As part of a series of lawsuits recently filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, lawyers for plaintiffs claiming that Roundup caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) have demanded to see the details of the EPA's safety assessments for Roundup, to which they have received little information. So far, Monsanto has turned over documents marked "confidential" that reveal nothing about the agro-chemical giant's relationship with the EPA.
According to reports, the EPA has been assessing the safety of glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, ever since the controversial chemical started gaining attention around the world as a serious threat to environmental and human health. On the surface, the EPA has supposedly been conducting an independent analysis of glyphosate's safety in the interest of public health.
But it is now being revealed that the EPA has merely been acting as a gatekeeper to approve whatever Monsanto throws its way, including chemicals like glyphosate that have repeatedly been linked to causing organ damage, cancer tumors, and more. Much of the rest of the world, including the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), is recognizing that glyphosate is dangerous and never should have been approved in the first place, but the EPA has been dragging its feet on the issue. Essentially, the EPA is engaged in fake science to obscure the evidence that glyphosate causes harm to humans and the environment.
This is largely because former EPA top brass Jess Rowland has been fighting on behalf of Monsanto, rather than on behalf of the people for whom the EPA works — the American public — to salvage glyphosate's dwindling reputation. The EPA has further been working on behalf of Monsanto in lawsuits like the one currently moving forward in California, much to the chagrin of independent scientists who recognize how corrupt the EPA has become on this front.
"The EPA's stamp of approval for the safety of glyphosate over the last few decades has ... been key to the success of Monsanto's genetically engineered, glyphosate-tolerant crops, which have been popular with farmers," explains Truth-Out.org about the issue. (RELATED: See more news about protecting the environment from toxic pesticides and herbicides at Pesticides.news)
Plaintiffs in suit against Monsanto demand to see correspondences between EPA top brass and chemical giant
Now that Rowland has been outed as a Monsanto hack, attorneys for plaintiffs in the California suit are now asking that he be deposed in order to reveal more about the EPA's connections with Monsanto, and possibly other chemical companies as well. Monsanto, of course, is fighting tooth and nail to keep its correspondences with Rowland private, but it is only a matter of time before this evidence is revealed.
Monsanto has so far turned over six million pages of documents as part of the court proceedings, but upwards of 85 percent of it has been marked as "confidential," meaning plaintiffs are required to black out this information. The plaintiffs' lawyers say this designation is improper and that such information needs to be revealed in order for the facts to prevail.
"Monsanto has been confident all along that [the] EPA would continue to support glyphosate, whatever happened and no matter who held otherwise," the lawyers say. "[I]t is clear that Monsanto enjoyed considerable influence within the EPA's OPP, and was close with Mr. Rowland ... The documentary evidence strongly suggests that Mr. Rowland's primary goal was to serve the interests of Monsanto."
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