The Nation — October 30, 2017

38 The Nation. October 30, 2017

THE

FUTURE

OF

FOOD

planned review of glyphosate by the Department of

Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Sub-

stances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). That agency,

along with the Centers for Disease Control and Preven-

tion (CDC), is charged with evaluating potential adverse

health effects from exposure to manmade chemicals. “If

I can kill this I should get a medal,” Rowland said of

the review, according to an e-mail written by Dan Jen-

kins, Monsanto’s lead liaison to government agencies. “I

doubt EPA and Jess can kill this; but it’s good to know

they are actually going to make the effort,” Jenkins wrote

to his colleagues in the same e-mail.

Other EPA officials weighed in against the ATSDR’s

proposed review, claiming it was unnecessary since the

EPA was conducting its own evaluation. “I am looking at

it from the standpoint of it being a duplicative govern-

ment effort given that we are currently in the midst of

our review now,” Jack Housenger, director of the EPA’s

Office of Pesticide Programs, wrote to a colleague at the

CDC on May 22.

Monsanto got what it wanted: By October 2015, the

ATSDR review was officially on hold, and Monsanto was

anticipating good news from the EPA. Jenkins updated

his colleagues: “Spoke to EPA: is going to conclude that

IARC is wrong.” Six months later, on a Friday in April

2016, the EPA’s long- anticipated report on glyphosate,

signed by Rowland and stamped “final,” was released

on the Internet. But it lasted only the weekend; EPA re-

tracted the report first thing Monday morning, calling

its release premature. Still, Monsanto had just enough

time to dispatch a press release with the headline “Once

Again, EPA Concludes That Glyphosate Does Not

Cause Cancer.”

Rowland retired within weeks of the release. That

came as no surprise to Monsanto: The previous Septem-

ber, Jenkins had told his co-workers, “Jess will be retir-

ing from EPA in 5–6 months and could be useful as we

move forward with ongoing glyphosate defense.”

In March, Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) called for

the Justice Department to launch a special investigation

into reports suggesting collusion between Monsanto

and EPA employees reviewing glyphosate. The EPA’s

Office of the Inspector General has said that it’s looking

into it. Rowland’s attorney and the EPA did not respond

to repeated requests for comment about Rowland’s re-

lationship with Monsanto. The company denies that it

tried to improperly influence the agency. “The [regula-

tory] process requires a tremendous amount of contact

and interaction with the government,” said Monsanto’s

Partridge in an interview. Partridge maintained that

Rowland’s comment about getting a medal referred

only to his desire to avoid duplicative studies at the tax-

payers’ expense.

T

he epa has often been criticized for

its chemical- screening processes, in large

part because it relies on research funded

or conducted by the chemical companies

themselves. In 2015, the agency determined

that there was “no convincing evidence” that glyphosate

disrupts the human endocrine system—a determination

based almost entirely on studies funded by Monsanto,

other chemical companies, and industry groups. None

of the industry studies, which were obtained by The

Intercept’s Sharon Lerner, concluded that there were

any health risks, despite the fact that some of their data

suggested otherwise—and in contrast to a few of the

small number of independent studies considered by the

EPA, which did find evidence that glyphosate harms

the endocrine system. Unlike the EPA, the IARC con-

siders only published, peer-reviewed science, and does

not consider—or, in most cases, even have access to—

a corporation’s studies.

An additional limitation in the EPA approval process

is that it examines only the main active ingredient in a

product—glyphosate, in the case of Roundup—and not

the complete formula, which includes inert ingredients.

(The IARC’s assessment considered studies of both the

full Roundup formula and glyphosate alone.) These ad-

ditional chemicals are often withheld as trade secrets,

making it more difficult for independent researchers

to study their risks. But scientists have recently begun

to identify many of the other components in Roundup,

and have found some to be more toxic to human cells

than glyphosate itself.

Plaintiffs claim that Monsanto “knew or should have

known that Roundup is more toxic than glyphosate

alone” but continued to advertise the product as safe. In

a 2002 e-mail, Monsanto product- safety strategist Wil-

liam Heydens wrote to Donna Farmer, one of the com-

pany’s leading toxicologists: “What I’ve been hearing

from you is that this continues to be the case with these

studies—glyphosate is OK but the formulated product

(and thus the surfactant) does the damage.” (Surfactants

reduce the surface tension of water, helping the herbi-

cide cling to leaves instead of flowing into the soil.)

In a November 2003 e-mail to Monsanto CEO

Sekhar Natarajan, Farmer wrote that the company “can-

not say that Roundup is not a carcinogen” because “we

have not done the necessary testing on the formulation

to make that statement.” She added, “We can make that

statement about glyphosate and infer that there is no

reason to believe that Roundup would cause cancer.”

In February, activists

in Germany called on

the European Union

to ban glyphosate,

the active ingredient

in Roundup.

“I doubt

EPA and

Jess can

kill this; but

it’s good to

know they

are actually

going to

make the

effort.”

— Dan Jenkins,

Monsanto’s lead

liaison to government

agencies

TOP: FLICKR / MIKE MOZART; BOTTOM: AP PHOTO / BRITTA PEDERSON