Bayer reaches deal to settle 85,000 cancer lawsuits over Roundup weedkiller

Bayer has said it will earmark $8bn to resolve all current cases

Published: 26 May 2020

EXCERPT: Under terms of the deals, Roundup will continue to be sold in the US for use in backyards and farms without any safety warning, and plaintiffs’ attorneys will agree to stop taking new cases or advertising for new clients, the people said. Because some of the Roundup cases are consolidated before US District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco, he may need to approve the settlement of those before him, the people said.
---

Bayer reaches deal to settle 85,000 cancer lawsuits over Roundup weedkiller

Jef Feeley
The Independent, 26 May 2020
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/bayer-roundup-weedkiller-cancer-lawsuits-settlement-a9531821.html

Chemicals and pharmaceuticals company Bayer has reached verbal agreements to resolve a substantial portion of an estimated 125,000 US cancer lawsuits over use of its Roundup weedkiller, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

The deals, which have yet to be signed and cover an estimated 50,000 to 85,000 suits, are part of a $10bn (£8.2bn) Bayer plan to end a costly legal battle the company inherited when it acquired Monsanto in 2018, the people said. While some lawyers are still holding out, payouts for settled cases will range from a few million dollars to a few thousand each, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorised to speak publicly.

Bayer is likely to announce the settlements, which need approval from the supervisory board, in June, people familiar with the negotiations said. None of the deals are signed, though plaintiffs’ lawyers are expected to do so the day of the announcement, the people said.

The shares gained 8 per cent on Monday in Frankfurt trading.

Getting past the Roundup drama is a top priority for chief executive Werner Baumann, who orchestrated the $63bn on Monsanto takeover and has suffered the legal consequences ever since. The surge of Roundup claims, along with three big US court losses, hammered the company’s stock, wiping tens of billions of dollars from the market value and prompting shareholders to issue Baumann an unprecedented rebuke last spring.

But since last summer, the chief executive has kept the company out of more jury trials while engaging in high-stakes mediation talks. Last month, he won the annual confidence vote from 93 per cent of shareholders amid signs that Bayer might soon reach a resolution.

“A settlement of all US lawsuits for $10bn should be a major share price trigger for Bayer,” Markus Mayer, an analyst at Baader Bank, said Monday by email.

Once a resolution is in place, Baumann will have to prove that his strategy of pairing pharmaceuticals, consumer health and agriculture makes sense. Some investors have doubts about the approach.

Bayer declined to comment on specifics about the talks. Chris Loder, a US-based spokesman, said Friday the company has made “progress in the mediations” that arose from lawsuits. “The company will not speculate about settlement outcomes or timing,” Loder said in an emailed statement. “As we have said previously, the company will consider a resolution if it is financially reasonable and provides a process to resolve potential future litigation.”

While the exact number of settlements so far wasn’t immediately clear, the estimate of at least 125,000 claims is more than twice the amount of Roundup litigation cases Bayer has previously disclosed. The company has only acknowledged filed and served cases of about 52,500 as of April. Tens of thousands more are being held in abeyance by plaintiffs’ lawyers under agreements with Bayer, people familiar with the negotiations said. Ken Feinberg, the chief Roundup mediator, said in January the total was 85,000 and would likely increase.

Bayer has said it will earmark $8bn to resolve all current cases, including those held in abeyance, according to some of the people familiar with the settlements. The deals so far involve many of the strongest claims against the company, the people said. It’s unclear how much would go to those who have now settled and what’s left for the holdouts. Another $2bn will be set aside to cover future suits linking the weedkiller to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, people familiar with the talks said.

Under terms of the deals, Roundup will continue to be sold in the US for use in backyards and farms without any safety warning, and plaintiffs’ attorneys will agree to stop taking new cases or advertising for new clients, the people said. Because some of the Roundup cases are consolidated before US District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco, he may need to approve the settlement of those before him, the people said.

To be sure, with tens of thousands of cases still unresolved, there’s no guarantee the company will remain within the $8bn it has budgeted for filed and backlogged lawsuits. Bayer complicated matters last month by backing out of some deals and demanding lawyers take less because of losses tied to the Covid-19 pandemic. That could prompt more lawyers to take their cases out of the settlement, the people said.

Feinberg, the Washington-based lawyer tapped by Chhabria to oversee settlement negotiations, said last week he remains “cautiously optimistic a national settlement will be reached.” He acknowledged fallout from Covid-19 “has slowed momentum” on the talks.

The settlements are designed to resolve claims that Roundup, whose active ingredient is the chemical glyphosate, caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in some users. The company denies that Roundup or glyphosate cause cancer, a position backed by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Still, after Bayer’s court losses spurred a surge in new suits, investors such as Elliott Management urged the company to seek a comprehensive settlement.

Feinberg dispatched mediators to oversee meetings between Bayer lawyers and individual plaintiff attorneys, who negotiated solely on behalf of their clients. The company has worked out various payout schedules, though none will exceed three years, the people said.

At this point, only a handful of lawyers are holding out for larger payouts, the people said. James Onder, a St. Louis-based attorney handling more than 24,000 Roundup cases, said last week he’s rebuffed settlement offers that would leave his clients with as little as $5,000 each.

Bayer’s overtures “have been insulting,” Onder said in an interview. The company is attempting “to strong-arm the most vulnerable in our society into accepting minuscule settlements, hoping they will cower in fear to Monsanto’s repeated idle threats of bankruptcy.” Onder said he’s preparing for trials in St. Louis next year.

The people familiar with the talks have said Bayer lawyers used the threat of putting Monsanto into bankruptcy to get people to accept lower payments. Other companies – including Purdue Pharma – filed for short-term protection from creditors to deal with a burgeoning wave a lawsuits over its OxyContin opioid painkiller.

In a surprising move, Bayer is also pressing ahead with appeals of early cases it lost in court, the people said. All together, juries from three trials ordered the company to pay a combined $2.4bn in damages. Judges later slashed those awards to $191m.

The first Roundup verdict came from a state court jury in California, which held Monsanto liable for a grounds keeper’s lymphoma in 2018 and awarded him $289m in damages. A judge later cut that to $78.5m. Oral arguments in the appeal are scheduled for 2 June in San Francisco.

Refusing to include past verdicts in the settlement may be designed to send a signal on future claims that Bayer won’t just roll over and pay, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond professor who specialises in mass-tort law.

“It says they’ll fight ‘em through the appeals, which can take years to resolve,” Tobias said. “In the meantime, people will be dying.”

The deals also limit eligibility for payments to non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cases and those where plaintiffs died of that specific cancer over the last decade, according to a Bayer term sheet reviewed in January by Bloomberg News. Roundup users that blame the product for causing their multiple-myeloma cancers get nothing under the settlement.

https://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/19411-bayer-reaches-deal-to-settle-85-000-cancer-lawsuits-over-roundup-weedkiller

Having trouble getting pregnant? Science says eat organic, regulate pesticides

Studies implicate eating pesticide-treated foods in fertility problems

 Published: 17 May 2020

The story below is from 2017, but its message is still timely and important.
---

Having trouble getting pregnant? Science suggests: eat organic and regulate the pesticide industry

Stacy Malkan
Huffington Post, Dec 1, 2017
https://tinyurl.com/y7cd9vuq
[links to sources at this URL]

If you’re trying to get pregnant and raise healthy children, recent science suggests you should consider switching to an organic diet and voting out politicians who put the pesticide industry in charge of our nation’s health laws.

In just the past few weeks, the Journals of the American Medical Association have published studies implicating pesticide-treated foods in fertility problems and documenting large increases in human exposure to the world’s most widely used pesticide, along with a physician’s commentary encouraging people to eat organic.

For their study in JAMA Internal Medicine, Harvard researchers followed 325 women at an infertility clinic and found that women who regularly ate pesticide-treated fruits and vegetables had lower success rates getting pregnant with IVF, while women who ate organic food had reduced risk of pregnancy loss and increased fertility.

The findings surprised lead researcher Jorge Chavarro, MD, of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“I was always skeptical that pesticide residues in foods would have any impact on health whatsoever. I thought we were not going to find anything,” he told Time magazine.

But now, “I am now more willing to buy organic apples than I was a few months ago,” Dr. Charvarro said.

The Harvard study sends “a warning that our current laissez-faire attitude toward the regulation of pesticides is failing us,” wrote epidemiologist and pediatrician Phillip Landrigan, MD, of Mount Sinai in a commentary in the same issue of JAMA.

The new study “comes at a time when multiple lines of evidence suggest that human fertility is on the decline and that the frequency of reproductive impairment is increasing,” Landrigan said – trends such as reduced sperm counts and increases in reproductive birth defects and testicular cancer that are “almost certainly” linked to environmental exposures to chemicals.

He said physicians should respond to these findings by educating patients about pesticides and urging reductions in exposure wherever possible.

“Encourage our patients to eat organic,” Dr. Landrigan wrote. “And educate elected officials and other policy makers about the hazards of pesticides—make them realize that pesticides are not merely a regulatory issue or an environmental problem, but that in fact these potent chemicals can have powerful effects on human health that need to be intelligently confronted.”

His statement echoes the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics to reduce children’s exposure to pesticides. “There is a growing body of literature that suggests that pesticides may induce chronic health complications in children, including neurodevelopmental or behavioral problems, birth defects, asthma, and cancer,” states a 2012 AAP paper in Pediatrics,

Rising levels of common pesticide in our bodies

Another recent JAMA study documented large increases in human exposure to the weed killer chemical glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer — and prompted more calls for government intervention.

Analyzing urine samples collected over two decades, researchers at UC San Diego reported that human exposure to glyphosate increased about 500% since the introduction of genetically modified crops (GMOs), most of which are engineered to survive Roundup pesticide spray.

Lead researcher Paul Mills told Time magazine that the levels of glyphosate found in people were 100-fold greater than levels of glyphosate fed to rats that developed liver disease in a long-term feeding study.

Glyphosate is also a probable human carcinogen, according to the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Hundreds of farmers and their families in the U.S. are suing Monsanto claiming glyphosate caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

A recent update to the large Agricultural Health Study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute failed to identify a link between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but reported evidence of increased risk of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) among people with the highest glyphosate exposures.

AML is a fast-growing cancer with a low survival rate, so this finding “should be very concerning to the public and particularly to pesticide applicators,” wrote Jennifer Sass of NRDC. She said the AHS study does not change the relevance of the IARC findings that glyphosate is “probably” a human carcinogen.

Two weeks ago — amid revelations that Monsanto manipulated the science on glyphosate for decades — the European Union failed to reauthorize glyphosate. Just hours before that vote, regulators in Arkansas voted to regulate dicamba, a weed killer used in combination with GMO crops that has damaged millions of acres of farmland.

“Taken together, the decisions reflect an increasing political resistance to pesticides in Europe and parts of the United States,” reported Danny Hakim in the New York Times .

What we can do to protect our families and our health

The science suggests we need to step up political resistance and insist on common-sense regulations for the pesticide industry.

As Dr. Landrigan wrote, “We need to overcome the strident objections of the pesticide manufacturing industry, recognize the hidden costs of deregulation, and strengthen requirements for both premarket testing of new pesticides, as well as postmarketing surveillance of exposed populations — exactly as we do for another class of potent, biologically active molecules—drugs.”

A September commentary in the AAAS magazine Science argues that lessons learned from pharmaceutical regulations could help improve pesticide regulations. The authors called for “pesticidovigilance” — requiring long term, post-market monitoring and data gathering of adverse effects, similar to the practice of pharmacovigilance.

In June, 14 researchers writing in Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health pointed out the many gaps in existing evaluations on glyphosate and concluded, “the current safety standards are outdated and fail to protect public health and the environment.”

They called for biomonitoring studies to document human exposures, state-of-the-art hazard assessments, and epidemiological studies that examine exposed workers, pesticide manufacturers and vulnerable populations.

In the meantime, we can use existing science as a guide. For those of us who are concerned about fertility, cancer and raising healthy children, science is suggesting we switch to an organic diet to reduce pesticide exposure and vote for politicians who are willing to stand up to the pesticide industry.

https://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/19400-having-trouble-getting-pregnant-science-says-eat-organic-regulate-pesticides

Inform Yourself About Pasteurized Milk

If you do your own grocery shopping or you’ve been to a supermarket recently, you’d be aware that pasteurized milk has monopolized the dairy section. Having been around since the late 1800s, pasteurized milk has been widely utilized by the population because of the “safety” it provides, as it’s said to minimize the risk of contracting milk-borne bacteria and diseases.

June 02, 2017

But while this may seem like a plausible idea, pasteurization has been observed to lower or even extinguish the nutrients found in milk. Aside from this, toxins and other harmful chemicals have also been introduced to conventional pasteurized milk, which compromises your health instead of providing a better choice.

Continue reading to learn more about pasteurized milk, the detrimental effects it may have on your body and why raw milk is a better choice.

What Is Pasteurized Milk?

Pasteurization was first introduced in the late 1800s, and was pioneered by Louis Pasteur after his study on the fermentation process of both wine and vinegar. After discovering the difference in the microbes in both substances, he developed the process, determining the exact time and temperature microbes die.

Pasteurization was first applied to dairy products after the spread of numerous milk-borne infections in the population.1 It refers to the heating of milk to a temperature higher than the boiling point, and then rapidly cooling it.

This process supposedly removes the bacteria and other harmful particles found in conventionally produced milk. However, what government health agencies have left out is that pasteurization renders essential enzymes and nutrients inactive.2

Conventional Milk May Also Be ‘Ultra-Pasteurized’

In addition to this, milk producers have also devised another process for milk production, a process called ultra-heat treatment (UHT), which produces ultra-pasteurized milk. Nowadays, you’ll notice that most milk, including organic milk, bear the label “UHT.” Milk that is labeled as such is thermally processed at or above 280 degrees Fahrenheit, in contrast to pasteurization, which heats the milk at about 161 degrees Fahrenheit. This prolongs its shelf life under refrigerated conditions.

While a small amount of bacteria can survive the process of pasteurization, ultra-pasteurization produces a nearly sterile milk product. This means that ultra-pasteurized milk can last from 30 to 90 days when unopened, which is good news for milk producers because they can ship to a larger population without the risk of spoilage.3

But is ultra-pasteurized milk good for you? No, it isn’t. Because of the extreme process, ultra-pasteurized milk contains fewer nutrients than pasteurized milk, and even fewer when compared to raw milk. Researchers and microbiologists have also said that ultra-pasteurization is extremely harmful to milk, as it was found to flatten milk molecules and cause immune responses in the body when digested.4

Raw Milk Versus Pasteurized Milk: Which Is Safer and Healthier?

The debate between raw milk and pasteurized milk has plagued the public for numerous years because of both safety and health issues on both sides. Processed milk advocates claim that the pasteurization is essential to avoid the recurrence of milk-borne diseases such as brucellosis, listeriosis and typhoid fever. They also claim that aside from preventing bacterial infections, pasteurization can lengthen the shelf life of milk.5

But although pasteurized milk is highly recommended and advertised by both the CDC and FDA, the talks of its safety are questionable. While raw milk enthusiasts are commonly lambasted because they supposedly “expose themselves to a higher risk of milk-borne bacteria,” pasteurized milk consumers actually have a higher chance of ingesting chemicals and other toxins from conventional dairy factories.

Because of pasteurization and other filtering processes, factory milk producers are allowed to raise cows in unhealthy, cramped environments, where they are fed an unnatural diet of grains and corn. This is mainly because they are dependent on pasteurization’s ability to kill off pathogens or filter antibiotics that may have leaked into their milk products.

But while they claim that this is entirely safe, the nutrient content and the overall quality of these milk products may be compromised.6 Pasteurization removes the essential nutrients and compounds that are beneficial to the human body. Studies show that this process deactivates the enzymes that are necessary for the human digestion of milk, kills off the good bacteria that may be beneficial to the human body, alters the calcium content and removes most of the vitamin C in raw milk.

By switching to raw milk, you ensure that you get a whole food filled with minerals, proteins, vitamins and beneficial bacteria that assist digestion and metabolism.7

The only issue that is often held against raw milk is that it supposedly increases your risk of ingesting pathogens or harmful bacteria, but this can easily be dealt with by locating and sourcing your raw milk from trustworthy producers. Organic, pasture-raised dairy cattle guarantee that you get safe and high-quality raw milk, in contrast to the antibiotic-treated cattle used in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Possible Side Effects and Dangers of Pasteurized Milk

Due to the numerous chemically manipulated components of pasteurized milk, it may pose numerous threats to your health. This includes the hidden exposure to pesticides, drugs and other harmful chemicals that may have seeped into the milk. The other dangers of the consumption of pasteurized milk include:

•Exposure to hormones and antibiotics. A 2011 research tested various milk products for chemicals that may have contaminated the product.8 It showed that conventionally sourced milk had high amounts of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, natural hormones, anti-malaria drugs, steroid hormones, and anti-fungal drugs. This is probably because of the exposure of the cattle to these chemicals inside CAFOs.

Antibiotics are usually given to cattle to treat mastitis, but this eventually seeps into the milk produced by these cattle. The consumption of this type of milk eventually leads to you to acquire these harmful chemicals that aren’t even supposed to be in milk.

•Ingestion of glyphosate. Glyphosate is a chemical component of Roundup, a pesticide and herbicide that is usually applied to genetically engineered crops, which are then fed to the cattle. Aside from the possibility of glyphosate contamination in the milk that these cattle produce, you are also exposed to the altered composition of the milk because of the unnatural way that these dairy cows are fed.

•May increase asthma risk. Studies show that pasteurization alters the composition of commercially available milk. Instead of preventing the development of asthma by stabilizing mast cells and preventing inflammation, pasteurized milk destabilizes the mast cells and triggers the release of histamines, causing inflammation and eventually, asthma.9

•May lead to bone wasting or osteoporosis. Milk has always been packaged as the primary source of calcium, helping preserve bone density and skeletal health. However, pasteurization has been observed to destroy phosphatase in milk, an enzyme that is crucial for the absorption of calcium. This renders the calcium in milk indigestible and basically useless.10

While pasteurization was initially done to protect the population, the process has allowed dairy corporations to hide unnatural and chemically-based milk production processes. Instead of providing a healthier and safer choice for people, pasteurized milk has become a lesser version of what milk is supposed to be, endangering the public and simultaneously depriving people of vitamins and minerals that are absolutely essential for your body.

Instead of consuming pasteurized or UHT-labeled milk, consider switching to raw milk to ensure that you get all the nutrients and enzymes that are supposed to be in dairy. This will guarantee that you’re getting whole and healthful milk, in contrast to its sterile counterpart.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Pasteurized Milk

Q: When did pasteurization of milk start?
A: Before pasteurization was developed by Louis Pasteur, William Dewes proposed the heating of milk before feeding infants during the prevalence of milk-borne diseases. It was only knowingly applied to milk in the late 1880s by dairy producers.11

Q: Is organic milk pasteurized?
A: Unfortunately, most brands of organic milk in the United States are still pasteurized. But although most of the organic milk available still undergoes this damaging process, studies show that it is still a better choice compared to conventional homogenized or pasteurized milk.

Q: Is cultured milk pasteurized?
A: Yes. According to the regulations that are enacted by the FDA, the production of cultured milk requires the addition of microbial culture to pasteurized or homogenized milk.12

Q: Is pasteurized milk sterile?
A: Not entirely. Pasteurization kills off a significant amount of the pathogens found in milk. There are instances where a small amount can survive this process. UHT, on the other hand, processes the milk to the point that the milk is virtually sterile.

Q: Is pasteurized milk safe to drink?
A: Despite claims of its safety, pasteurized milk can expose you to different harmful toxins that may have seeped into the milk, especially if the pasteurized milk comes from conventional dairy farms. It should be noted that pasteurized milk contains a lower concentration of the beneficial components found in unprocessed and raw milk.

Q: Is pasteurized milk safe during pregnancy?
A: Because of the possible chemical components of pasteurized milk, its consumption may cause different repercussions for both you and your unborn child. Consider drinking raw milk from trustworthy distributors so that you can get the whole array of nutrients and enzymes in milk, without the risk of exposing yourself to possible toxins in conventional milk products.

Q: Is raw milk better than pasteurized milk?
A: Yes raw milk is the highest quality milk you can get. Nutritionally, raw milk contains active enzymes, vitamins and minerals, which are deactivated in pasteurized milk. Consumption of raw milk also ensures that you do not unknowingly expose yourself to possible harmful components found in pasteurized milk.

References:

• 1 Science: How Stuff Works, How Pasteurization Works
• 2 Food Policy For Thought, The History of Raw Milk and Pasteurization
• 3 Cornell University, Pasteurized versus Ultra-Pasteurized Milk – Why Such Long Sell-By Dates?
• 4 Food Renegade, Just Say No To UHT Milk
• 5 U.S. Food &Drug Administration, The Dangers of Raw Milk: Unpasteurized Milk Can Pose a Serious Health Risk
• 6 Daily Mail Online, It’s Worth Paying Extra for Organic Milk…Not Just For Your Health But For The Sake Of The Cows
• 7,10 Global Healing Center, Pasteurized Milk vs. Raw Milk: Which One is Healthier for You and Your Family?
• 8 PubMed.gov, Simultaneous determination of 20 pharmacologically active substances in cow’s milk, goat’s milk, and human breast milk by gas chromatography-mas spectrometry
• 9 A Campaign for Real Milk, The 15 Things That Milk Pasteurization Kills
• 11 World Organization for Animal Health, Milk pasteurization and safety: a brief history and update
• 12 U.S. Food and Drug Administration, CFR – Code of Federal Regulations Title 21

https://foodfacts.mercola.com/pasteurized-milk.html

Many breakfast cereals still contaminated by weed killer, environmental group says

Several popular breakfast foods, including Cheerios and Nature Valley products, continue to test positive for trace amounts of a controversial herbicide that may increase the risk of cancer, according to a report released Wednesday by an environmental advocacy group.

 Arman Azad, CNN

Updated 1204 GMT (2004 HKT) June 12, 2019

The Environmental Working Group, which has links to the organics industry, found that all 21 of the products it tested had levels of glyphosate that were "higher than what EWG scientists consider protective for children's health."

Manufacturers maintain that their foods are safe, and the findings aren't unprecedented: The group also found in October that most of the breakfast cereals it tested contained glyphosate, the main ingredient in the weed killer Roundup.

The new report follows two prominent legal verdicts that determined the herbicide caused cancer in plaintiffs.

Juries say glyphosate causes cancer, award billions

A federal jury unanimously determined in March that Roundup was a "substantial factor" in causing a California man's cancer. And last month, California jurors ordered the manufacturer, Monsanto, to pay over $2 billion to a couple who said long-term exposure to the product caused their cancers.

The latter verdict is being appealed, but about 11,000 similar cases are pending in state and federal courts.

Pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG, which now owns Monsanto, maintains that its product is safe.

A spokeswoman for the company's crop science subsidiary, Charla Lord, said that an "extensive body of science" and "the conclusions of regulators around the world" show that "glyphosate-based products are safe when used as directed."

General Mills, which manufactures all of the products tested in the EWG report, said in a statement that its "top priority is food safety."

The company noted that "most crops grown in fields use some form of pesticides and trace amounts are found in the majority of food we all eat" but said it was working to "minimize the use of pesticides on the ingredients we use in our foods."

General Mills did not directly respond when asked why it is reducing pesticide use when it already considers its products to be safe.

How much glyphosate is too much?

An analysis published in February found that glyphosate can increase cancer risk by up to 41%, although the researchers focused on those with the "highest exposure" to the chemical, like groundskeepers, who are exposed to more glyphosate than people may consume through snacks.

The herbicide can make its way into processed foods after being used on farms that grow oats, but none of the levels found in any food products in the new report exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency's legal limits.

"It is not surprising that very low levels of pesticides, including glyphosate, are found in foodstuff," said Dr. Paolo Boffetta, associate director for population sciences at Mount Sinai's Tisch Cancer Institute. "In general, these levels are unlikely to cause health effects in consumers."

Still, "it is important that people know whether there is glyphosate or other chemicals in their food, even at very low levels," said Boffetta, who was not involved in the reports or the analysis.

General Mills emphasized in its statement that it followed "strict rules" set by "experts at the [Food and Drug Administration] and EPA." Bayer's Lord said "the reality is that regulatory authorities have strict rules when it comes to pesticide residues, and the levels in this report are far below the established safety standards."

The Environmental Working Group, however, uses a far more conservative health benchmark that includes an added buffer for children, as "exposure during early life can have more significant effects on development later in life," said Dr. Alexis Temkin, an EWG scientist who co-authored both reports and spoke to CNN last year.

Manufacturers dispute that threshold. In an October statement, General Mills said that "the extremely low levels of pesticide residue cited in recent news reports is a tiny fraction of the amount the government allows."

The EPA said in April that the proper use of glyphosate poses "no risks to public health" and that the chemical "is not a carcinogen," a cancer-causing chemical. But a World Health Organization agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, determined in 2015 that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans."

A separate WHO panel assessing pesticide residues said in 2016 that "glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet," adding to a dizzying array of contradictory findings, but the International Agency for Research on Cancer has vigorously defended its conclusion.

The agency wrote in 2018 that it "has been subject to unprecedented, coordinated efforts to undermine the evaluation, the program and the organization." Those attacks, it said, "have largely originated from the agro-chemical industry and associated media outlets."

A war of words

A 2017 CNN investigation of internal emails from Monsanto appeared to show company executives attempting to discredit the International Agency for Research on Cancer report before it was even released.

One executive's email, titled "RE: IARC planning," suggested that the company ghostwrite parts of a 2015 study in which experts rejected the agency's finding that glyphosate could cause cancer. A Monsanto spokeswoman told CNN at the time that the study was not ghostwritten and was "the work of the glyphosate expert panel."

Although the EPA has maintained that glyphosate is safe, CNN's investigation also raised questions about industry influence at the federal agency.

A Monsanto executive wrote in a 2015 internal company email, for example, that an EPA official offered to help quash another agency review of glyphosate, saying, "If I can kill this I should get a medal."

The company has denied any undue influence over regulators. And its parent company, Bayer Crop Science, criticized the Environmental Working Group in its recent statement to CNN. "The group behind the new report has a long history of spreading misinformation about pesticide residues," spokeswoman Lord said.

EWG, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, denied those allegations. Bayer's criticism "must be taken with a grain of salt," EWG President Ken Cook said in a statement. In light of lawsuits, he said, Bayer was "desperate to continue hiding the truth."

Though it maintains that it is an independent organization, EWG acknowledges support from the organics industry, stating that its "corporate partners for general support and events" include Organic Valley and Stonyfield Farms. Foods labeled organic may not be grown with most synthetic substances, including glyphosate.

The group also has a "shared services agreement" with the Organic Voices Action Fund, a nonprofit organization funded by companies such as Nature's Path and Annie's -- both of which make cereal.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/12/health/glyphosate-cereals-ewg-study/index.html

Curious Cook: Glyphosate, the free stuff we do not really want

Despite the highly plausible health risks regarding alcohol, I still like drinking good wines. What I am less keen on is the extra stuff I am also ingesting with the wines, like a chemical called glyphosate.

March 24, 2019 Food, Food News

By CHRIS CHAN

A recent documentary on French TV highlighted that every wine they tested had detectable levels of glyphosate, a component of the herbicides commonly used at vineyards and most commercial crop farms.

Glyphosate was also found in varying quantities in the urine of every person they tested, so it appears that exposure to this ubiquitous compound is part of modern living for many millions of people. Therefore, this chemical is what this article will investigate.

One reason why glyphosate (also known as n-phosphonomethylglycine) is so ubiquitous is because the Monsanto patents expired in 2000 and now the compound is produced around the world by several other manufacturers. Since its introduction in 1974, it is estimated over nine billion kilograms of glyphosate has been sprayed on farmlands worldwide.

Should we worry?
A little research into how glyphosate works as a herbicide finds that the compound inhibits the shikimic acid pathway in plants. If you want to know more, glyphosate specifically obstructs the enzyme, 5-enolpyruvoylshikimate 3-phosphate synthetase, which is indirectly required by plants for the biosynthesis of essential aromatic amino acids such as phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan.

The shikimic pathway is found only in plants, fungi and bacteria. Therefore, in theory, glyphosate is highly unlikely to be toxic to mammals, insects, birds, fish, etc.

Two opinions
At this point, it is worth noting two different, but important, opinions about glyphosate. One is the assessment by the influential IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organisation) that glyphosate is a Group 2A risk – this means the IARC classified it as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

Most fruits and vegetables have traces of glyphosate. Photo: Karen Cropper/Flickr

This is the same group of risk as for red and industrially-processed meats which contain nitrites or nitrates. For more information, please read my article Processed meats: WHO says it’s bad on Star2.com.

The other opinion is shared by the highly-respected European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the Environmental Protection Agency of the USA (EPA). Discounting the EPA for the moment, the EFSA report was particularly interesting as it specifically addressed the earlier findings of the IARC during a new assessment and still came out with the conclusion glyphosate is “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans”.

To complicate matters, on 11 August 2018, a US court awarded damages of US$289 million (RM1.17 billion) against Monsanto for allegedly causing a man to develop terminal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma due to the use of Roundup products which contain glyphosate. So, what is the reality?

The research
It turns out that everybody is a little bit right. The informative EFSA report provided an interesting clue in a paragraph which states, “Regarding carcinogenicity, the EFSA assessment focused on the pesticide active substance and considered in a weight of evidence all available information.”

In short, the EFSA report (and the EPA assessment) was based on testing only the compound glyphosate while the IARC status was based on products and formulations that contain glyphosate.

Toxicity
According to a University of Caen study in 2018, the ancillary chemicals added to glyphosate formulations make a huge difference to the toxicity of such products. A range of herbicides containing glyphosate were analysed, along with the surfactants, diluents and other chemicals added to enhance the efficiency of glyphosate.

Traces of glyphosate are found in most vineyards. Photo: Nat Welch/Flickr

This was not as easy as it sounds as US and EU packaging do not list additives in full if the producer deems them as “inert” substances, and there is little regulatory clout to demand proof of the “inert” nature of such additives.

But it is clear such additives have a very significant impact. Tests with glyphosate alone and formulations containing glyphosate (FCG) elicited wildly different responses – in test human cells, glyphosate alone generally had no effect but most of the FCGs were established to be highly toxic, killing human cells within 90 minutes.

This is a sobering finding, and one group of problematic additives identified is polyoxyethylenamines (POEA) derived from petroleum. But POEA is not the only contaminant found in FCGs – nonylphenol polyethoxylates (NPEOs), poisonous metals such as arsenic, chromium, nickel and lead are also often found in FCGs. When applied persistently, these chemicals and metals remain in the ground, can contaminate future crops and also leach into groundwater causing further damage via pollution.

Oddly, the study also very surprisingly found that glyphosate is very much less toxic for plants than the additives in FCGs. After numerous tests, the study stated plainly glyphosate is usually the least effective herbicide chemical in the tested FCGs and that the bulk of herbicidal effects were due to the additives in FCGs, and not glyphosate itself.

French farmers
The Caen study might tie in with another multi-institute French study in 2010 which researched the link between Parkinson’s Disease (PD) with persistent occupational exposure to chemicals such as herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, rodenticides, crop treatments, etc.

The study covered 237,917 French farming workers in 2007, and found that for all age groups investigated, the incidence of PD was roughly double that of the general French population. However, as stated, the study does not only cover herbicides, and indeed the research only confirms there may be serious dangers involved with farm chemicals in general, at least in relation to PD.

Regarding cancers, the evidence is less conclusive. Large scale studies like the Agricultural Health Study (AHS) in the USA and the French Agriculture & Cancer (AGRICAN) study found that mortality rates from most cancers were not abnormal compared to the general public. Some deviations applied to multiple myeloma, lip and prostate cancers, and even so, they do not affect the overall death rates of farm workers.

This may be due to the “healthy worker” effect as farm workers are more physically active which tends to make them healthier than average. The favourable effects of such healthier lifestyles may conceal, mask or counter the negative effects of exposure to farm chemicals. As such, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research warned against making “simplistic” assumptions from the data.

Analysis of the AGRICAN data also suggested an increased risk of PD, especially with users of dithiocarbamate-based fungicides, rotenone and the herbicides diquat and paraquat. Curiously, glyphosate was not amongst the compounds analysed for some (unknown) reason.

Consumers
Farmers are constantly and often heavily exposed to pesticides, but so too are consumers who are exposed to these chemicals via residues on fruit, vegetables and meat. There is not much good that comes from ingesting pesticides (such as insecticides) because in sufficiently high doses they are almost always seriously toxic to humans.

Even everyday breakfast meals like cereal have glyphosate. Photo: Ben Siedelman/Flickr

However, we are discussing glyphosate today and the weight of evidence suggests it is not onerously toxic to humans by any scientific measure. It may affect the shikimic acid pathway in human gut bacteria and kill some of them, but this also happens when ingesting many other compounds, such as artificial sweeteners or simply unbalanced quantities of junk food.

The warning
So it appears the main and very real dangers of glyphosate lie within the chemical additives in FCGs. In this respect, it may be suggested consumers are being starved of data they need to make an informed choice about foods treated with glyphosate and other compounds.

At present, glyphosate is found in foods ranging from breakfast cereals through to fruits, vegetables and many meats. While probably not toxic by itself, the presence of glyphosate may be a warning indicator of the likely toxic compounds that accompany it.

https://www.star2.com/food/2019/03/24/curious-cook-glyphosate-free-stuff-not-really-want/