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EU states rebel against plans to relicense weedkiller glyphosate
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: March 14th, 2016
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/04/eu-states...
Several EU countries could scupper plans by the European commission to approve the relicensing of a weedkiller linked to cancer. The vote to relicense glyphosate, a key ingredient in herbicides such as Monsantos multibillion-dollar brand Roundup, had been scheduled at a two-day meeting of experts from the EUs 28 member states, which begins on Monday. But officials are now saying that they may postpone the vote rather than lose it, raising the prospect of a legal limbo for glyphosate, the licence for which runs out in June. France, the Netherlands and Sweden have all said they will not support an assessment by the European food safety authority (Efsa) that glyphosate is harmless. That ruling ran counter to findings by the WHOs cancer agency that glyphosate was probably carcinogenic to humans, causing a bitter row over scientific methodology and industry influence. The Swedish environment minister, sa Romson, said: We wont take risks with glyphosate and we dont think that the analysis done so far is good enough. We will propose that no decision is taken until further analysis has been done and the Efsa scientists have been more transparent about their considerations. An Efsa panel based its recommendation that glyphosate was safe ... on six industry-funded studies that have not been fully published. Glyphosate use has been banned or restricted in large parts of Europe because of alleged links to a host of health problems, ranging from birth defects and kidney failure to coeliac disease, colitis and autism.
Note: The overlap between the GMO industry and European regulators has become increasingly controversial. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing GMO news articles from reliable major media sources.
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