[ShareTompkins] New on ISN: EU Safety Institutions Caught Plotting an Industry “escape route” Around Looming Pesticide Ban

[A Wilson]

New on ISN: EU Safety Institutions Caught Plotting an Industry  
“escape route” Around Looming Pesticide Ban

By admin | Published: May 26, 2014
Independent Science News has just published “EU Safety Institutions  
Caught Plotting an Industry “escape route” Around Looming Pesticide  
Ban” by Jonathan Latham, PhD, Executive Director of the Bioscience  
Resource Project.

Synopsis: Documents obtained by the nonprofit Pesticide Action Network  
(PAN) of Europe reveal that the health commission of the European  
Union (DG SANCO), which is responsible for protecting public health,  
is attempting to develop a procedural “escape route” to help  
companies evade an upcoming EU-wide ban on endocrine disrupting  
pesticides. This ban arose from strong scientific concerns over  
endocrine disrupting chemicals in food and the environment. As  
discovered by PAN Europe, DG SANCO is working with the European Food  
Safety Authority (EFSA) to construct a technical loophole that would  
allow these chemicals to stay on the market. The discovery of a secret  
plan is troubling for many reasons. It implies the leadership of the  
EU, and even its specific safety institutions, would rather ignore  
scientific knowledge, endanger the public, and disregard the  
democratic decision-making process, than go against the wishes of the  
chemical industry. The article quotes Science Director of The  
Bioscience Resource Project, Allison Wilson, PhD, “The public will be  
astounded and appalled to find that the institutions tasked with  
protecting them are secretly working against them. EFSA has shown  
itself to be untrustworthy and should be disbanded. Deep rethinking  
appears necessary since it is not only the EU that has failed to  
construct institutions capable of safely regulating toxic substances.  
Perhaps we should question the wisdom of economies dependent on  
synthetic chemicals and high risk products.”

Read the full article on ISN: EU Safety Institutions Caught Plotting  
an Industry “escape route” Around Looming Pesticide Ban.

More on the systemic nature of regulatory failure in the EU and USA:

Myers, John Peterson, et al. “Why Public Health Agencies Cannot  
Depend on Good Laboratory Practices as a Criterion for Selecting Data:  
The Case of Bisphenol A.” Environmental Health Perspectives 117.3  
(2009): 309-315.
The estrogenic chemical BPA is used extensively in food and drink  
packaging. Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies show harmful effects of  
BPA at low doses. Yet the EPA and the European Food Safety Authority  
disregard them all because they are not certified as GLP (Good  
Laboratory Practice). Instead, they have declared BPA to be safe based  
on two industry studies. These studies are GPA but they are  
dangerously flawed. The authors demonstrate why “public health  
decisions should be based on studies using appropriate protocols and  
the most sensitive assays. They should not be based on criteria that  
include or exclude data depending on whether or not the studies use  
GLP. Simply meeting GLP requirements is insufficient to guarantee  
scientific reliability and validity.”

Wagner, Wendy, and David Michaels. “Equal Treatment for Regulatory  
Science: Extending the Controls Governing the Quality of Public  
Research to Private Reseach.” Am. JL & Med. 30 (2004): 119.
“Worrisome evidence of compromised private research is effectively  
ignored as the “sound science” reforms take aim primarily at  
publicly funded research.” This paper is essential reading for anyone  
interested in scientific risk assessment; the types of flaws found in  
industry data; how industry controls data production and suppresses  
adverse results; unequal scrutiny of industry vs. public sector data;  
the misuse of CBI (confidential business information); and how to  
combat these pernicious and pervasive problems. Eye-opening data and  
analysis.

Snyder, Caroline. “The Dirty Work of Promoting  “Recycling” of  
America’s Sewage Sludge” International Journal of Occupational and  
Environmental Health 11.4 (2005): 415-427.
This powerful article documents how the EPA has joined with the Sludge  
industry to promote the farmland application of toxic sewage sludge.  
EPA and industry tactics include attacking and suppressing the  
research of independent scientists; funding industry-friendly science;  
and defending data known to be fraudulent. EPA uses tax-payer money to  
promote the use of toxic sludge on farmland and cover up its harmful  
effects. Rather than fund epidemiological or ecological studies into  
the harmful effects of farmland application, EPA funds workshops to  
explore whether illnesses reported by sludge victims are  
“psychosomatic”. Even the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has  
caved in to industry pressure, whitewashing known sludge hazards in  
its 2002 report Biosolids Applied to the Land. Snyder’s article shows  
that EPA and sludge industry PR follow the playbook of other “product  
defense” campaigns.

Robinson, Claire, et al. “Conflicts of Interest at the European Food  
Safety Authority Erode Public Confidence.” Journal of Epidemiology  
and Community Health 67.9 (2013): 717-720.
This paper outlines EFSA regulators’ numerous conflicts with the  
public interest and demands five key reforms. These are explained and  
include an end to reliance on industry-funded research for risk  
assessment and wider participation and greater transparency in the  
risk assessment process.

David L. Pelletier.”FDA’s regulation of genetically engineered  
foods: Scientific, legal and political dimensions” Food Policy 31  
(2006) 570–591.
Pelletier discusses how the FDA decided on its regulatory policy for  
GMOs, which remains in place today. “This paper reveals that the FDA  
responded to political pressure for a permissive regulatory approach  
by exploiting gaps in scientific knowledge, creatively interpreting  
existing food law and limiting public involvement in the policy’s  
development.” Pelletier documents the unscientific basis of GMO  
regulation, revealing the contrast between government and industry  
assurances that GMO regulation is science based and stringent and that  
GMOs are “safe” and the actual situation, which continues to be one  
of “great uncertainty“, due to the lack of a “major public  
research effort.”

Meyer, Hartmut, and Angelika Hilbeck. “Rat Feeding Studies with  
Genetically Modified Maize – a Comparative Evaluation of Applied  
Methods and Risk Assessment Standards” Environmental Sciences Europe  
25.1 (2013): 1-11.
In this important review of GMO risk assessment methods, Meyer and  
Hilbeck documented bias in the way that EFSA regulators evaluated the  
controversial rat feeding study research carried out by Seralini et  
al. (2012). In addition, they identified inappropriate laboratory  
practices that are commonplace in GMO studies. These practices  
compromise research integrity, often by introducing an industry  
favorable bias. See also: Researchers Uncover Multiple Sources of Bias  
in GMO Risk Assessments.

Allison Wilson, PhD
Science Director
The Bioscience Resource Project

phone: 1 (607) 319 0279
a.wilson at bioscienceresource.org
www.independentsciencenews.org
and
www.bioscienceresource.org

"Good with Science"

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