US Biotech Giant Never Tested Poisonous Ingredient

On February 13, the High Court in Lyon found in favour of a French farmer in his case against the American biotech company Monsanto. The firm, which has appealed, was declared responsible for the poisoning of grain grower Paul Francois, who had accidentally inhaled the pesticide Lasso.

The Monsanto company is currently the subject of several complaints before the French Council of State, the highest administrative jurisdiction in France. The complaints call for the repeal of the authorization to market three of Monsanto’s products. On the same day, February 13, in one of these cases, the public rapporteur of the Council of State spoke out against one of the most widely used pesticides in France, RoundUp Express.

The rapporteur’s statement came in the wake of demands made by Jacques Maret, an anti-GM farmer and member of the Movement for Rights and Respect for Future Generations (MDRGF in French) concerning one of three “plant protection” products in the RoundUp range.

In his conclusions, the public rapporteur found that any repeal of the authorization to market Roundup Express would be well founded.

Acceptable risk

In June 2009, in a letter addressed to the Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, the MDRGF had called for the market authorization to be cancelled and the words “authorized to be used in gardens” to be removed from the pesticide’s label. In his response dated October 14, 2009, then minister Bruno Lemaire asserted that the allegations against Monsanto could not be admissible to call into question the product, stating that:

The risks to humans and the environment associated with the RoundUp Express preparation for the uses requested, in amateur gardens, are considered acceptable.

Undeterred, the MDRGF and Jacques Maret took their case to the magistrates of the Council of State.

The rapporteur to the Council of State cited problems observed in the approval procedure of RoundUp Express in his opinion. It appears the pesticide had never been fully evaluated, as a representative of the High Court explained:

This is due to a legal error committed during the appraisal process of the product by the administration. In the opinion that preceded the Minister’s decision to authorize the marketing of this product, AFSSA¹) did not explain the presence and role in the product of one of its component substances; that does not mean that the substance in question or its association with other components of the product is dangerous. But it is a substance that can produce a specific effect on plants. In the assessment of the public rapporteur AFSSA, in order to fully inform the Minister, should have declared that explicitly in their report.

Label

The active ingredient of Roundup Express is a molecule: glyphosate. For glyphosate to enter the plant, it needs an adjuvant, an agent that modifies the effects of another ingredient. This adjuvant, pelargonic acid, is classified by the EU as an active substance that must be included in the list of a product’s ingredients. It was also classified as such by AFSSA. But it was not included on the product’s labels [PDF].

Furthermore, the mixture of the glyphosate and adjuvant had never been tested. According to Jacques Maret:

Without this adjuvant, it’s a bit like if you were offered a free vaccine without a needle and syringe. (It was) neither mentioned, nor tested. But an EU directive requires that the tests be complete, and not just carried out on the detergent molecule². At Monsanto, we are told that the molecule is just there to accompany the detergent.

In the specifications for Monsanto Roundup Express [PDF], the adjuvant molecule – pelargonic acid – is presented as an active ingredient of the mixture. François Veillerette, spokesman for MDRGF, explains:

With RoundUp Express, we could  see that there was pelargonic acid in the composition. (It’s) classified as an active ingredient by the European Commission, and thus must be tested in the same way as the rest.

“The mixture must also be tested,” insists Jacques Maret, adding that “the toxicity of Roundup Express can be immediate and long term. It can cause embryonic malformations according to a study in the United States among women and children of GM Monsanto farmers, which observed malformations and hormonal changes.”

If the Council of State follows the recommendations and public opinion of their rapporteur, then the Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries will be obliged to review the market authorization of the pesticide within six months of the Council’s judgement. We attempted to contact the Monsanto group for comment in the course of writing this article, without success.

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1. now ANSES, the French agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety [↩]
2. in this case glyphosate [↩]