A large majority – seven out of eleven, or 64% – of the members of an important new subcommittee tasked with evaluating the safety of GM foods and animal feed have potential, probable, or definite conflicts of interest, in the form of vested interests in the liberalisation or commercialisation of GM technologies or related products, according to our analysis. Our finding comes shortly after the publication of an important paper in Nature Food, the highest ranking journal on food science and technology, which found extensive conflicts of interest in UK regulatory committees on GMOs and other food safety issues. The experts who undertook this analysis point out that conflicts of interest (COIs) are critical to public trust in decision making and conclude that ideally such regulatory or advisory bodies "should not include anyone with COIs that deserve to be declared". GMWatch

 

 

A new peer-reviewed review looks at genotoxicity (DNA damage) tests on glyphosate-based herbicides published since 2016, a year after the cancer research agency IARC classified glyphosate as a "probable" carcinogen and identified genotoxicity as one of the mechanisms that could trigger cancer. In contrast, the US EPA classified glyphosate as “not likely” to pose cancer risk and as not genotoxic. But the review authors conclude that in light of the results of these tests, the conclusion that glyphosate-based herbicides pose no risk of cancer via a genotoxic mechanism is "untenable". The authors write, "We conclude that the 80+ positive glyphosate/GBH [glyphosate-based herbicides] genotoxicity assays published since 2016 provide clear and compelling evidence that both glyphosate and formulated GBHs are genotoxic. We also find that the POEA surfactants in many GBHs markedly increase genotoxic potency in contrast to glyphosate alone." The authors of the review are Drs Charles Benbrook, Robin Mesnage, and William Sawyer. Agrochemicals

 

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