Roundup® Gets More Media Attention

Econintersect:  The Huffington Post is the latest news media giant to notice the bad news about Roundup®, the weed control product made by Monsanto (NYSE:MON).  The birth defects risks of  exposure to glyphosate, the active chemical ingredient in Roundup®, is the topic of a feature article today at the major online news publisher.  The report discusses the data review published earlier this month by Earth Open Source.  This review was reported on June 9 by GEI News. Reports of other research on problems associated with microorganism activity was posted by GEI News on April 30.

From the Huffington Post:

Critics have argued for decades that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides used around the globe, poses a serious threat to public health. Industry regulators, however, appear to have consistently overlooked their concerns.

A comprehensive review of existing data released this month by Earth Open Source, an organization that uses open-source collaboration to advance sustainable food production, suggests that industry regulators in Europe have known for years that glyphosate, originally introduced by American agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in 1976, causes birth defects in the embryos of laboratory animals.

As recently as last year, the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BLV), a government agency conducting a review of glyphosate, told the European Commission that there was no evidence the compound causes birth defects, according to the report.

The agency reached that conclusion despite almost half a dozen industry studies that found glyphosate produced fetal malformations in lab animals, as well as an independent study from 2007 that found that Roundup induces adverse reproductive effects in the male offspring of a certain kind of rats.

Sources: Huffington Post,  Earth Open Source report and GEI News