Glyphosate Panelists Sought

OMAHA (DTN) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has scheduled a scientific advisory panel meeting this fall to review the widely used herbicide glyphosate, but offers no indication in a Federal Register notice Tuesday, if the panel will consider the conclusions of an EPA cancer assessment review committee that found glyphosate poses no significant cancer risk.

The agency has scheduled the meeting of a Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act scientific advisory panel (SAP) for Oct. 18 to Oct. 21 in Washington, D.C.

According to the notice, EPA is looking for nominations to serve on the SAP and seeking comments on the subject. The agency is looking to select eight ad hoc scientists to form the panel.

The agency notice requests nominations of scientists with expertise in carcinogenicity, cancer biostatistics and rodent cancer bioassays, suggesting cancer will be the main focus of the panel.

EPA does not cite directly the work of the cancer assessment review committee as the basis for the panel. Read the CARC's cancer review here: http://www.dtn.com/…

The Federal Register notice mentions the conclusions of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in March 2015 that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans," work done by the European Food Safety Authority that found glyphosate is unlikely to pose a hazard, and the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization meeting on pesticide residues that also concluded there is likely not a risk.

EPA points to its own report, "Framework for Incorporating Human Epidemiological and Incident Data in Health Risk Assessment" as a foundation for evaluating multiple lines of scientific evidence.

EPA posted and then removed from its website in May a CARC final report that essentially cleared glyphosate. The agency said the report was posted inadvertently. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told Congress this summer the agency would complete the review this year because of questions raised about how EPA is handling the matter.

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world, but regulators in both Europe and the U.S. have been reviewing the science and market approval for the herbicide since the IARC conclusions.

A House Science, Space and Technology Committee investigation focuses not only on the inadvertent release of the EPA's report, but whether there was any connection between the EPA's analysis and conclusions reached by the IARC.

The House Committee on Agriculture also announced in May it was conducting oversight into EPA's actions on glyphosate.

In a May 11 letter to EPA, House Ag Chairman Rep. K. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, ranking member Rep. Colin Peterson, D-Minn., and Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., questioned the agency's intentions on glyphosate.

"We are concerned that EPA has continually delayed its review of glyphosate," the letter said. "In a hearing before this committee on May 13, 2015, one of our members specifically asked Assistant Administrator Jim Jones when EPA's glyphosate review would be complete and whether EPA would continue to stand behind its previous assessment that glyphosate does not pose a serious cancer risk.

"Administrator Jones assured this committee that EPA's review would be final in July 2015 and the agency would continue to stand behind its previous conclusions. Despite these assurances, no report was issued until the one posted on April 29, 2016, and removed on May 2, 2016."

In June, Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, sent a letter to the National Institute of Health which funds IARC, questioning the science behind IARC's monograph on glyphosate and funding from the institute.

The IARC has received about $39 million from the NIH since 1992, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Read the Federal Register notice here: http://bit.ly/…

Todd Neeley can be reached at todd.neeley@dtn.com

Follow him on Twitter @toddneeleyDTN

(CZ/BAS)

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