Spiegel Online: Monsanto Faces Blowback Over Cancer Claims

A class-action lawsuit in the United States claims that the active ingredient in Monsanto's herbicide Roundup, glyphosate, causes a form of lymph node cancer. “Monsanto's strategies for whitewashing glyphosate have been revealed in internal e-mails, presentations and memos,” reports Philip Bethge for Spiegel Online. The company’s argument: The chemical could not be described as a carcinogen because testing had not been done. The lawsuit and document release could increase scrutiny of German chemical company Bayer's acquisition of Monsanto. “Glyphosate is the world's most used herbicide,” Bethge writes. “Companies like Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer produce more than 800,000 metric tons of the substance every year…. Farmers use the agent to clean the slate while preparing fields for the new sowing season, or spray it on potato or rapeseed fields to kill the plants just before maturity, making harvesting easier.” In March 2015, the International Agency for Cancer Research of the World Health Organization, classified the chemical as "probably carcinogenic," but only after sales of glyphosate exploded over four decades with the chemical now found in beverages from beer to milk as well as feed for livestock. Permission to sell glyphosate in Europe requires reauthorization before the end of the year. – YaleGlobal