Question
Where can the formerly sealed Monsanto studies from the late 1970s and 1980s that were released by the EPA in 2015 through the FOIA be found?
Submitted by: sonny
Answer
Expert response from Kimberly Hodge-Bell, Ph.D., DABT
Senior Toxicologist, Bayer Crop Science
Wednesday, 13/01/2016 14:32
If you are referring to the Monsanto chronic toxicity/carcinogenicity rodent studies, those studies were submitted to the U.S. EPA for evaluation and the agency summarized them in their publicly available glyphosate Re-registration Eligibility Decision (RED). These studies have also been reviewed and summaries made available by other regulatory agencies and scientific bodies around the world (European Food Safety Authority, Health Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency, World Health Organization / Food and Agriculture Organization). Although referred to as ‘sealed’, or sometimes ‘hidden’ or ‘secret’ studies, these were petitioned by an anti-GM group from the U.S. EPA through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and you can obtain copies of the studies from EPA under FOIA by requesting them using their Master Record Identifier (MRID) numbers. MRID numbers allow EPA to give all submitted studies a unique identifier. The RED lists all of the studies submitted to EPA to re-register glyphosate by their MRID numbers. Proprietary information submitted to regulatory agencies is not routinely released to the public; however, Monsanto has over recent decades moved to publish previously confidential information in the interest of transparency (Williams et al., 2000; Greim et al., 2015).
If you’re interested in exploring some of the publicly available literature relevant for the safety evaluation of glyphosate, here is a good resource: http://www.glyphosate.eu/database/literature-database.
I hope this information is helpful.
Answer
Expert response from Kimberly Hodge-Bell, Ph.D., DABT
Senior Toxicologist, Bayer Crop Science
Wednesday, 13/01/2016 14:32
If you are referring to the Monsanto chronic toxicity/carcinogenicity rodent studies, those studies were submitted to the U.S. EPA for evaluation and the agency summarized them in their publicly available glyphosate Re-registration Eligibility Decision (RED). These studies have also been reviewed and summaries made available by other regulatory agencies and scientific bodies around the world (European Food Safety Authority, Health Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency, World Health Organization / Food and Agriculture Organization). Although referred to as ‘sealed’, or sometimes ‘hidden’ or ‘secret’ studies, these were petitioned by an anti-GM group from the U.S. EPA through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and you can obtain copies of the studies from EPA under FOIA by requesting them using their Master Record Identifier (MRID) numbers. MRID numbers allow EPA to give all submitted studies a unique identifier. The RED lists all of the studies submitted to EPA to re-register glyphosate by their MRID numbers. Proprietary information submitted to regulatory agencies is not routinely released to the public; however, Monsanto has over recent decades moved to publish previously confidential information in the interest of transparency (Williams et al., 2000; Greim et al., 2015).
If you’re interested in exploring some of the publicly available literature relevant for the safety evaluation of glyphosate, here is a good resource: http://www.glyphosate.eu/database/literature-database.
I hope this information is helpful.
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