Chinese citizens have filed a lawsuit against China’s Ministry of Agriculture, demanding that the agency make public an animal study used to approve Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide nearly three decades ago.

Monsanto provided the animal test to the Ministry in 1985, but to date the Chinese government has refused to release the report, citing Monsanto’s right to protect their commercial secrets.

The lawsuit is demanding increased transparency over Roundup, with Chinese citizens eager to review the supposed “safety” study used for its approval. The case has been accepted but a date for a hearing has not yet been set.¹

While genetically modified (GM) food crops are banned for cultivation in China, the government is reportedly “trying to foster positive public opinion of GMO food crops.”² The country also imports 65 percent of the world’s soybeans, many of which are GM and doused with Monsanto’s Roundup. China is also the biggest producer of Roundup worldwide.³

Roundup’s Active Ingredient Ruled a ‘Probable Carcinogen’

The lawsuit comes on the heels of an announcement by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, as a “probable carcinogen” (Class 2A).⁴ According to Dr. Aaron Blair, a cancer epidemiologist and scientist emeritus at the National Institutes of Health (NIH):⁵

“There were enough studies to suggest something was going on, but not enough to be sure that was absolutely happening.”

IARC is the research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO) and is considered the global gold standard for carcinogenicity studies, so this determination is of considerable importance. IARC is also one of the five research agencies from which the OEHHA—which is the California agency of environmental hazards—gets its reports to declare carcinogens under Prop. 65.

So, eventually, foods containing detectable levels of glyphosate will likely have to have a Prop. 65 warning label to be sold in California. While glyphosate is commonly used on conventional crops, GM crops tend to be more heavily contaminated.

GM Roundup Ready crops are designed to tolerate greater amounts of the chemical, and farmers growing GM plants tend to have more trouble with resistant weeds, requiring ever-heavier herbicide applications.