Monsanto Caught Red-Handed Making False Statements About 3rd party Research for RoundUp

When Monsanto first released RoundUp, an herbicide that would not adversely affect genetically modified (GMO) crops, most farmers were optimistic about better crops free from unwanted weeds and critters. That optimism was short-lived, however, as reports began to surface that RoundUp which contains “glyphosate” might be carcinogenic to people.

When the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced that glyphosate was a probable human caraboutcinogen, it triggered a huge number of lawsuits from people claiming they contracted non-Hodgkin lymphoma from RoundUp exposure. At first spokespeople from the company denied claims that glyphosate induced cancer and would provide third-party research and evidence disproving the allegations.

However, several internal damning documents from Monsanto were leaked to the press. Embarrassingly they revealed that Monsanto wrote several of the “independent scientific reviews” themselves. Making Monsanto’s allegations that their safety as a non-carcinogen, false statements.

Monsanto recently released “An Independent Review of the Carcinogenic Potential of Glyphosate,” but allegedly paid the Intertek Group to supervise the review. Their lawyers said that Intertek’s involvement was limited. However, one wonders how an “independent review” might be influenced by the supervisor being paid by the manufacturer of the product being investigated.

In leaked documents, Monsanto executives tried to spin the language of the review with Intertek. They had a choice of two statements:

1. “expert panel review of the carcinogenic potential of the herbicide glyphosate”
2. “an expert panel concludes there is no evidence that glyphosate is carcinogenic to humans”

In the end Monsanto executive Thomas Sorahan’s stated: “We can’t say ‘no evidence’ because that means there is not a single scrap of evidence, and I don’t see how we can go that far.”

As part of pretrial discovery, some of the Monsanto documents were gathered and posted online. Monsanto’s lawyers objected that the release of these documents blind-sided them and asked U.S. District Judge Vince Chabria in San Francisco to pull the documents from evidence. However, plaintiff attorneys claim that Monsanto missed their 30-day window for objection provided by law.

According to the plaintiff’s lawsuit, some of the documents clearly showed that William Heydens, Monsanto’s Chief of Regulatory Science, was heavily involved in the language eventually used in the scientific reviews.

We note that as with all politics the company line must be maintained with careful manipulation by the word smiths, and spin doctors. While Monsanto claims they were only involved in “cosmetic editing” without really changing the document, one wonders what the real research revealed. The company’s Vice President for Global Strategy, Scott Partridge stated that - while the “choice (of) words…was not ideal…it didn’t change the science.”

Critical Reviews of Toxicology, the journal in which the review was published, is launching an investigation into the matter, stated their Editor-in-Chief