The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has received an embarrassing letter last Monday 29 May, 2017.
Christopher Portier, world-renowned toxicologist and biostatistician, former director of several US federal research institutions, has had access to data from confidential studies on glyphosate – those transmitted by industrialists to European authorities. He discovered information that had gone so far unnoticed.
Executive Summary
The European Food Safety Agency IEFSA) and the European Chemical Agency IEChA) have completed their assessments of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate and concluded that the evidence does not support a classification for glyphosate.
The raw data for the animal cancer studies for glyphosate have been released, and a reanalysis of these data show eight instances where significant increases in tumor response following glyphosate exposure were not included in the assessment by either EFSA or EChA.
This suggests that the evaluations applied to the glyphosate data are scientifically flawed, and any decisions derived from these evaluations will fail to protect public health.
I ask that the evaluations by both EFSA and EChA be repeated for all toxicological endpoints and the data underlying these evaluations be publicly released.
Christopher Portier,
Former Director US National Center for Environmental Health
Former Director US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Former Associate Director, US National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences
Former Associate Director US National Toxicology Program
Fellow, American Statistical Association
Fellow, International Statistics Institute
- Read the full letter, Review of the Carcinogenicity of Glyphosate by EChA, EFSA and BfR, by Dr. Christopher ]. Portier, PH.D., on the Natural Resources Defense Council, May 28,2017.
- Image credit independent.