Print

The science is on the side of GMO critics; Roundup has been declared a “probable” carcinogen; and Monsanto’s stock is down (though not enough)
 
Please note that this part of the Motley Fool article (item 2) on the recent decision by the UN cancer agency IARC that glyphosate herbicides probably cause cancer is incorrect: “Feel free to use it [Roundup] at home though: The new designation for glyphosate generally only applies toward industrial and commercial applications of Roundup, so the consumer side of the herbicide, which is handled by Scotts Miracle-Gro… for Monsanto, is not considered a health hazard.”

In fact there is nothing in the IARC report on glyphosate that says this, nor does it make sense scientifically. Roundup is Roundup, whether it’s used by “industrial and commercial” users like farmers, or by home gardeners. We don’t know of any research evaluating the relative exposures of farmers and gardeners, though one study found marginally higher concentrations of glyphosate in the urine of non-farming families than farming families, probably because of urban or home garden use of the herbicide. You need to read the full paper to access this fact, as it's not in the abstract.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16984946?dopt=Citation

1. Sorry, Monsanto: The science is on our side
2. Did the U.N. just ruin this $5 billion Monsanto business?
3. For Monsanto, a season of woes

1. Sorry, Monsanto: The science is on our side

by KATHERINE PAUL
Counterpunch, 27–29 March
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/27/sorry-monsanto/
[links to sources at the URL above]

A few weeks ago, I spoke by phone with Cathleen Enright, executive vice president of the Biotech Industry Organization (BIO). (Long story).

During the course of our conversation, when we touched on the subject of the science behind the debate over whether or not GMOs are “safe” (me arguing that there’s no scientific consensus on safety) Enright said, “Then you must not believe in climate change, either.”

I glossed over that accusation, though it struck me as odd. And random. Until less than a week later, on March 9 (2015), an article appeared in the Guardian under this headline: “The anti-GM lobby appears to be taking a page out of the Climategate playbook.”

That’s when I realized what I should have known. Enright’s comment wasn’t random at all. It’s just a new twist on an old talking point — from an industry on the verge of crumbling under the weight of an avalanche of new credible, scientific evidence exposing not only the dangers of GMO crops and the toxic chemicals used to grow them, but the extent to which both Monsanto and U.S. government agencies like the EPA, FDA and USDA have covered up those dangers. (Side note: Turns out the authors of the Guardian piece all have ties to, surprise, the biotech industry).

Here are just a few examples of the latest reports, articles and books exposing the dangers of GMOs, Big Ag’s toxic chemicals and evidence of a decades-long cover-up to keep consumers in the dark.

* New study: World Health Organization declares glyphosate a human carcinogen. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) decision was reported in The Lancet Oncology, on Friday, March 20 (2015). Predictably, Monsanto went on the attack, demanding  the study be retracted.

* New study:  Roundup causes antibiotic resistance in bacteria. In the first study of its kind, a research lead by a team from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand says that commonly used herbicides, including the world’s most used herbicide Roundup, can cause bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics. Cause for concern? You bet, when nearly 2 million people die.

* New article:  “GMO Science Deniers: Monsanto and the USDA,” points out what we all learned in third-grade science (but what Monsanto and the USDA refuse to acknowledge): That plants evolve to adapt to their environment, with the stronger ones winning out. Hence the fact that over time, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops have bred a new generation of superweeds. Yet, incredibly, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) bought into Monsanto’s anti-science claim that the continuous use of Roundup, over time, would not produce evolving Roundup-resistant weeds. Of course, that’s exactly what’s

* New book: "Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public", exposes how the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) disregarded the warnings of its own scientists in order to foster the biotech industry’s agenda. According to author Steven Druker, the FDA broke U.S. food safety laws when the agency made a blanket presumption that GE foods qualified to be categorized “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS). And they did it in order to push GMOs into the market with no pre-market safety testing.

* New book: "Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA", written by a former (1979-2004) employee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), documents the EPA’s “corruption and misuse of science and public trust.” According to author E.G. Vallianatos, the EPA allowed our lands and waters to be poisoned with more toxic chemicals, including glyphosate, than ever, while turning a blind eye to the consequences.

* New report: “Seedy Business: What Big Food is hiding with Its Slick PR Campaign on GMOs”, exposes Big Food’s long history of manipulating the media, policymakers and public opinion with $100-million worth of sleazy public relations tactics.

That’s just a smattering of the latest science — from scientists who have nothing to gain and everything to lose, based on Monsanto’s history of aggressively discrediting and scientist who dares to challenge GMOs — that should have every consumer in this country asking, “What’s going on here?”

Of course the industry response to the latest accusations concerning both its products and its desperate attempt to keep consumers in the dark, has been the same old same old: deny, deny, deny. All the while pretending to be incredulous that anyone would question its motives. This from an industry that (among other crimes) for nearly 40 years, knowingly poisoned a community in Alabama by dumping millions of pounds of PCBs into open-pit landfills, according to 2002 article that said:

“And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents — many emblazoned with warnings such as ‘CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy’ — how that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.”

One final comment on the climate-denier talking point. How ironic that Enright and the biotech industry would pretend to side with the scientists sounding the alarm on global warming—when the largest contributor to global warming is industrial agriculture, with its GMO monoculture crops. Anyone serious about global warming knows that our best hope is to ditch our chemical-intensive, soil-destroying industrial agriculture and replace it with organic, regenerative farming practices that restore the soil’s ability to capture carbon.

That’s a talking point we can all get behind.

Katherine Paul is associate director of the Organic Consumers Association.

2. Did the U.N. just ruin this $5 billion Monsanto business?

By Rich Duprey
The Motley Fool, 26 Mar 2015
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/03/26/did-the-un-just-damage-this-5-billion-monsanto-bus.aspx

The United Nations may have just delivered a hard right hook to Monsanto's (NYSE: MON  )  business. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, the U.N.'s cancer research center at the World Health Organization, declared the main ingredient in Monsanto's leading weed-killer Roundup a probable cancer-causing product.

Because the glyphosate-based herbicide is primarily responsible for almost half of all Monsanto's revenues, or $5.1 billion in 2014, the declaration could have far-reaching implications for the biotech.

Worse, because the herbicide platform is used to strategically support Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops -- which comprise the vast bulk of the balance of its revenue stream -- the health organization's determination stretches across the whole breadth and depth of Monsanto's operations potentially affecting all $16 billion of its revenues.

Although staggered -- the biotech's stock is down 10% over the past month -- don't expect the ruling to be a knockout blow.

Growing like a weed

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, herbicide-tolerant biotech plants were grown on virtually all soybean fields in the U.S. last year, some 94% of the total, and on 89% of all cornfields. The activist group Food & Water Watch found the volume of glyphosate applied to those crops increased almost 1,000% between 1996 and 2012, from 15 million pounds to 159 million pounds, but the rate of increase in usage has been growing in recent years.

One of the arguments in favor of genetically modifying crop seed is that it ought to lead to the reduction in the use of herbicides and pesticides, but Washington State University says farmers growing GMO crops use about 25% more weed-killer than farmers using traditional seeds. That's apparently led to the creation of so-called "super weeds," weeds that have built up a tolerance to the chemicals being sprayed and are able to grow anyway.

It's also resulted in something of an arms race in agriculture. The USDA recently approved the sale of seeds that are resistant to a different weed-killer manufactured by Dow Chemical (NYSE: DOW  ) , its Enlist Weed Control System, one whose constituent component - 2,4-D - is perhaps best known as one half of the deadly Vietnam War-era herbicide Agent Orange. Even without the dioxin that was found in its other component, 2,4,5-T, it's still considered by some to be more dangerous to humans while also been having shown to cause birth defects in animals.

The likelihood that weeds will become resistant to this new weed-killer after it's put into regular use seems high.

Skewing results to fit a narrative

Monsanto vigorously defends its Roundup herbicide, saying the international agency basically reviewed the same studies others looked at when they concluded it was safe, but somehow came to a different conclusion. Yet it also charges the IARC excluded studies that support the position glyphosate is not a human health risk.

We're consumers, too, Monsanto writes, so "safety is a priority for every person who works" here. The biotech insinuates the only way the review process could have found glyphosate a probable carcinogen was because it was biased.

But with the IARC having determined glyphosate is a probable cancer-causing agent -- one step below the risk designation of "known carcinogen" -- the Environmental Protection Agency, which previously said it was safe because "there is inadequate evidence to state whether or not glyphosate has the potential to cause cancer from a lifetime exposure in drinking water", will now revisit the matter.

Feel free to use it at home though

The new designation for glyphosate generally only applies toward industrial and commercial applications of Roundup, so the consumer side of the herbicide, which is handled by Scotts Miracle-Gro (NYSE: SMG  ) for Monsanto, is not considered a health hazard. It's the sustained, prolonged exposure to the chemical such as found in commercial agricultural operations that represents the biggest risk (you will also find Dow's 2,4-D herbicide in Scotts popular Turf Builder weed-and-feed lawn care products).

The effect of the U.N. body's determination certainly won't be immediate, as it will merely cause regulatory agencies such as the EPA and USDA in the U.S. to reexamine their methodologies that led to approval. Other countries like Germany, that only just recently deemed the chemical safe, may also take a second look to see if they missed something.

While one of the IARC's researchers noted, the classification of glyphosate, and by extension Roundup, as a probable carcinogen is "just something for people to be conscious of," the real risk for Monsanto comes from potential lawsuits.

Labor unions or trial attorneys advocating on behalf of workers could very well begin suing agri-corporations for exposing them to the chemical, which in turn might cause them to stop buying it. And if farmers aren't buying Roundup, then there's little reason for them to buy Roundup Resistant seed.                                                                                                                                           Only then would Monsanto's money-maker be in danger, but at the moment the imminent risk to its business seems to be remote.

3. For Monsanto, a season of woes

By Jacob Bunge                                                                                                                 Wall St Journal, 26 Mar 2015
http://www.wsj.com/articles/for-monsanto-a-season-of-woes-1427397228

* Warning on Roundup weed killer follows low crop prices, criticism of biotech food

Agribusiness giant Monsanto Co. is confronting some of its stiffest challenges in years, as it contends with consumer criticism of biotech foods, farmers tightening their belts, and a global health agency that has labeled its trademark weed killer as a potential  carcinogen. [Full article only available by subscription]