05/July/21

 

A new analysis of more than 50 previously secret, corporate-backed scientific studies is raising troubling questions about a history of regulatory reliance on such research in assessing the safety of the weedkilling chemical glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup herbicide. In the report, researchers from the Institute of Cancer Research at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria said a thorough review of 53 safety studies submitted to regulators by large chemical companies showed that most do not comply with modern international standards for scientific rigour, and lack the types of tests most able to detect cancer risks. “The quality of these studies, not of all, but of many of these studies is very poor. The health authorities... accepted some of these very poor studies as informative and acceptable, which is not justified from a scientific point of view,” Siegfried Knasmueller, lead author of the analysis, said. [GMW: The analysis is available here.] The Guardian

 

 

Managers and staff in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention tampered with the assessments of dozens of chemicals to make them appear safer, according to four scientists who work at the agency. The whistleblowers provided evidence of pressure within the agency to minimize or remove evidence of potential adverse effects of the chemicals, including neurological effects, birth defects, and cancer. On several occasions, information about hazards was deleted from agency assessments without informing or seeking the consent of the scientists who authored them. Some of these cases led the EPA to withhold critical information from the public about potentially dangerous chemical exposures. In other cases, the removal of the hazard information or the altering of the scientists’ conclusions in reports paved the way for the use of chemicals, which otherwise would not have been allowed on the market. The Intercept

 

 

Africans have long been told that their agriculture is backward and should be abandoned. Western science and technology, in the form of seeds modified by science and technology, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, petroleum-fuelled machinery and artificial irrigation are key to that miracle, they are informed, and they too need to tread that path. A primary proponent of this view is the Gates-funded Cornell Alliance for Science (CAS). In contrast, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), which represents more than 200 million farmers and others across Africa, holds that agroecology is what the continent needs. This mission has put AFSA, the largest social movement in Africa, at odds with the CAS and by extension the Gates Foundation. Scientific American