NGO questions industry access to chemicals data

Corporate Europe Observatory, a campaign group, has criticised the European Food Safety Authority for giving industry advanced access to its glyphosate safety assessment.

An article published on 12 July by the group, which campaigns on corporate lobbying, described communications that took place between Efsa and industry representatives in the weeks before the authority published its safety assessment on the pesticide glyphosate in November 2015.

Efsa’s verdict proved controversial because it found that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer in humans, in contrast to an assessment from the International Agency for Research on Cancer.