This is a new, decisive and explosive element in the controversy over the dangerousness of glyphosate. The world, alongside several European media, including The Guardian, Der Spiegel, By Standaard or the German public television, was able to consult the first Evaluation independent of the 53 confidential regulatory genotoxicity studies, which led to the reauthorization of the controversial herbicide in Europe, in 2017. Until now, independent scientists have been able to consult the details of these studies and comment publicly without incur legal proceedings. Commissioned by the NGO SumOfUs from two Austrian scientists and made public on Friday 2 July, this analysis sheds light on the differences of view on the properties of toxicity for DNA (key stage in carcinogenesis) of the best-selling herbicide in the world .
The two authors of this evaluation, Siegfried Knasmueller and Armen Nersesyan, are researchers at the Cancer Research Institute of the University Hospital Center Vienna (Austria) and internationally recognized specialists in genetic toxicology. According to them, the vast majority of the 53 regulatory studies which based the opinion of the European health authorities on the genotoxicity of glyphosate do not meet the expected quality criteria. “Among these studies, a few are acceptable, but the majority are a disaster”, said the teacher Siegfried Knasmueller, also editor-in-chief of the journal Mutation Research / Genetic Toxicology and Environmental Mutagenesis. “I wonder how they could have been considered acceptable by the health authorities”, he adds.
To understand, it must be remembered that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the main classification authority for carcinogens in the world, has considered since 2015 that glyphosate is a “probable carcinogen” and that there are “Strong evidence” of its genotoxicity. Conversely, regulatory agencies in Europe and the United States believe that such evidence does not exist.
One of the reasons for this divergence is the nature of the work considered by both sides. On the one hand, IARC based its analysis on studies published by academic researchers in scholarly journals. The collective expertise of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), made public on June 30, did the same and concluded that “Many studies show genotoxic damage (DNA breaks or changes in its structure)” induced by glyphosate. As for the health agencies, in particular the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), they considered the scientific literature on the subject unreliable, and essentially based their expertise on confidential studies provided by firms. These regulatory tests are subject to strict specifications (known as “good laboratory practices”, or GLP), defined by a series of “guidelines” established in particular by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
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