#8 Carey Gillam Presentation at EU Parliament Hearing on Glyphosate

Video #8 of 14 from European Parliament Hearing: ‘The Monsanto Papers and Glyphosate’ © European Union, 2017

On Oct. 12, 2017, European Parliament held a public hearing discussing the Monsanto Papers and glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer.

Glyphosate is the most widely-used agricultural chemical in the world. However, concerns have been raised over the chemical’s link to cancer.

In this hearing held by the Environment (ENVI) and Agriculture (AGRI) Committees in the EU Parliament, legislators, public health advocates, scientists and others convened to provide expert analysis on glyphosate, with particular attention paid to the stunning revelations from the Monsanto Papers, which can be viewed in their entirety here

The video above includes a presentation by Carey Gillam of U.S. Right to Know (USRTK). In her presentation, Ms. Gillam outlines the “overwhelming evidence of Monsanto’s attempts to deceive in ways that manipulate the press and policy makers.”

According to Gillam, the Monsanto Papers show the following:

- Monsanto ghostwrote research papers that assert glyphosate’s safety for publication and regulatory review.

- Monsanto provided alternative assessments for Roundup / glyphosate studies showing harm in order to convince regulators to discount evidence of safety problems.

- Monsanto created a network of scientists to push glyphosate safety to regulators while appearing to be independent of industry. Gillam points out that the speaker that followed her at the hearing, Dr. David Kirkland, is one of several scientists that received funding from Monsanto to study and/or review glyphosate.

- Monsanto used PR tactics to help ghostwrite articles and blogs that appear in publications using names of scientists that appear to be independent.

- Monsanto use front groups that work to discredit journalists and scientists that publicize safety concerns re: glyphosate.

- Monsanto developed close ties to EPA. These ties were so close that Monsanto felt comfortable enough to distribute talking points to EPA for use in dealing with the press after the IARC glyphosate report was released in 2015.

- Monsanto successfully pushed EPA to remove a top scientist from an EPA Scientific Advisory Panel.

- Monsanto enlisted at least three top EPA officials to block another U.S. government agency’s review of glyphosate in 2015. Monsanto said they were worried ATSDR would agree with IARC’s conclusion on glyphosate.

Gillam ended her presentation by saying: “Monsanto says it has nothing to hide. But I want you to ask yourself: why would Monsanto need to go to these lengths? Why would they need to ghostwrite research papers? Set up networks of scientists? Why would they be worried about the IARC review and the ATSDR review? These are not the actions of a company that has nothing to hide. This is not how you promote a product that is actually proven safe. This is how you whitewash unfortunate and unprofitable facts. This is not by accident, but by design, and it serves Monsanto very well but it does not seem that it serves the public interest.”

For all other videos from the EU Parliament Hearing on the Monsanto Papers, please visit the Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman YouTube page.

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