The European Commission’s proposal to renew the authorization of glyphosate in the European Union for 10 years will be studied on Friday by EU member countries. European agencies do not base themselves on the same studies as the World Health Organization or Inserm.
The 27 member states of the European Union will examine on Friday September 22 the proposal from the European Commission which has caused environmental associations to jump this week. The commission actually proposes that glyphosate, this controversial herbicide, be authorized for 10 more years, even though it has been classified as a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization.
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The European agencies are not of the same opinion because the work carried out by the different organizations is not based on the same studies, nor on the same criteria and in the end the conclusions are contradictory.
On the one hand, the International Agency for Research on Cancer qualifies glyphosate as a probable carcinogen. In France, Inserm highlights several toxic risks. On the other hand, the European agencies (that of food safety, that of chemical products) for which “Assessment of the impact of glyphosate on human health, animal health and the environment has not identified any areas of critical concern.” The European Food Safety Authority also notes gaps in the data collected.
Few independent academic studies
These European agencies are based on scientific studies: 2,400 studies, for 180,000 pages read according to them. But numbers do not equal quality, denounce the anti-glyphosate movement, which calls into question the way in which the articles are sorted and selected. Most come from manufacturers themselves, who analyze the toxicity of their product before putting it on the market. Independent university studies are in the minority. They represent only 0.4% of the studies retained by agencies, according to the NGO Génération Futures…
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Other studies are excluded because they often do not have “Good laboratory practice” certification and are therefore considered irrelevant. This “good laboratory practice” is in fact a standard supposed to guarantee the quality of analyses.
To obtain this label, costly investments are required that universities are not able to make. Without this label, the results put forward by researchers are therefore not considered by European agencies, despite their scientific interest. On the other hand, for institutes like Inserm, the reliability of studies is based on traditional scientific validation, with publication in dedicated journals. Inserm therefore uses results ignored by European regulatory agencies, resulting in sometimes contradictory conclusions.