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#EFSA: Quo Vadis, glyphosate?

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The battle over the fate of the widely used glyphosate herbicide is heating up in the European Union. Most commonly known under its commercial name Round-Up, the substance has been the main topic of discussion in the European Parliament and the European Commission this week, after the European executive’s 17 May decision to restart the procedure to extend its market authorization – due to lapse by the end of 2017 unless action is taken. The move prompted a flurry of reactions pitting activists and green MEPs against regulators. But is the controversy over glyphosate just a smoking gun?

The opening shot was delivered on 28 May when environmental engineer Chrisopher Portier wrote a letter addressed to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, attacking the conclusions and modus operandi of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

The usually low-profile agency was catapulted to European fame in 2016 after it overruled the conclusions of the International Agency on Cancer Research (IARC), finding that exposure to glyphosate is not harmful to human health. In a controversial analysis published in 2015, IARC had deemed the substance as probably causing cancer and classified it as a Group 2A carcinogen.

Portier’s letter blasted EFSA for omitting information or failing to provide the proper weight to various studies that pointed to increased cancer rates after exposure to glyphosate. Moreover, the scientist also took issue with the way the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) reached a similar conclusion in March, when it found that glyphosate is probably not carcinogenic. In Portier’s views, ECHA’s methodology was found wanting due to its reliance on studies that are not made available to the wider public.

Through a spokesperson, the Commission played hot potato with Portier’s allegations and asked EFSA and ECHA to intervene. However, the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) was the first one to rebuff Portier’s accusations, invalidating the main claim of the scientist. The German regulator stated that the “ECHA, along with the 'Weight of Evidence' (WoE) approach recommended in the Technical Guidelines, taking into account all statistical analyses and the inclusion of its own statisticians, as well as analyzes by Christopher Portier, together with other guidelines for the estimation of carcinogenic potential.”

This is not Portier’s first brush with EFSA. A member of IARC and a fellow with the controversial Ramazzini Institute, Portier wrote a first letter alongside a group of scientists against the European regulator in November 2015. In a surprising twist, Bernard Url, EFSA’s executive director, publically accused the group of the scientists who signed the letter of incompetence and of acting like lobbyists and of partaking in “Facebook science.” To put things into perspective, more than 90,000 pages of evidence and 3,300 peer-reviewed studies supported EFSA’s decision.

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The debate deepened on June 2, when a group of four MEPs from the Green parliamentary group lodged a complaint against EFSA for its “lack of transparency”, asking the agency to revisit its internal rules. “Secret science is bad for your health,” said Michèle Rivasi, a French Green MEP, alluding to the fact that trade secrets legislation forbids EFSA from releasing the full corpus of data used in their assessment efforts.

Onerous accusations?

The fate of glyphosate in Europe has been stuck in regulatory limbo ever since June 2016, when what should have been a routine market extension process was hijacked by ecologists and anti-pesticide activists. Despite the fact that every regulatory authority in the world has concluded that there is not enough evidence to classify glyphosate as a carcinogen (including the US-based EPA, Canada’s PMRA,and a Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues to name just a few) as well as a four-decade long history of safe usage, IARC’s dissenting opinion was enough to light the spark. Unable to find a common ground, and faulted by several member states who were afraid of the public backlash they would spark at home, the European Commission put the decision on hold for 12 months.

Much like in the debate surrounding climate change, a minority of scientists, with easily identifiable biases but pretending to stand for objectivity and transparency, is trying to force the hand of the European Commission to take a decision that is not rooted in the scientific consensus. Portier himself is muddying the waters between science and lobbying by also representing the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), a non-governmental organization that recently called for a petition to ban glyphosate in the European Union. Before HEAL, Portier was affiliated with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), an American NGO that describes its mission as preserving “the natural systems on which all life depends.”

So far, Health and Food Safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis seems impervious to the attacks directed at his turf. In an interview with Euractiv, Andriukaitis said; “As a doctor, I rely on science. Therefore, I will continue to base my decisions on science and on the rule of law.”

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