US company Monsanto has rejected claims that glyphosate, the world's biggest-selling weedkiller, sold as the brand Round-Up, which it makes, poses any health or environmental risk, despite claims an EU ban may be imminent.
Many of the biotech company's GM crops also have a gene incorporated in them to make them resist the herbicide's effects.
A Swedish study indicating a potential link between non-Hodgkins's lymphoma (a form of cancer) and glyphosate had ignored "earlier, widespread rebuttal of this by a range of independent experts", according to Monsanto's Irish business manager, Dr Patrick O'Reilly.
It was also reported this week that glyphosate faced an EU ban after a confidential report concluded it killed beneficial insects and spiders. Channel 4 News claimed the report proposed the herbicide should not be approved for use, pending further research. The company insisted that glyphosate, known as Round-Up, had been established as one of the world's safest pesticides. Dr O'Reilly said more than 1,000 studies had confirmed its favourable health and environmental safety profile.
He added: "From a health perspective, glyphosate is listed by the US Environmental Protection Agency as `category E', the most favourable category possible, indicating `evidence of non-carcinogenicity for humans'. "
From an environmental perspective, glyphosate left no residues in soil and was the only product authorised for use in highly sensitive environments such as the Galapagos Islands, he noted. Equally, it was considered suitable for use near water courses.
