When will glyphosate stop causing cancer

Monsanto Inc has recently fallen into the center of public opinion First, a judge of Fresno County High Court in California rejected Monsanto's lawsuit, in which Monsanto protested against the proposal of adding glyphosate to the list of known carcinogens in California; then, Monsanto scientists were accused of writing papers on glyphosate harmless to human body Although there is no final conclusion about the two events mentioned above, the long-standing controversy about glyphosate carcinogenesis has been rising again After a long-term use and scientific evaluation, when will glyphosate cancer be completely eliminated? What's the impact of California's decision on glyphosate? It's an active ingredient of a herbicide synthesized by Monsanto chemists in the 1970s It's very effective in killing weeds Once invented, it's popular among farmers However, some crops are naturally resistant to glyphosate, while others are not, such as soybeans If glyphosate is applied, soybeans will die with weeds Therefore, after the transgenic technology came to the agricultural stage, scientists developed glyphosate resistant soybeans, which made them rapidly popularized At present, glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in global agricultural production, and it is more used in non transgenic crops Since the development and application of glyphosate, a number of international authorities have conducted scientific assessment on its safety, all of which believe that it is unlikely to cause cancer risk to human beings, which is also the basis of large-scale application of glyphosate However, in March 2015, the international agency for cancer research (IARC), based in France, classified it as a class 2A carcinogen This result is widely cited, and it is also the main basis to support the California judge's judgment However, at present, California has not officially started the legislative process of including glyphosate in carcinogens, so glyphosate has not been judged to be carcinogenic at the legal level Gao Yong, director of business affairs for Asia and Africa of glyphosate structured Monsanto, told China Science Daily: "the judgment did not follow the conclusions of the US pesticide regulatory agency, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but followed the opinions of IARC, an opaque foreign group, which violated the constitution of California and the US." In addition, in response to the accusation that the paper was written on behalf of others, Monsanto said that the paper was in line with the norms of peer review and publication in the scientific community Dr William heydens, who is accused of writing on behalf of others, also explained by oath that his role in it is as a text editor, so it appears in the acknowledgment section Luo Yunbo, Professor of the school of food science and nutrition engineering, China Agricultural University, told China Science Daily that although there is no final conclusion about the incident at present, the verdict will have a great impact on the public, and people are likely to simply link cancer with glyphosate Whether IARC is authoritative in fact, since glyphosate was developed and applied, it has been evaluated several times by many agencies such as the U.S Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S Department of agriculture, the European Commission, the World Health Organization and so on Through a wide range of toxicology experiments, more than 300 independent toxicology studies have been conducted around the world, and it is finally determined that it is unlikely to cause cancer to human beings On March 15 this year, the European Chemicals Agency just announced that glyphosate can be used safely Wang Dayuan, former director of the bioengineering Department of China Rice Institute, told China Science Daily: "three of the four relevant agencies under the who disagree with the view that glyphosate may cause cancer However, IARC does not have the qualification to approve whether glyphosate is toxic, because IARC does not conduct experimental research, and the rating refers to the literature provided by other research institutions " In fact, IARC defines a class 2A carcinogen as "more likely to cause cancer", which is also classified as class 2a with glyphosate, including fried food, red meat, barber, night shift, etc According to Gao Yong, this shows that IARC ignores the specific risk level of causing cancer, that is, how likely it is to cause cancer According to reports, at present, the main authorities for assessing pesticide safety risks include the World Food Code Commission, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency and the European food safety agency Governments in various countries, including China, have basically formulated pesticide safety standards by referring to the above three institutions The simultaneous interpreting of glyphosate and traditional herbicides shows that glyphosate is less toxic Luo Yunbo said that two broad-spectrum herbicides, glyphosate and glyphosate, are the preferred herbicides for herbicide resistant (tolerant) transgenic crops, which can reduce the cost of weeding, improve the effect and reduce the harm of drugs At the same time, they have little impact on the environment They can degrade rapidly in the soil, with almost no potential risk of pollution At the same time, he stressed that even if there are hazards, they can only be produced by a certain number of orders of magnitude Only pay attention to the dosage can be avoided Wang Dayuan also said that the use of glyphosate is relatively the safest alternative to the more toxic herbicides in the past The large-scale planting of Transgenic Herbicide resistant crops has made the traditional diphenyl ethers, aryloxyphenoxy propionic acids and cyclohexanone herbicides, which are more toxic, shrink rapidly Although the advantages of glyphosate are obvious, the voice of questioning it is always difficult to calm This has a lot to do with people generally linking glyphosate and transgene At present, 80% of the commercialized transgenic crops are glyphosate resistant In response, Wang Dayuan pointed out that "before the advent of genetically modified soybeans, glyphosate had been widely used in Europe and the United States for 20 years, and the genetically modified soybeans themselves had no relationship with the toxic and side effects of glyphosate." Wang Dayuan also told reporters that 60% of glyphosate herbicides in the United States are used in non GM crops, and even in many family gardens China is a major producer of glyphosate, accounting for 70% of the world's production, 80% of which is exported Because there is no approval for the planting of genetically modified crops in China, all of them are applied to non genetically modified crops Huang Jikun, a professor at Modern Agricultural College of Peking University, told China Science Daily: "our research finds that there is no significant evidence that glyphosate has an impact on health For the debate on the safety of transgenes, we hope to convey scientific voice through more popular science and keep the debate on the scientific level " Luo Yunbo also believes that "science communication is a process that needs long-term efforts, and the scientific community should spare no effort to carry out science popularization, so that the public can improve their judgment and eliminate prejudice." "If there is not enough reliable scientific basis, it is a game and a hype," Huang Dafang, a researcher at the Institute of biotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told China Science Daily