European Food Safety Authority to share glyphosate assessment data

Glyphosate is an active substance widely used in herbicides
Glyphosate is an active substance widely used in herbicides

The European Food Safety Authority is to share glyphosate assessment data, saying the move is part of its commitment to open risk assessment.

The information will be shared with a group of MEPs following a public access to document request.

The information will be sufficient to enable a third-party scientist to scrutinise the evaluation of glyphosate that was carried out by EFSA and EU Member States.

In releasing the raw data from these industry studies, EFSA will further increase the transparency of the glyphosate evaluation - while complying with its obligations under European law regarding the protection of commercially sensitive information.

Bernhard Url, EFSA’s Executive Director, said: "Transparency and openness are essential values for EFSA because they strengthen confidence in science.

"Sharing the data that underpin our work is a key ingredient in making science reproducible and therefore trusted.

"We will continue to make data available whenever we can, while striking the balance between transparency and the legitimate interest of study owners."

Greenpeace has claimed that EFSA partly based its risk assessment of glyphosate on confidential studies commissioned by glyphosate producers, while the IARC assessment was only based on publicly available scientific evidence.