HOW? Roundup Sold For 40+ Years Yet Escaped Testing For Cancer-Causing Properties

The mainstream Monsanto media blitz is still alive and growing as outlets attempt to report on the various angles of the recent case and its discovery documents – both now significant historical entities. Headlines and narratives from the mainstream appear to be freely reporting on the discovery documents, scientific fraud, financial losses and other important news tidbits. However there is one, gigantic elephant in the room which few, if any, in the mainstream are unpacking or questioning. How did Roundup, patented in the early 1970s, get a free pass to avoid testing for its cancer-causing properties in humans? The pigeonholed narrative by industry-bought science and Monsanto execs has been that glyphosate doesn’t cause cancer. The conversation never circled back to question the entire Roundup formulation synergistically, enjoying multi-billion dollar sales profits, for its carcinogenicity.

Even now after the cat is out of the bag, Monsanto has still been attempting to counter the drowning media coverage with their claim that “more that 800 scientific studies and reviews” support the fact that glyphosate doesn’t cause cancer. One would think that, with court discovery documents now freely accessible refuting those statements, that mainstream media would immediately counter the corporation’s desperate attempt to damage control rather than just parrot their talking points. Speaking with Democracy Now, Johnson’s attorney Brent Wisner had this to say regarding Monsanto’s claim:

“When you talk about cancer, we’re talking about 20 or so studies. Six or seven of them are in humans the rest are in animals. And those studies, as the jury was shown, are almost completely positive.”

Wisner continues by countering the other Monsanto talking point that glyphosate has a 40-year history of safety by stating:

“Almost absent from the conversation is that for the first 20 years, Roundup was approved based on fraud. It was coming from a laboratory [where] people were indicted, people went to jail. And that was actually former Monsanto employees. So this idea that it has a 40-year history of safety, it glosses over a 20-year history of fraud.”

Why isn’t the media questioning or reporting on exactly how Monsanto and Roundup escaped the watchful eyes of a 40-year global labyrinth of regulatory agency scrutiny? Furthermore, over the last five years specifically, glyphosate-based herbicides have been revisited with intense regulatory pressure and investigation to determine their cancer-causing properties. Where were the people within those agencies questioning the synergistic effects of the entire Roundup formula, not just one isolated ingredient?

Discovery documents revealed that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was found to be possibly colluding with Monsanto to get an investigation sidelined. Yet, the question of ignoring the synergistic effects of Roundup for so many years goes beyond a few well-placed Monsanto minions or paid fraudsters working for US regulatory agencies, scientific journals or embedded ghostwriters.

To be clear, while those responsible for our safety had their flawed, hyper-focused attention on glyphosate, real scientists were asking the important questions. In early 2018, Gilles-Éric Séralini published a paper titled Toxicity of formulants and heavy metals in glyphosate-based herbicides and other pesticides. The study reveals damning findings suggesting the true toxicity from glyphosate-based herbicide (GBH) formulations. Séralini and his team studied glyphosate alone and its 14 formulations to determine the toxicological effects and how they happen.

According to the study, Séralini and researchers stated:

“We exposed plants and human cells to the components of formulations, both mixed and separately, and measured toxicity and human cellular endocrine disruption below the direct toxicity experimentally measured threshold.” The researchers found that the toxic effects and endocrine disrupting properties of the formulations were mostly due to the formulants and not to glyphosate.”

Séralini’s study went on to state:

“In this work, we also identified by mass spectrometry the heavy metals arsenic, chromium, cobalt, lead and nickel, which are known to be toxic and endocrine disruptors, as contaminants in 22 pesticides, including 11 G-based ones.”

Among many key points, the recent study concludes by stating:

“All these results could shed a new light on the toxicity assessment of genetically modified plants tolerant to Roundup, because they could contain high levels of toxic formulants, and on the impact of these on the environment. Indeed, they are used for food and feed; and their assessment protocols should be upgraded”

The study also found oxidized petroleum distillates such as families of polyoxyethylenamines in the formulants along with arsenic, cobalt, chromium, nickel  and lead at levels “well above admissible ones in water.”

In true fashion, Séralini and his findings have, and are continuing to be, silenced and ignored by mainstream reporting. It is telling that such findings are being ignored again at such a historical time. Why isn’t any mainstream outlet interviewing Séralini regarding these findings now? Why have none of the major outlets breathed a word about his 2018 study?

Here are a few selected comments by Monsanto execs that came to light in the court discovery process:

“we are in pretty good shape with glyphosate but vulnerable with surfactants. What I’ve been hearing from you is that this continues to be the case with these studies – Glyphosate is OK but the formulated product (and thus the surfactant) does the damage.” -Monsanto scientist

“…you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen … we have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement.” -Monsanto toxicologist Donna Farmer, PhD

“We do not conduct sub-chronic, chronic or terotogenicity studies with our formulations.” -Regulatory Affairs Lead at Monsanto Europe