Monsanto Halts Launch of NemaStrike Chemical After Users Complain of Rashes

Monsanto halted the launch of NemaStrike, a chemical designed to be applied to crop seeds. On November 1st Monsanto pulled the launch, following reports that it caused skin rashes on people. NemaStrike, is designed to protect corn, soybeans, and cotton from worms that reduce yields. The company said it conducted three years of field tests across the United States in preparation for a full launch and that more than 400 people used it this year as part of a trial.

Monsanto called NemaStrike a “blockbuster product”. It’s another setback for the company that has been battling to keep other products on the market lately.

Monsanto said it conducted three years of tests across the U.S. in preparation for the product’s launch. They say more than 400 people used the chemical, and some of the people reported skin problems.

There have been limited cases of skin irritation, including rashes, that appear to be associated with the handling and application of this seed treatment product.” – Brian Naber, U.S. commercial operations lead for Monsanto.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBFGnSWpSik

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Dicamba – The Herbicide Monsanto is Promoting to Replace Roundup’s Glyphosate

Dicamba is the active ingredient, or is one of a few active ingredients, in herbicidal products the same way glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup. It’s been commonly used for over seventy years in professional landscaping as well as home gardening, and its recent popularity is on the rise thanks to the public gaining knowledge regarding the harmful effects of Monsanto’s Roundup. Monsanto has reintroduced Dicamba as the herbicide for the “next-generation.”

The product is causing damage when it drifts onto other fields, and many state agriculture authorities have either banned the substance or are considering such bans. Dicamba lawsuits from commercial farmers are becoming more frequent as well.

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What is Dicamba?

First developed in England during the Second World War, dicamba is a broad-spectrum herbicide found in several brands of commercial weed killer, including Ortho Weed B Gon, Ace Lawn Weed Killer and Roundup Max. Chemically, it’s part of a group known as the chlorophenoxy family. More specifically, it is an organochloride, a carbon-based compound, the molecules of which contain atoms of the element chlorine. It is derived from benzoic acid, a substance occurring naturally in several plant species and commonly used as a food preservative.” – Dicamba Drift Lawsuit Lawyer – Crop Damage Compensation

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For a toxin, Dicamba may be safer to humans than glyphosate. It seems we pass it through our urine, and studies indicate that residues do not bioaccumulate in biological systems. To say a product is “safer,” compared to glyphosate, certainly does not indicate that the product is safe, and no long term studies have been done on the health effects of Dicamba. It’s clearly not good for the environment, and it doesn’t belong in our food supply.

Almost exactly a year ago, on Oct. 27, 2016, farm worker Allan Curtis Jones allegedly shot and killed soybean farmer Mike Wallace on a county road in Arkansas. The sheriff later told reporters that the two men had been arguing. Their dispute, the sheriff said, apparently revolved around a phenomenon known in the region as ‘dicamba drift.’ – NBC News

Related: PCBs, Roundup, and Dicamba – Monsanto’s Current Problems

In the heartland states, NBC reports that farmers are pitted against each other. Farmers not using the product report the chemical has wafted onto their fields and damaged their crops which are not genetically modified to withstand Dicamba.

Jones has pleaded not guilty to a first-degree murder charge. He is slated to go to trial in December.

According to the state’s farm bureau website, Arkansas ranks third in domestic cotton production, accounting for approximately 7 percent of the national crop. The state comes in at 10 in soybean production, and about half of that is exported.

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Dicamba Lawsuit Against Monsanto, BASF, and DuPont Filed as Farmers Deal With Drift

There have been rumblings from farmers dealing with the damage caused by herbicide dicamba for quite some time now, and (legal) shots have now been fired. On Monday, a complaint against Monsanto, BASF, and DuPont was filed in Southern Illinois on behalf of Brian Warren, owner of Warren Farms in Broughton, IL. Filed by an attorney from Classaction.com, Rene Rocha, the lawsuit alleges that dicamba was deceptively marketed as “low-volatility”, a claim that the 2,242 farmers currently dealing with crops ruined by the herbicide would dispute.

Related: Monsanto’s Glyphosate, Fatty Liver Disease Link Proven – Published, Peer-reviewed, Scrutinized Study

Dicamba has been touted as a replacement for glyphosate, whose effectiveness is dwindling as glyphosate-resistant, “super weeds” like Palmer amaranth become more common. For a new product launch, companies commission their own tests and share them with regulatory agencies. Conversations with scientists responsible for initial safety tests run by Monsanto have revealed that the company specifically did not allow them to test their new version of dicamba for volatility. The Environmental Protection Agency allowed to company to release the herbicide anyway.

Currently, more than 3 million acres of crops have been damaged by dicamba drift. States with substantial acreage devoted to growing soybeans, like Iowa, are experiencing record numbers of complaints from farmers. According to Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s vice-president of global strategy, as much as three-fourths of the problems occurring with dicamba application are caused by operator error. This actually makes sense.  The insert that accompanies XtendiMax seems more suited for a meteorologist, with instructions like “If fog is not present, inversions can also be identified by the movement of smoke from a ground source or an aircraft smoke generator…” and a chart designed to inform farmers of the ideal wind speed to apply the product during (3 and 10 miles an hour).

Related: Understanding and Detoxifying Genetically Modified Foods

Where is the Recourse?

If your neighbors have applied the product incorrectly (and they likely have: check out these instructions!), you don’t have much recourse. Insurance companies are unlikely to find in your favor, and Monsanto has made it clear where they feel the blame lies. In fact, the damage caused by dicamba is likely to be a good thing for Monsanto. Farmers hoping to avoid a repeat of this year’s devastated crops could end up purchasing dicamba-resistant crops.

So we arrive back at the newly filed lawsuit. Farmers like Brian Warren who sue frequently lose, or spend so much money and time in court with biotech companies that a win ends up costing more than the initial loss. At this point, many farmers will have to write off this year’s crops and make a big decision about next year. They can purchase dicamba-resistant seeds and grow the demand for a product that isn’t safe and doesn’t behave as promised or they can potentially lose their livelihood. What kind of choice is that?

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PCBs, Roundup, and Dicamba – Monsanto’s Current Problems

They say bad news comes in threes, and biotech giant Monsanto can certainly attest to the truth of that statement right now. Their newest product line, XtendiMax (better known as dicamba), made it to market without proper volatility testing. This refers to the product’s tendency to vaporize and travel. Subsequently, dicamba is drifting, causing major damage to neighboring crops, and currently banned in one U.S. state. There have also been two separate instances of newly released documents confirming that Monsanto knew two of their products, PCBs (from 1935 and 1977) and glyphosate, are harmful and continued to defend and sell them in spite of that.

For years, Monsanto has presented unsafe products as safe with little to no repercussion. Yet it is still on track to further dominate the food supply due to the company’s merger with Bayer. So why are the agencies charged with regulating food and environmental safety ok with Monsanto’s market control in the face of their shady practices?

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Past Indiscretions with PCBs

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were banned pretty much everywhere in 1979 after being linked to cancer and environmental degradation. PCBs began manufacture in 1935, and the first evidence of their toxicity appeared in 1937, after three workers who handled the chemicals died from acute liver damage. Serious health and environmental concerns continue to be reported to this day, even though the largest manufacturer of these, Monsanto, halted their production in 1977.

Monsanto is currently being sued by the state of Washington and eight cities for PCB contamination. Recently released documents have confirmed that Monsanto was aware of the effect of PCBs as early as 1969, eight years before they stopped selling them. A 1969 pollution abatement plan from the company acknowledged the product’s risks, stating “…“The evidence proving the persistence of these compounds and their universal presence in the environment is beyond questioning.” In another letter from a Monsanto manager in 1975, the company knew that “There is a potential real effect to humans – including death…”

In Monsanto’s own words, PCBs are dangerous in more ways than one. Yet they made money and Monsanto is first and foremost a business. But this wouldn’t be the only instance of company records showing corporate profits trump health, safety, and environmental concerns.

Related: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

Present Problems with Roundup

More court documents exposing Monsanto’s behind the scenes manipulations were released by attorneys pursuing claims against the company in regards to the link between Roundup and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Attorneys from the law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman released more than 700 pages of internal documents, detailing Monsanto’s behind the scenes activities. Numerous emails, texts, and other documents confirm that employees at Monsanto ghostwrote and manipulated scientific studies and expert panel discussions, failed to disclose conflicts of interest, discredited multiple negative glyphosate studies, and colluded with the Environmental Protection Agency. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) labeled glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans in 2015, but it’s clear from the recently released documents that Monsanto has known this since before 2008.

These documents also make Monsanto’s strategy for avoiding regulation clear: government collusion. Many of the documents released are communications with high ranking individuals at the Environmental Protection Agency, imploring them to delay scientific reviews of glyphosate multiple times. Monsanto’s has a clear modus operandi once they learn their products cause human harm – muddy the scientific waters, defend it furiously, and make as much money as possible. Their experience with PCBs was a learning experience. The lesson? Get the agencies regulating you to do the dirty work.

Related: Understanding and Detoxifying Genetically Modified Foods

Future Uncertainty with Dicamba

The Environmental Protection Agency approved Monsanto’s newest version of dicamba, XtendiMax, in November of 2016. Poised to replace glyphosate now that many weeds are developing resistance to that product, many farmers instead experienced serious crop loss after illegal versions of it used prior to that release drifted onto their fields from neighboring farms. With the product officially released, Monsanto is now facing a class actions lawsuits from farmers reporting severe losses for the second year in a row.

Testimony from researchers, regulators, and a company employee indicate that Monsanto used its influence to bring the product to market without all of the proper tests, including a proper volatility test. In fact, testing contracts for the product explicitly forbade it. Yet the EPA approved the product without it.

Arkansas was the only state to ask for additional testing. Monsanto denied that request. Arkansas has now banned dicamba, and other states are now assessing damage from the herbicide for the second year in a row. This damage occurs when dicamba drifted to other, non-modified crops, the exact scenario further testing could have predicted. A class action lawsuit is pending.

Is It Too Late?

Monsanto wields incredible influence with government agencies, scientists, and researchers. This allows the company to continually deny and create confusion around health and environmental damages that their products are actually causing. And it’s scary. What chance do we have when those charged with upholding regulations created to protect the public are on the Monsanto Christmas card list?

It took nearly a decade from when Monsanto privately acknowledged the damage PCBs were causing for regulatory agencies to do something about it. The new formulation of dicamba, XtendiMax, has been on the market for less than a year and has been banned in both Arkansas and Missouri. The times are changing.

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USDA Drops Glyphosate Testing Plans, Makes Monsanto’s Life Easier

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is no longer planning to test samples of corn syrup for glyphosate residue. Plans to test for the herbicide were coordinated between the USDA and the Environmental Protection Agency and scheduled to begin in April of this year.

The cancellation of this program is good news for Monsanto. The company is currently embroiled in litigation, with plaintiffs in the case alleging that Roundup caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The extent of the EPA’s involvement in the lawsuit is not known, although the federal judge presiding over the case has indicated he is likely to subpoena the chair of the EPA’s Cancer Assessment Review Committee. Regardless of the lawsuit, the decision by the USDA to drop scheduled glyphosate testing is disheartening and further erodes their food integrity credibility.

Agencies in Disarray

The USDA’s failure to properly test for glyphosate residue is baffling. The agency’s reasons for not testing for the world’s most used pesticide center around that process being too expensive and inefficient. If that argument sounds familiar, that’s because it echoes Monsanto’s own thoughts on glyphosate tests. The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t necessarily agree. Last year they set in motion a testing program that found glyphosate in every sample of honey tested. Launched in February, it was indefinitely suspended by November.

When Demand Isn’t Enough

Europe and Canada have glyphosate testing programs in place, with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency planning to release their findings in the near future. This is the most used herbicide in the world, with over 250 million pounds of it used in the U.S. every year. Any layperson looking for it has only to walk into the nearest supermarket, restaurant, or convenience store. But we don’t know for sure, although we definitely want to.

The entire motivation behind the FDA’s short-lived was public demand. The American public and the U.S Government Accountability Office both have issues with the current ill-advised and unsustainable system. For a brief, shining period the USDA got it. The taxpayer need and demand for testing didn’t change. So what did?

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Monsanto Might Be in Big Trouble

Monsanto is currently embroiled in a lawsuit from farmers claiming that glyphosate caused their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, contradicting the EPA’s finding that the chemical is “…not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” On Tuesday, documents from the case were unsealed, including an internal email exchange at Monsanto that implies they wrote portions of EPA studies on the herbicide. According to one email, “…we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak…” Another email specifically mentions portions of studies that would be ghostwritten by Monsanto employees, as opposed to regulatory agencies.

Suspect Everyone

Federal judge Vince Chhabria, who is based in Northern California and is overseeing the litigation against the company, has indicated that, “My reaction is when you consider the relevance of the EPA’s reports, and you consider their relevance to this litigation, it seems appropriate to take Jess Rowland’s deposition…” Previous documents released in the case included a letter from a long-time EPA employee, alleging that Rowland and other colleagues played “political, conniving games with the science to favor the registrants.” Other emails directly from Rowland indicated that he would quash another assessment of glyphosate from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, among other things. Rowland’s testimony will be key for the plaintiff, as his time as the chair of the Cancer Assessment Review Committee coincides with the release of the EPA memo that disputes the World Health Organization’s classification of glyphosate as probably carcinogenic. A subpoena will likely be necessary to interview Rowland, as he has declined a previous, voluntary request.

The EPA is also concerned about their standing in this lawsuit. Raven M. Norris, the attorney representing them this case,  stated, “The agency has legitimate concerns about being pulled into private litigation…They want to be able to maintain their impartiality.” If the already released documents are any indication, impartiality is already off the table. They are left fighting for plausible deniability.

Monsanto has maintained its defense of glyphosate, and Bill Heydens, one of the alleged ghostwriters, has given sworn testimony about his original emails, claiming, “It was things like editing relatively minor things, editing for formatting, just for clarity, really just for overall readability to make it easier for people to read in a more organized fashion…”. Rowland will hopefully provide the other side of that conversation, but it is likely his testimony will protect the company.

A Vulnerable Position for the Agricultural Giant

Complaints and studies against Monsanto and glyphosate have been piling up for quite some time now. While the WHO has reclassified the chemical after extensive research, the U.S. regulators have lagged behind with a different script. The EPA may be able to claim that they were unaware of this manipulation, though plaintiff attorneys have suggested that the EPA “may be unaware of Monsanto’s deceptive authorship practices.” But there really isn’t a good position here. If Rowland implicates Monsanto and saves the EPA, Monsanto’s $66 million dollar merger with Bayer might be in jeopardy. If Rowland follows the money (history indicates probably) or martyrs himself, the EPA looks incompetent. For the rest of us, we’ll get a better picture of who is pulling the strings when this case is decided.

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Lawsuit Alleges that Monsanto Influenced the EPA’s Classification of Glyphosate

In 2015, the World Health Organization categorized glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. A new lawsuit, filed on behalf of cancer victims, claims the Environmental Protection Agency had the information to label glyphosate as carcinogenic two years earlier and instead chose to claim glyphosate was “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”

Marion Copley, now deceased, was a toxicologist at the EPA for 30 years. In 2013, she wrote a letter to Jess Rowland, the chair of the EPA’s Cancer Assessment Review Committee (CARC), listing 14 reasons to classify glyphosate as carcinogenic. Copley also alleged that Rowland and other select colleagues changed important reports to benefit companies like Monsanto.

The lawsuit is demanding the release of Jess Rowland’s communications with Monsanto during his time on the CARC and his involvement with the release of the EPA’s memo declaring glyphosate is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”

Something Isn’t Adding Up

This is not the first time there have been questions surrounding the EPA and their treatment of glyphosate. A glyphosate risk report that found glyphosate was not likely to be carcinogenic to humans, a direct contrast to the WHO report, was released in 2016 on the EPA website on April 29, only to be taken down four days later. This is not the first time two different groups of scientists (the IARC and CARC) have taken a look at the same problem and come up with conflicting views. But the EPA sent officials to help conduct the IARC study. The discrepancy in results was enough for the House of Representatives Science Committee to request interviews with four different EPA officials, including Jess Rowland. While it makes sense for the chair of the CARC to be mentioned, the letter from Marion Copley makes the EPA’s findings seem more like a dictate from private interests than an independent government report.

Where is Monsanto in All of This?

It goes without saying that Monsanto is deeply invested in keeping glyphosate from being labeled as a health hazard. It’s easy to sound like a conspiracy theorist, accusing the EPA of being in Monsanto’s back pocket, that EPA scientists collaborated with the scientists who found that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen and then walked it back. Monsanto is now using the EPA’s official report to dispute the study that the found that glyphosate was harmful. In that light, Marion Copley’s allegations of changing study findings to favor industry are not so outlandish. Until we have a transparent system, we have to trust that government science has our best interests at heart. Do we matter more than Monsanto?

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