June, 07 2017, 04:00pm EDT
Inspector General Investigating Potential Collusion Between Monsanto, Top EPA Official
Controversy Casts Doubts on EPA's Cancer Assessment of Roundup's Main Ingredient
WASHINGTON
The inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency is investigating possible collusion between Monsanto and a top EPA pesticide official who recently retired. Documents released by court order indicate that the possible collusion may have resulted in a biased review of cancer risks associated with glyphosate, the most commonly used pesticide in the world and the active ingredient in Roundup.
The official, Jess Rowland, was the chair of the EPA's Cancer Assessment Review Committee.
"The EPA is supposed to protect us from toxic chemicals, not go out of its way to protect the profits of chemical companies," said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "I'm glad to see the inspector general investigating these disturbing indications that one of the EPA's top staffers may have been working with Monsanto to hide the truth about the dangers of glyphosate."
Specifically, the documents that spurred the investigation revealed that:
- The chair of the EPA's Cancer Assessment Review Committee on glyphosate was in regular contact with Monsanto, providing insider information that guided Monsanto's messaging;
- The chair warned Monsanto that the World Health Organization's cancer research arm had found glyphosate to be a probable carcinogen months before the 2015 determination became public, allowing the pesticide-maker to mount a public relations attack on the finding;
- The chair promised to thwart the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' review of glyphosate's safety, saying that if he was successful he deserved a medal. The department never did review glyphosate's safety;
- A Monsanto executive emailed other company officials that they could hire academics to put their names on glyphosate research papers written by Monsanto, citing a previous instance where this was done. The referenced paper was used in the EPA pesticide program's own cancer analysis.
Also, in March a scientific advisory panel of independent top experts commissioned by the EPA to review its work concluded that the EPA's pesticides office failed to follow its own guidelines when it found last year that glyphosate -- the active ingredient in Monsanto's flagship pesticide Roundup -- is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.
"The evidence of Monsanto's troubling coordination with the EPA's pesticide office, combined with an apparent disregard for established scientific guidelines, completely discredits the EPA pesticide office's conclusion that glyphosate doesn't cause cancer," said Burd. "The 2015 finding of the World Health Organization's cancer arm that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen is still the most credible, scientifically supported finding on glyphosate's cancer risks."
Court documents also revealed that the EPA's glyphosate cancer review committee came to its conclusion three months before the WHO analysis was published, all the while maintaining that the WHO analysis was taken into consideration.
After news of these documents became a national scandal and the EPA's pesticide office did not announce an investigation, the Center for Biological Diversity submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the pesticide office to determine the scope of the problem. The EPA has not released any documents in response to that request.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
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'Killing Is Normalized': IDF Soldier Speaks Out About Orders to Shoot Civilians in Gaza
The commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die," the soldier said. "If they're inside, they're dangerous, you need to kill them. No matter who it is."
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Another Israel Defense Forces soldier has spoken out publicly against the IDF's brutalization of civilians in Gaza.
In an interview with the British Sky News Monday, a reservist who has served three tours of duty in Gaza spoke candidly about orders he and other soldiers received to shoot any person arbitrarily who entered defined "no-go zones," regardless of whether they posed a threat.
The soldier gave his testimony anonymously for fear of being labeled a "traitor." However, he identified himself as a reservist from the 252nd Division who was stationed at the Netzarim Corridor, a road which divides North and South Gaza.
The area has been one of the most critical strategic points for Israel's occupation of Gaza, allowing control over the flow of aid and people.
The soldiers, stationed on the edge of a civilian neighborhood in the homes of displaced Palestinians, were ordered by their commanders to kill anyone who passed an "imaginary line" that marked the beginning of the military stronghold, the soldier said.
"We have a territory that we are in, and the commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die," the soldier said. "If they're inside, they're dangerous, you need to kill them. No matter who it is."
"It was like pretty much everyone that comes into the territory, and it might be like a teenager riding his bicycle," he said.
The soldier said that the prevailing attitude among the troops was that all Palestinians were "terrorists," and that this attitude was reinforced by commanders.
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He said that when soldiers in the corridor kill civilians, a lot of them "think that they did something good."
That sense of impunity, he said, comes from the higher-ups.
"Some commanders can really decide to do war crimes and bad things and don't face the consequences of that," he said.
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This anonymous soldier is the latest of many who have decided to speak out against atrocities their military has committed.
His testimony comes on the heels of a harrowing Haaretz expose, in which several other Israeli soldiers described being ordered to shoot Palestinian aid-seekers, turning the U.S.-Israeli administered Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites into "killing fields." Others provided The Associated Press with video of soldiers bombarding civilians in an aid site with pepper spray and stun grenades.
Others have spoken out against the attacks on civilians near the Israeli stronghold at Netzarim.
In April, a report by the Israeli veterans group Breaking the Silence detailed many more accounts of brutality over the first year-and-a-half of the war. It included accounts of Israeli soldiers razing agricultural land, bulldozing entire city blocks, and designating "large swathes of the land" that "were turned into massive kill zones."
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The soldier who spoke to Sky News said his deployment left a similar stain on his conscience.
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Sarah Redd, Oxfam's advocacy and campaigns manager in Ukraine, called reports of banned chemical weapons use deeply troubling and called for a full investigation into the matter.
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Ukraine has claimed that Russia has carried out more than 9,000 chemical weapons attacks ever since it launched its invasion of the country more than three years ago. During the 2024 election campaign, President Donald Trump claimed that he could bring an end to the Ukraine-Russia war within a single day although so far fighting between the two nations has only intensified.
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FlyUSA, a private aviation provider, gushed in a blog post that with final passage of the unpopular budget reconciliation package, "business jet ownership has never looked more fiscally attractive or more fun to explain to your accountant."
The law, crafted by congressional Republicans and approved with only GOP support, permanently restores a major corporate tax break known as 100% bonus depreciation, which allows businesses to deduct the costs of certain assets in the first year of purchase rather than writing them off over time.
Forbes noted that the bonus depreciation policy "applies to a slew of qualified, physical business expenses which depreciate over time, such as machinery and company cars, but the policy is often associated with big-ticket luxury items, such as private aircraft, and its institution last decade led to a boom in jet sales."
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Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies, called bonus depreciation "a massive tax break for billionaires and centi-millionaires that use the most polluting form of transportation on the planet."
"A corporation purchasing a $50 million private jet could potentially deduct the entire $50 million from their taxes in the year of the purchase, rather than spreading the deduction over many years," Collins wrote. "This amounts to a massive taxpayer subsidy, as ordinary taxpayers pick up the tab for the private jet industry and billionaire high flyers."
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