Meet Monsanto"s Other Herbicide Problem...

Earlier this year we wrote about a series of court documents that were unsealed and seemingly revealed a startling effort on the part of both Monsanto and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to work in concert to kill and/or discredit independent, albeit inconvenient, cancer research conducted by the World Health Organization"s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) related to their key herbicidal product, RoundUp.  The efforts to kill the research came even as Monsanto"s own lead toxicologist, Donna Farmer, admitted that she "cannot say that Roundup does not cause cancer" because "[w]e [Monsanto] have not done the carcinogenicity studies with Roundup" (see: Monsanto Colluded With EPA, Was Unable To Prove Roundup Does Not Cause Cancer, Unsealed Court Docs Reveal).

But, as Reuters points out today, RoundUp isn"t the only Monsanto herbicide causing outrage in the ag community these days as state regulators all across the country say they"re being flooded with reports from farmers that Dicamba, Monsanto"s other herbicide, is increasingly becoming airborne and killing crops far away from the fields where they were actually applied.

U.S. farmers have overwhelmed state governments with thousands of complaints about crop damage linked to new versions of weed killers, threatening future sales by manufacturers Monsanto Co (MON.N) and BASF SE (BASFn.DE).

 

Monsanto is banking on weed killers using a chemical known as dicamba - and seeds engineered to resist it - to dominate soybean production in the United States, the world’s second-largest exporter.

 

The United States has faced a weed-killer crisis this year caused by the new formulations of dicamba-based herbicides, which farmers and weed experts say have harmed crops because they evaporate and drift away from where they are applied.

Regulators in several major soybean-growing states, including Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois, each say they received roughly four years’ worth of complaints about possible pesticide damage to crops this year due to dicamba use.

Now agriculture officials face long backlogs of cases to investigate, which are driving up costs for lab tests and overtime. Several states had to reassign employees to handle the load.

 

“We don’t have the staff to be able to handle 400 investigations in a year plus do all the other required work,” said Paul Bailey, director of the Plant Industries division of the Missouri Department of Agriculture.

 

In Missouri, farmers filed about 310 complaints over suspected dicamba damage, on top of the roughly 80 complaints about pesticides the state receives in a typical year, he said.

 

Nationwide, states launched 2,708 investigations into dicamba-related plant injury by Oct. 15, according to data compiled by the University of Missouri.

Of course, Monsanto has bet on dicamba-tolerant soybeans to replace those that withstand glyphosate, the key ingredient in RoundUp, because it has become less effective over the years as weeds develop resistance...and because of that pesky European research which suggests the product causes cancer.

The problem is that if you"re not planting dicamba-resistant soybean seeds then you could quickly find yourself among the growing list of Monsanto"s spray drift victims....so you better buy Monsanto seeds...see how that works?

Of course, Monsanto has decided to simply blame spray companies saying that the "herbicides are safe when properly applied."

Monsanto and BASF say the herbicides are safe when properly applied. They need to convince regulators after the flood of complaints to state agriculture departments.

 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last year approved use of the weed killers on dicamba-resistant crops during the summer growing season. Previously, farmers used dicamba to kill weeds before they planted seeds, and not while the crops were growing.

 

However, the EPA approved such use only until Nov. 9, 2018, because “extraordinary precautions” are needed to prevent dicamba products from tainting vulnerable crops, a spokesman told Reuters in a statement last week. The agency wanted to be able to step in if there were problems, he said.

 

Next year, the EPA will determine whether to extend its approval by reviewing damage complaints and consulting with state and industry experts. States are separately considering new restrictions on usage for 2018.

In conclusion, with Dicamba usage up for regulatory review, it seems that it may be time for Monsanto execs to start pulling some strings at the EPA again...

Court Docs Reveal Monsanto Colluded With EPA To Prove Roundup Does Not Cause Cancer

If we had a dime for every kooky, left-wing theory we"ve heard alleging some vast corporate conspiracy to exploit the treasures of the earth, destroy the environment and poison people with unknown carcinogens all while buying off politicians to cover their tracks, we would be rich.  The problem, of course, is that sometimes the kooky conspiracy theories prove to be completely accurate.   

Lets take the case of the $60 billion ag-chemicals powerhouse, Monsanto,  and their controversial herbicide, Roundup as an example.  For those who aren"t familiar, Roundup Ready is Monsanto’s blockbuster weedkiller, credited with transforming U.S. agriculture, with a majority of farm production now using genetically modified seeds resistant to the chemical. 

For years the company has assured farmers that their weed killing product was absolutely safe to use.  As proof, Monsanto touted the approval of the chemical by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

That said, newly unsealed court documents released earlier today seemingly reveal a startling effort on the part of both Monsanto and the EPA to work in concert to kill and/or discredit independent, albeit inconvenient, cancer research conducted by the World Health Organization"s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)....more on this later.

But, before we get into the competing studies, here is a brief look at the "extensive" work that Monsanto and the EPA did prior to originally declaring Roundup safe for use (hint: not much).  As the excerpt below reveals, the EPA effectively declared Roundup safe for use without even conducting tests on the actual formulation, but instead relying on industry research on just one of the product"s active ingredients.

"EPA"s minimal standards do not require human health data submissions related to the formulated product - here, Roundup.  Instead, EPA regulations require only studies and data that relate to the active ingredient, which in the case of Roundup is glyphosate.  As a result, the body of scientific literature EPA has reviewed is not only primarily provided by the industry, but it also only considers one part of the chemical ingredients that make up Roundup." 

Meanwhile, if that"s not enough for you, Donna Farmer, Monsanto"s lead toxicologist, even admitted in her deposition that she "cannot say that Roundup does not cause cancer" because "[w]e [Monsanto] have not done the carcinogenicity studies with Roundup."

And just in case you"re the super skeptical type, here is Farmer"s actual email, from back in 2009, which seems pretty clear:

"you cannot say that Roundup does not cause cancer..we have not done carcinogenicity studies with "Roundup".

And while the revelations above are quite damning by themselves, this is where things get really interesting. 

In early 2015, once it became clear that the World Health Organization"s IARC was working on their own independent study of Roundup, Monsanto immediately launched their own efforts to preemptively discredit any results that might be deemed "inconvenient".

That said, Monsanto, the $60 billion behemoth, couldn"t possibly afford the $250,000 bill that would come with conducting a legitimate scientific study led by accredited scientists.  Instead, they decided to "ghost-write" key sections of their report themselves and plotted to then have the independent scientists just "sign their names so to speak."

"A less expensive/more palatable approach might be to involve experts only for the areas of contention, epidemiology and possibly MOA (depending on what comes out of the IARC meeting), and we ghost-write the Exposure Tox & Genetox sections...but we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak."

Finally, when all else fails, you call in those "special favors" in Washington D.C. that you"ve paid handsomely for over the years. 

And that"s where Jess Rowland, the EPA"s Deputy Division Director for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention and chair of the Agency"s Cancer Assessment Review Committee, comes in to assure you that he"s fully exploiting his role as the "chair of the CARC" to kill any potentially damaging research..."if I can kill this I should get a medal." 

All of which begs the question of whether the D.C. swamp is just too large to be drained.