Monsanto’s Secret Roundup and Birth Defects Report

Monsanto and Birth Defects

Monsanto is all too happy keeping the public in the dark when it comes to the birth defects that their primary money maker Roundup (Glyphosate) is causing.  How long do you want to stay there? Concerns about the best-selling herbicide Roundup® are running at an all-time high.
The pesticide industry and EU regulators knew as long ago as the 1980s-1990s that Roundup, the world’s best selling herbicide, causes birth defects – but they failed to inform the public.

The need for a review of glyphosate is particularly urgent in the light of the shortcomings of the existing review of the pesticide, on which its current approval rests. In this report, we examine the industry studies and regulatory documents that led to this approval. We show that industry and regulators knew as long ago as the 1980s and 1990s that glyphosate causes malformations – but that this information was not made public.

Monsanto’s Secret Roundup and Birth Defects Report

Scientific research published in 2010 showed that Roundup and the chemical on which it is based, glyphosate, cause birth defects in frog and chicken embryos at dilutions much lower than those used in agricultural and garden spraying. The EU Commission dismissed these findings, based on a rebuttal provided by the German Federal Force for Consumer Protection and Food Safety,
BVL. BVL cited unpublished industry studies to back its claim that glyphosate was safe.

The Commission has previously ignored or dismissed many other findings from the independent scientific literature showing that Roundup and glyphosate cause endocrine disruption, damage to DNA, reproductive and developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, and cancer, as well as birth defects.

However, shortly after the Commission was notified of the latest research showing that glyphosate and Roundup cause birth defects, it quietly passed a directive delaying the review of glyphosate and 38 other dangerous pesticides until 2015. This delay is being challenged in a lawsuit brought against the Commission by Pesticides Action Network Europe and Greenpeace. Delaying the review of glyphosate until 2015 is serious enough. But in reality, the Commission’s slowness in preparing the new data requirements for the incoming regulation mean that glyphosate may well not be re-assessed in the light of up-to-date science until 2030. The beneficiary will be the pesticide industry; the victim will be public health.

The need for a review of glyphosate is particularly urgent in the light of the shortcomings of the existing review of the pesticide, on which its current approval rests. In this report, we examine the industry studies and regulatory documents that led to this approval. We show that industry and regulators knew as long ago as the 1980s and 1990s that glyphosate causes malformations – but that this information was not made public.

The industry studies and regulatory documents on which the current approval of glyphosate tests reveal that:

  • Industry (including Monsanto) has known since the 1980s that glyphosate causes malformations in experimental animals at high doses
  • Industry has known since 1993 that these e?ects could also occur at lower and mid doses
  • The German government has known since at least 1998 that glyphosate causes malformations

Download the report – Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?

By Michael Antoniou, Mohamed Ezz El-Din Mostafa Habib, C. Vyvyan Howard, Richard C. Jennings, Carlo Leifert, Rubens Onofre Nodari, Claire Robinson, John Fagan. Published by Earth Open Source, June 2011

Monsanto’s Response to – Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?

EOS Response to Monsanto – Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?

New data on health aspects of Glyphosate? Response to Earth Open Source’s report from the German ministry for risk assessment, BfR

In the interests of transparency and so that readers can check the accuracy of the statements in our report, we have made available those parts of Germany¹s 1998 draft assessment report (DAR) on glyphosate that we cite.

The files are as follows:

French and German translations of the report “Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?” are available for download below.


Download the peer-reviewed version of the report, published 2012 in the Journal of Environmental and Analytical Toxicology as “Teratogenic effects of glyphosate-based herbicides: Divergence of regulatory decisions from scientific evidence”.

Source: http://earthopensource.org/