense.\u00a0Pesticide scientists and plant scientists have based their assessment of herbicides on complete ignorance of human gut physiology.\u00a0Humans and animals have exactly the same pathway as in plants; mammals can only absorb nutrients via the\u00a0bacteria\u00a0in their gut; the gut microbiome. The gut microbiome is the collective genome of organisms (i.e. bacteria) inhabiting our body (see\u00a0this<\/a>).<\/p>\n

2)<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Environmentalists launch legal case against Monsanto and EU regulators over glyphosate assessment April 26 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

Viennese lawyer\u00a0Dr Josef Unterweger says<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there has been deliberate manipulation of the new licensing procedure for glyphosate with the intention of approving a carcinogenic substance, then this would be defrauding 508 million EU citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

For this reason Dr Unterweger is pressing charges on behalf of Munich Environmental Institute and the six environmental organisations: Global 2000, Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe, PAN Germany, PAN UK, G\u00e9n\u00e9rations Futures (France), WeMove Europe, and Nature & Progr\u00e8s Belgique.<\/p>\n

A report will also be submitted to OLAF, the European anti-fraud office.<\/p>\n

Have EFSA and the EU Commission received a copy of the lawsuit?<\/p>\n

3)<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Ignoring evidence about glyphosate in South America<\/strong><\/p>\n

I probably don\u2019t need to remind you of the email I wrote to you on 22\/10\/2012 about EFSA and the Seralini paper on rat tumours (see\u00a0this<\/a>)<\/p>\n

I said:<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Senior Attorney to EFSA, I presume that your CEO Ms Catherine Geslain-Lanu\u00e9lle must, on occasions, take your advice. Perhaps you would like to point out to her the trail of disasters to human health and the environment that has followed the planting of GM maize and Roundup Ready\u00ae crops in both Latin America and the US since they were first grown in 1996.\u00a0These statistics are real, not theoretical laboratory ones. Are these the disasters that she would want to see repeated in Europe?\u201d<\/p>\n

I had no reply.<\/p>\n

I noted that the German Rapporteur Member State (BfR)\/Glyphosate Task Force had excluded all papers from Argentina\/Paraguay reporting cancers, birth defects, reproductive problems and DNA changes in their Renewal Assessment Report.<\/p>\n

4)<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Conflicts of interest<\/strong><\/p>\n

The German RMS (BfR) has members of industry serving on it.\u00a0Le Monde\u00a0revealed that one third of the Members of the BFR Commission on Pesticides and their Residues are directly employed by the chemical industry; others came from the \u2018dubious\u2019 bee institutes. The satirical comment from\u00a0Le Monde\u00a0was, that in Germany: \u201cpeople from the pesticide industry give expert safety advice on their own products.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walter Haefeker President of the European Professional Beekeepers\u2019 Association (EPBA) confirmed this:<\/p>\n

\u201cFederal authority for Consumer Protection and Food Safety: BVL (Bundesamt f\u00fcr Verbraucherschutz und Lebensmittelsicherheit), during a presentation in 2015, in Berlin, at the world\u2019 s largest agricultural products fair, \u2018Die Gr\u00fcne Woche\u2019, the Director of the Department for the Admission of Plant Protection (Pesticide Regulation Authority), Dr. Karsten Hogardt, stated that the BVL sees itself as: \u2018a service for its clients, the plant protection industry\u2019.\u00a0In this role it is\u00a0\u2018advised\u2019 by an expert group of \u2018risk managers\u2019 including many from the pesticide industry. It is shocking and disgraceful, that no independent scientists are allowed in the regulation, or licensing, of pesticides in Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n

They were correct. The BfR Committee for Pesticides and its residues had two members from Bayer and two members from BASF. Bayer manufactures Super Strength Glyphosate and BASF supplies a chemical component of glyphosate.<\/p>\n

The WHO\/JMPR\u00a0(WHO Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues held jointly with the FAO Panel of Experts on the Use of Pesticides in Agriculture)\u00a0met to make the final decision about the registration of glyphosate in September 2015 based on IARC\u2019s full report; at least three had conflicts of interest<\/p>\n

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) wrote to the World Health Organization (WHO)\u00a0\u00a0with the list of eight members of this Committee. They complained that three members had conflicts of interest.\u00a0Angelo Morettiresigned in 2011 from EFSA after he had failed to declare conflicts of interest because he had shares in a company that helped companies needing to comply with EU Regulations.\u00a0Prof Alan Boobis\u00a0is Vice-President of the Board of Directors of the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) Europe, Vice Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of ILSI Europe and a Member of the Board of Trustees. He had served as a WHO expert\u00a0on Pesticides Residues on the WHO\/JMPR Committee when glyphosate was granted approval in 2002.<\/p>\n

Dr Roland Solecki, Head of the BfR, was one of the eight experts on the WHO\/JMPR even though\u00a0BfR had said:\u00a0\u201cIn BfR\u2019s opinion, it would be inexpedient if BfR as the composer of the assessment report on glyphosate would comment on the IARC monograph.\u201d<\/p>\n

5)<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Members of the Office of the European Ombudsman appear to be protecting industry<\/strong><\/p>\n

On 06\/03\/2016, I sent a letter to the EU Ombudsman Janet O\u2019Reilly: \u2018Maladministration and criminal collusion with the agrochemical involved in the renewal of glyphosate registration\u2019. I received a reply on 13\/05\/2016,\u00a0five days before the vote on the re-registration of glyphosate:<\/p>\n

Complaint 378\/2016\/JVH\u00a0\u201cAfter a careful examination of your complaint, it seems that this condition is not met, because you do not appear to have made any administrative approaches either to the European Food Safety Authority or to the European Commission, in relation to your complaint. I regret to have to inform you, therefore, that I am not entitled to deal with your complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n

On 12\/10\/2015, I wrote an\u00a0Open Letter to the European Commission and the European Food Safety Authority.<\/p>\n

On 07\/12\/2015, I sent the Health Commissioner an\u00a0Open Letter to the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed\u00a0asking for a copy be sent to the Committee.<\/p>\n

On 16\/02\/2016, I sent letter to Bernhard Url:\u00a0Glyphosate causes cancer and birth defects.<\/p>\n

6)<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Glyphosate, which Monsanto claimed isn\u2019t metabolized, was found in MEPs urine\u00a0<\/strong>(see\u00a0this<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The recent Green\u00a0Party\u2019s MEPs test was inspired by a German study \u2018Urinale 2015\u2019, which sampled glyposate concentrations in urine from more than 2,000 participants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe study found that the scale of the glyphosate problem is enormous, with detected concentrations in urine between five and 42 times over the maximum value of residues for drinking water in Europe,\u201d the Green Party pointed out.\u00a0\u201cNo less than 99.6 percent of all citizens who took part in this survey had higher residue levels. This means that virtually all citizens are contaminated with glyphosate.\u201d<\/p>\n

A\u00a0number of other studies<\/a>\u00a0have detected glyphosate\u2014the \u201cmost widely applied pesticideworldwide<\/a>\u201d\u2014in\u00a0feminine hygiene products<\/a>,\u00a0everyday food items<\/a>\u00a0and, yes, human\u00a0bodies.<\/p>\n

As veteran reporter Carey Gillam\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0in the article:\u00a0What Killed Jack McCall? A Farmer Dies; A Case Against Monsanto Takes Root:<\/p>\n

\u201cMonsanto has deliberately concealed or suppressed information about the dangers of its product,\u201d said environmental and chemical pollution attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is assisting in litigating glyphosate cases. \u201cThis is big. It\u2019s on every farm in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are now hundreds of court cases against glyphosate (and PCBs) for causing non-Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma, and since Anthony Samsel obtained the secret sealed files from the US EPA under Freedom of Information about Monsanto\u2019s knowledge in the 1970s that glyphosate caused cancer and cataracts in animals, he is in great demand as a witness.<\/p>\n

[In her letter, Mason then goes on to outline the track record of Monsanto in relation to PCBs and its own\u00a0internal memos that\u00a0proved it knew about the toxicity of PCBs<\/a>\u00a0as far back as 1970 but continued production. She also notes US EPA\u2019s close links with Monsanto and the failure to protect the public interest.]<\/em><\/p>\n

I look forward to hearing that the Standing Committee for Plants, Animals, Food and Feed has rejected EFSA\u2019s Report on glyphosate and that the European Commission heeds the Appeal by the International Society of Doctors for the Environment to immediately and permanently ban, with no exceptions, the production, trade and use in all the EU territories of glyphosate-based herbicides and the four insecticides as assessed by IARC (see\u00a0here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Yours sincerely,<\/p>\n

Rosemary Mason<\/p>\n

16\/05\/2016<\/p>\n

____________________________________<\/a><\/p>\n

Colin Todhunter<\/em>\u00a0is an extensively published independent writer and former social policy researcher based in the UK and India.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monsanto\u2019s Assault on Europe – There are around 500 million people in the EU. They want EU officials to uphold the public interest and to be independent from commercial influence. They do not want them to serve and profit from commercial interests at cost to the public\u2019s health and safety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organic-gmo-genetic-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}