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Joe Breier, Ph.D.

Regulatory Toxicologist, Bayer Crop Science

Expert Bio

Joe Breier is a Regulatory Toxicologist with Bayer LP and is responsible for variety of pesticide products. He has a Ph.D. in pharmacology from Boston University School of Medicine, is a member of the Society of Toxicology, and is involved in several ad hoc groups through CropLife America.

Studies, Articles and Answers

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Question

Q: How credible is Jack Heinemann or Bill Freese are? They have been mentioned in some blogs about their expertise in anti gmo sites. And Isoxaflutole, it's toxicity studies?

Answered By Tom Nickson, Ph.D. - Jan 22, 2014

A: I’ll try to answer the first part of your question, but obviously, I can’t say anything directly about credibility. As you point out, both Bill Freese and Jack Heinemann are widely cited in anti-GM communications.  They hold strongly to certain beliefs that a very large part of the scientific community does not share, but that do resonate within the anti-GM community.  Two of these beliefs include that the process involved in modern biotechnology poses unique risks, and that the current regulatory processes used to evaluate risks are unsatisfactory.    The majori [...]

Answered By Joe Breier, Ph.D. - May 15, 2014

A: Generally speaking, credibility, as it relates to scientific data, can be established via independent replication of study results and ultimately leads to acceptance of the data by other scientific experts. In consideration of newly generated data or the absence of study replication, credibility can be obtained by evaluating and characterizing the data against sets of criteria presented in several excellent publications (Klimisch et al., 1997; Conrad and Becker, 2011; Henry and Conrad, 2008).   In the pesticide industry, data reliability is achieved through the conduct of toxicity s [...]

Health & Safety Other

Question

Q: The USDA recently approved soybean with stacked glyphosate/isoxaflutole tolerance. A 1998 EPA report designated isoxaflutole as a "probable carcinogen." What is the environmental/toxicological impact of this USDA decision?

Answered By Joe Breier, Ph.D. - Apr 14, 2014

A: In approving genetically modified crops, such as soybeans, with dual herbicide tolerance, USDA evaluates the safety of the crop, while EPA assesses the safety of the pesticide used on the crop, which includes consideration of the potential risk of an adverse health effect, such as cancer. Based on exposure estimates provided by EPA (2011), the likelihood that humans are exposed to carcinogenic levels of isoxaflutole (IFT) is extremely low. First and foremost, it should be emphasized that the cancer classification noted above is an indication of cancer hazard only and does not provide insight [...]

Environment