How many pesticides like glyphosate are there? The EU opens its review black box while Taiwan plans to relax residue limits

Evidence that Monsanto concealed the cancer risk of glyphosate keeps flowing out in US courts; at the urging of the US House of Representatives, the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) report on the health risk assessment of glyphosate, sealed for four years under Monsanto pressure, has finally seen the light of day. The European Parliament revealed that the glyphosate review report Germany submitted to the EU plagiarised Monsanto extensively.

The main ingredient of Roundup, the world's most widely used herbicide - glyphosate opens the black box of pesticide review.

The health risks of glyphosate are becoming ever more conclusively proven, and consumers and environmental groups in Europe and the US keep demanding stricter regulation. Yet Taiwan's Food and Drug Administration announced online on 23 April a plan to add glyphosate residue tolerance levels for 10 crops, raising them from not detectable to 6 to 10 ppm and so on. These include rapeseed, mostly grown from GM varieties, as well as durum wheat and sorghum and other grains that have likewise been hit in the US-China trade war.

The Food and Drug Administration drafted the residue tolerance levels with reference to international standards from Europe, the US, Japan and others, but what raises doubts is that in the notes on the "reason for the addition and revision and the basis of reference", it lists the carcinogenicity risk assessments by Europe, the US, Japan and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) under the World Health Organization (WHO) for eight pesticides including abamectin and clofentezine. But it conspicuously omits that the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies glyphosate as Group 2A, probably carcinogenic to humans.

Court of Justice of the European Union: commercial confidentiality cannot be grounds for refusing to disclose pesticide toxicity data

Although the government holds the power of review, manufacturer-led research creates information asymmetry: not only is it hard for citizens to obtain, sometimes even the reviewing agencies cannot analyse the raw data, creating regulatory loopholes, and the result is the absurd situation of manufacturers dictating the rules of the game.

Under the unrelenting pressure of European citizens' groups and environmental political parties, the Glyphosate Task Force, led by Monsanto and made up of 23 companies, opened some of the data in 2016. Yet those who wanted to view the data had to pass through layer after layer of hurdles to enter the reading room, and could not take notes or make photocopies, and some data was deleted, such as information related to "best laboratory practice".

After several more months of struggle, the European Food Safety Authority handed over more than 100,000 pages of research reports related to the glyphosate application. Yet under the cover of the black box of scientific hegemony, glyphosate had already passed the review successfully again, obtaining a 5-year renewal of approval at the end of 2017 after Germany switched sides.

The European Parliament demands that all research used for pesticide review must be made public immediately and automatically, without the need for an application; only this can help make the process transparent and allow independent researchers to help confirm whether there are scientific errors. The Court of Justice of the European Union also ruled: "Commercial confidentiality cannot be grounds for refusing to disclose toxicity data related to pesticide hazards and risks."

The review of scientific research affects public policy, production models and ways of life, and the power it holds goes without saying. Opening the black box of pesticide review and rebuilding the credibility of science and public confidence concerns not only health and the environment, but is also a step forward for democracy. Yet in the way the Food and Drug Administration recently announced the addition of glyphosate tolerance levels, the Taiwan government is still standing still.

Note 1: A point estimate in sample statistics can hardly be exactly the parameter of the population, so interval estimation is mostly used. The commonly heard 95% confidence level means that 95% of interval estimates will contain the population mean. It can also be said that when the sample shows a normal distribution, if independent sampling is done 100 times, 95 of them will fall within the interval estimated by the researcher.

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Is the pesticide review agency just a mouthpiece for pesticide companies? The European Parliament reveals that Germany's glyphosate review directly plagiarised Monsanto's report