Despite the new administration’s attempts to breathe fresh air into Washington, D.C., crony capitalism continues in many federal government agencies.
For example, the EPA recently initiated a probe into possible collusion between a former high-ranking EPA official and Monsanto, manufacturer of the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate), which farmers use to grow genetically modified (GM) crops.
The EPA’s inspector general (IG) initiated the probe. As in other government agencies, the EPA’s IG is a quasi-independent “watch dog” looking over its shoulders. It is not always like the Charlie Chaplin movie, or the fox guarding the henhouse.
It appears that a former EPA official colluded with Monsanto to cover up evidence that Roundup causes cancer. (My own independent forensic medical research also documented that Roundup causes cancer.)
Subpoenaed EPA documents reveal a manager in the EPA’s pesticide division allegedly bragging to a Monsanto executive in April 2015 that he could kill investigations into Roundup. Internal Monsanto memos claim the EPA official told them, “If I can kill this I should get a medal.”
These are the kind of bureaucrats we have “protecting” the environment and our health. In China, this kind of public corruption and malfeasance gets a public execution.
DHHS now worried about Roundup
Another government agency — the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) — now has growing concerns about the toxicity of Roundup. They worry it severely damages human health, not to mention destroying the Earth’s ecosystem.
In fact, the DHHS recently tasked a review of Roundup by its Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). In my experience, the DHHS, at least once upon a time, was better at seeing the scientific evidence and basing decisions on a professional medical basis, compared to the EPA, which has been totally politicized from the beginning.
When I first arrived in Washington 30 years ago, I asked an older family friend who was an environmental lawyer why they didn’t let ATSDR, as part of Health and Human Services, do the health evaluations for environmental chemicals like pesticides? Instead, the EPA, rife with political agendas, handled the evaluations.
My friend told me that the DHHS had effectively built a “firewall” against the EPA to avoid becoming totally politicized themselves.
Apparently, the EPA’s collusion with Monsanto was, in part, an attempt to block the DHHS review of glyphosate. Sadly, taxpayers must support these duplicative, redundant dueling federal agencies. The only department the federal government doesn’t have in place (yet) is a Department of Redundancy Department.
There is now a Special Agent in Charge for the EPA’s criminal investigations division. Another step could involve investigators at the Department of Justice, Public Integrity Section (if they aren’t too busy chasing politically generated shadows).
In Europe, they are now considering whether or not to renew Roundup’s application to stay on the market in the European Union. The original European approval for Roundup has expired, and they have to decide by the end of 2017.
In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyons, France, issued a conclusion that Roundup causes cancer. IARC relies only on evidence published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
So — it should have been case closed.
But the European Union also uses unpublished, proprietary data “fed” to them by chemical companies in assessing food safety to make its decisions.
In May 2017, Christopher Portier, the former associate director of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, sent a formal warning to the EU stating that some raw data shows that Roundup undoubtedly causes cancer. However, the EU did not include this evidence in their own assessment. Portier is now contacting the U.S. EPA administrator.
For years politicians and bureaucrats have kept us distracted from the real threats to the environment and to public health. Indeed, President Obama, while in office, and candidate Hillary Clinton, while on her (long) campaign trail, gave a free pass to Roundup and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which are resistant to Roundup. Instead, they focused on the vagaries of “climate change” and ignored the real and present pesticide dangers to natural plants, bees, butterflies, and wildlife —backed by solid scientific data and evidence.
The latest suspicions are that Roundup is also behind the skyrocketing rates of gluten sensitivity and wheat intolerance. I will give you all the details in next month’s Daily Dispatch.
When it comes to Roundup, it looks like the time has finally come to “round up the usual suspect.”
Source:
“EPA IG probing whether agency staffer colluded with Monsanto,
Politics,” Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com) 6/6/2017