The strong outcry caused last summer by Health Canada’s proposal to increase in several foods, at the request of Monsanto-Bayer, the world’s leading manufacturer of glyphosate (HBG) herbicides, the maximum residue limits of this herbicide undoubtedly contributed to the launch of the public consultation on the evaluation of pesticides, held by Health Canada from March 21 to June 30 and aimed, it is said, to strengthen the protection of health and the environment.
Should we rejoice? For now, these consultations are very “targeted” on limited, even minor points, without any real desire to review the very foundations of the shaky evaluation of pesticides in Canada. Thus, for the first pesticides in the world, in Canada and in Quebec, namely HBGs, the regulatory assessment essentially relates to glyphosate, presented by its manufacturers as the active substance, whereas these HBGs, in addition to approximately 40% of glyphosate, contain heavy metals, sometimes arsenic, and in Canada up to 20% POEA, petroleum derivatives, banned in Europe since 2016.
However, these HBG can have a toxicity up to 1000 times higher than glyphosate alone, several scientific studies have shown. Although in 2015 the WHO-linked International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared glyphosate and HBG genotoxic and carcinogenic, in 2017 Canada approved it for marketing until 2032, and in 2020, they represent 45% of pesticide sales in Quebec.
In the United States, several of the 125,000 victims of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma attributed to Roundup, the best known HBG, have won their lawsuits, while 100,000 of these cancer victims are sharing with the lawyers an out-of-court settlement of 10, US$9 billion. This led Bayer-Monsanto to try to limit the multiplication of lawsuits, announcing the withdrawal, in the United States, of HBG sales to individuals and presenting an appeal to the Supreme Court that the multinational recently lost.
Admittedly, the 10 million pages of internal Bayer-Monsanto documents declassified during the first trials, the Monsanto Papers, revealed to the public incredible stratagems by the firm to conceal the toxicity of its product. Thus, according to California court testimony on January 24, 2019 given by the chief toxicologist at Monsanto and then in charge of regulatory affairs at Bayer-Monsanto Donna Farmer Monsanto did not do long-term animal studies on the formulated product .
However, if the formulated product is the one that is sold, and if glyphosate is the only ingredient tested in the long term by the firm on the regulatory level, how can one claim that a rigorous scientific examination is made of it? This is why many scientists, lawyers and NGOs are calling on responsible authorities to carry out, on the basis of a systematic review of the independent scientific literature, comprehensive assessments of the pesticides sold and their effects.
This is also the meaning of the debates held on June 15, 2022 in the European Parliament which, relating to the lack of evaluation of marketed pesticides, are based on the decision of the European Court of Justice of October 2019 to invite the Commission to apply the law. This decision of the European Court of Justice considers that the active substances of certain pesticides are not declared or declared inert, that the reliability of the scientific studies produced by the applicant for an authorization is questionable and that one cannot oppose the communication of data during an approval or authorization procedure.
According to this decision, it is essential to carry out analyzes of the cumulative effects of several pesticides, or cocktail effects, and long-term analyzes of the toxicity and carcinogenicity of products as marketed. However, failure to comply with this procedure should lead to the immediate withdrawal of many marketing authorizations for pesticides.
Canada is still far from these debates, and even more from European requirements, including for access to pesticide sales data, the only way to claim their reduction. Thus, in France, these data compiled by postal code are mapped and even include the carcinogenic, mutagenic, neurotoxic and endocrine disruptor character. By contrast, in Canada, where sales of HBG are silly presented as “more than 25 million kilograms of active ingredient (ai)” of glyphosate, recourse had to be had to the Access Act to the information to find that, in 2018, it was 57 million kilos of a.i., more than double.
These false underestimates cover the entire period 2008-2018 and are two to three times higher for the sales of two other major herbicides. As for the documents requested on the sales of pesticides associated with Parkinson’s, one of which is the subject of legal proceedings in the United States, they were given to us redacted and illegible. Why is Health Canada so brazenly covering up sales data for pesticides, nearly half of which are genotoxic and probable carcinogenic HBGs (IARC, 2015), associated with so many cases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer also very present in Quebec and in Canada.
Recourse to the courts
Remember that in the case of drugs, it was a 2018 legal decision that forced Health Canada to be more transparent by making available all clinical data submitted for their approval. Already, Vanessa’s law, in 2014, gave the responsible minister the power, for public health reasons, to make all studies accessible. How can it be justified that, in the case of drugs, Health Canada has made public health prevail over the protection of “confidential commercial information”, and does not do so for toxic pesticides, present in fields, water, ecosystems and food ?
Why is Canada not taking advantage of the Pest Control Products Act review to adopt sound, science-based procedures for evaluating and disclosing full formulations of pesticides sold, thereby prioritizing the environment, health and at the same time its credibility, its international reputation, even its markets?
More than 60 years after the publication of the visionary silent springby Rachel Carson, on the ravages of pesticides, the kick-off of the environmental and environmental health movements, and while Montreal will host, in December 2022, the 15e Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, how does Prime Minister Trudeau, claiming to be concerned about health and the environment, intend to ensure that Health Canada fully respects its mandate on the issue? of pesticides, and how does it intend to support the viability of agri-food systems?