Report clears way for renewal of controversial weedkiller licence

‘Glyphosate does not cause cancer,’ says EU’s chemical agency

THE weedkiller glyphosate does not cause cancer, the EU’s chemicals agency has said in a new report that clears the way for the chemical’s licence to be renewed.

Last year, EU governments agreed to temporarily extend glyphosate’s licence pending the report, which they hoped would heal a scientific split over the harm the chemical causes to humans.

The European Chemicals Agency’s (ECHA) risk-assessment committee concluded on March 16 that “the available scientific evidence did not meet the criteria to classify glyphosate as a carcinogen, as a mutagen or as toxic for reproduction”.

A decision on whether and when to propose reauthorisation rests with the European Commission, which fears being held liable for the reauthorisation of a chemical that has caused a public outcry across Europe and is the subject of an EU citizens’ petition seeking to ban it. It will then be up to EU governments to accept or reject the proposal, with a decision due in the six months following the ECHA’s opinion, or by the end of 2017 at the latest.

The Irish Farmers’ Association welcomed the opinion, saying glyphosate had been used as “a political football” in the past and a failure to reauthorise it “has the potential to destroy the EU crop production sector in the near to medium term”.

Glyphosate has been around since the 1970s and was last authorised in the EU in 2002.

It is the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup and is in widespread use in Ireland and across the EU by gardeners and farmers of cereals, sugar beet and other crops.

The chemical came up for a 15-year renewal in 2015 but a decision was put off after a World Health Organisation (WHO) body classified it as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. The advice conf licted with the European Food and Safety Agency, which found it was “unlikely” to be carcinogenic, a position echoed by a joint United Nations/WHO committee.

Green MEPs, who made an accessto-documents request to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) last year, say this contradiction has not been resolved by the ECHA’s new opinion, and claim they have received only a partial reply to their request.

“Again we see a contradiction between the opinion of an EU agency and that of the World Health Organisation’s cancer research agency,” said the Greens’ transparency spokesperson Benedek Jávor.

“This controversy will continue, and citizens will continue to have understandable doubts regarding the safety of glyphosate, until the studies used are made public.”