SAN FRANCISO, Calif. — Despite a conclusion by the European Chemicals Agency of the World Health Organization (WHO) that glyphosate, the widely used chemical ingredient in Monsanto’s popular Roundup weed killer, doesn’t cause cancer, emails in a federal court case here suggest otherwise, and also indicate an improper relationship between the company and the Environmental Protection Agency.

 

Last week, U.S. Federal Judge Vince Chhabria, presiding over long-running litigation brought by a group of farmers and farm workers who allege that Monsanto

failed to warn users of glyphosate’s possible cancer risks, unsealed files that claim Monsanto may have acted inappropriately with EPA regulators.

 

Court files show that Monsanto was tipped off by a deputy division director of the EPA two years ago that WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer found that glyphosate was a possible carcinogen before the news was made public. The preliminary finding cited research linking the chemical to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The tip to Monsanto helped the company prepare a public relations campaign to defend its use of

its best-selling weed killer, Roundup.

 

The EPA emails include one from the EPA director, Jess Rowland, that say he allegedly told a Monsanto executive that he would try to prevent a separate government probe of glyphosate, claiming, “If I can kill this, I should get a medal.”

 

In a deposition in the case, Donna Farmer, Monsanto’s lead toxicologist, admitted in her court filing that she “cannot say that Roundup does not cause cancer because we, Monsanto, have not done the carcinogenicity studies with Roundup.”

 

In a statement to the media, Monsanto said: “Glyphosate is not a carcinogen.”

 

“The allegation that glyphosate can cause cancer in humans is inconsistent with decades of comprehensive safety reviews by the leading regulatory authorities around the world. The plaintiffs (in the lawsuit) have submitted isolated documents that are taken out of

contest,” the statement said. 

 

Among the other documents in the lawsuit were a letter from an award-winning EPA scientist, Marion Copley, who said it was “essentially certain” that glyphosate caused cancer.

 

It’s not known what effect Europe’s reclassification of glyphosate will have on the outcome of the federal lawsuit. During the past several years, the safety of glyphosate

has been unsettled science. A number of agencies, including the European Food Safety Agency and the EPA, have disagreed with the international cancer agency, playing down concerns of a cancer risk, and Monsanto has vigorously defended glyphosate.

 

The day after the court-released emails were made public, news out of Europe cited a report by WHO’s European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) that “concluded that glyphosate is not a carcinogen and therefore should not be classified as such.”

 

Richard Garnett, chairman of the European Glyphosate Task Force (GTF), stated: “The conclusion reached by the ECHA’s Committee for Risk Assessment reinforces the outcome of other evaluations of glyphosate which have been conducted by regulatory authorities around the world.

 

“The scientific evidence to support the renewal of glyphosate is overwhelming. On the basis of RAC’s robust assessment of scientific evidence, there is now no barrier to member states renewing the approval of glyphosate in the E.U.,” Garnett said.

 

Monsanto invented glyphosate in 1974 and has marketed the powerful weed killer under the Roundup brand, and it has since become the most widely used herbicide in the world with sales beyond $4 billion from its agricultural-productivity division.

 

The new classification of glyphosate now paves the way for its license renewal in the European Union.

 

“This conclusion was based both on the human evidence and the weight of the evidence of all the animal studies reviewed,” said Tim Bowmer, chairman of the Committee for Risk Assessment at ECHA. The European Commission, he said, is expected to restart talks within the European Union to re-approve glyphosate by August.