The European Commission is reportedly ready to grant a new 15-year license to the controversial weedkiller Glyphosate.  This is despite the UN World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declaring that glyphosate is "probably a carcinogenic".

The EU's food watchdog - the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) - last year issued a report contradicting WHO and ruled that the substance from the vast chemical copany Monsanto was unlikely to be carcinogenic.  The agriculture and food industries welcomed that move. 

But it turned out that EFSA's research relied on six industry-funded and partly unpublished studies.  96 prominent experts, including almost the whole IARC team, labasted EFSA's work as "not credible because it is not supported by the evidence" (.pdf link).  And then this week, another 14 scientists signed a consensus statement saying that regulatory estimates of tolerable exposure levels for glyphosate were based on outdated science.

"Glyphosate was once described by Monsanto as 'safe as table salt'.  Now science is telling us that it's a serious threat for our health and the environment'" said Franziska Achterberg, Greenpeace EU's food policy director.  "Ignoring the evidence for another 15 years will cost us dearly.  Europe needs an exit strategy from chemical pesticides," she added.

The European Commission has nonetheless drafted a law to grant the license to Monsanto's herbicide, based on the report that scores of scientists and environmentalists say is flawed.  EU national representatives will vote on it at a meeting in Brussels on 7 March.