Health Canada Adds Glyphosate to Continuous Oversight Policy

By Robert Arnason
Published June 6, 2026 on The Western Producer

Health Canada is paying more attention to the safety of glyphosate – the most popular herbicide in the world.

On June 4, the Toronto Star reported that Health Canada’s Pesticides Regulatory Directorate is monitoring glyphosate, as the herbicide is now part of its “continuous oversight policy.”

Continuous oversight is tracking and evaluating new information around the safety of a pesticide, says an explainer on the Government of Canada website.

Health Canada made the decision, last fall, to apply its continuous oversight policy to glyphosate.

Why It Matters

Canadian farmers rely on glyphosate, also known by its trade name Roundup, to control weeds on tens of millions of acres

This new status could lead to a special review of glyphosate, where Health Canada takes a detailed look at the herbicide’s safety, the Star reported.

Bayer, in an email, said Health Canada is adopting a new way of evaluating all pesticides, where the department is shifting to continuous monitoring.

“But this process does not indicate a health concern or activate special reviews,” Bayer said.

The department is changing how it monitors the safety of pesticides, says a Health Canada website. 

Instead of reviewing a product on a particular schedule, say once every 15 years, it will monitor and consider new scientific information, as required.

“This will ensure that (Health Canada) stays abreast of emerging risks related to pesticides… (and) prioritizes regulatory action when necessary,” says the Health Canada website.

New Information About Glyphosate

Ecojustice, an environmental law group in Canada, says there’s new evidence that warrants a special review of glyphosate.

A special review happens when there are reasonable grounds that the pesticide poses unacceptable risks to human health or the environment.

In early December, the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology redacted a 2000 study on glyphosate, over allegations that Monsanto employees were ghostwriters of the paper.

As well, the conclusions in the paper were possibly based on unpublished studies from Monsanto.

The decision to redact the paper casts doubt on the safety of glyphosate, since scientists have frequently cited it as evidence that the herbicide is harmless, says Ecojustice and other groups.

That study, however, is just one of hundreds of published reports on glyphosate, Bayer said.

As well, the 2,000 paper was a review article and contained no original data.

“Thousands of studies have been conducted on the safety of glyphosate products, and the vast majority of published studies had no Monsanto involvement,” Bayer said.

“The consensus among leading regulatory bodies worldwide is that glyphosate can be used safely as directed and is not carcinogenic.”

Health Canada Says Glyphosate Not a Carcinogen

In January of 2019, Health Canada issued a definitive statement on the safety of the herbicide.

Following a review, that went on for years, it said “no pesticide regulatory authority in the world currently considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed.”

In a statement to Glacier Farm Media in December, a Health Canada spokesperson said the redaction of the 2000 study doesn’t change its established position on glyphosate.

“While this review was previously considered in our assessment, it is important to note that the primary data sources were independently evaluated by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency,” the department said.

Health Canada may believe that glyphosate is safe, when used properly, but that hasn’t stopped lawsuits in multiple countries.

Multiple firms have been recruiting Canadians to join class actions against Bayer, including McKenzie Lake Lawyers in London, Ont.

The suits claim that glyphosate caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other forms of cancer.

Bayer maintains that glyphosate is safe, when used according to label directions.

“Our glyphosate products have been used safely and successfully in Canada and internationally for nearly 50 years. Leading health regulators around the world have repeatedly concluded that glyphosate is not a carcinogen,” say Bayer officials.

Read the original article on The Western Producer »

Bayer’s Monsanto Deal Destroyed Billions and Rewrote M&A Risk Rules

By Emily Trask
Published _June 1, 2026 on AgroLatam

A decade after Bayer announced its blockbuster acquisition of Monsanto, the company is still paying the price for a deal that reshaped global agriculture while becoming one of the most expensive legal and financial miscalculations in corporate history.

Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto for $62 billion, announced in 2016 and completed in 2018, is now widely regarded as one of the most expensive mistakes in modern agribusiness history. Led by then-CEO Werner Baumann, the deal aimed to create a global agricultural powerhouse by combining Monsanto’s seed technology and digital farming capabilities with Bayer’s crop protection portfolio. However, billions of dollars in litigation tied to Roundup, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide, transformed what was expected to be a growth-driven acquisition into a cautionary tale for corporate dealmakers worldwide.

At the time, Bayer argued that the acquisition would position the company as the undisputed leader in agricultural innovation. The merger brought together complementary businesses spanning seeds, biotechnology, precision agriculture, and crop protection products.

Yet investors immediately expressed concern. Following reports of Bayer’s interest in Monsanto, the German company lost roughly $15 billion in market value, reflecting widespread skepticism about both the purchase price and the risks attached to the deal.

Despite those concerns, Bayer moved forward with what became the largest acquisition in its more than 160-year history.

The roots of Bayer’s troubles can be traced back to a warning sign that many analysts believed was already visible before the transaction closed.

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization (WHO), classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Although regulatory agencies including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and European authorities continued to support the safety of glyphosate-based products, the classification sparked intense legal scrutiny.

That scrutiny quickly evolved into litigation.

In 2018, just months after Bayer completed the Monsanto acquisition, a California jury ruled in favor of a groundskeeper who claimed that Roundup caused his cancer. The verdict opened the floodgates for thousands of similar lawsuits across the United States.

What initially appeared to be a manageable legal challenge soon became one of the largest corporate litigation battles in modern history.

The financial consequences have been staggering.

Since acquiring Monsanto, Bayer has spent more than $10 billion settling claims related to Roundup. The company has also set aside nearly $14 billion in litigation provisions, highlighting the ongoing financial burden associated with the lawsuits.

The impact on shareholders has been severe. Bayer’s market value today remains below the amount it paid for Monsanto, making the acquisition a textbook example of how legal liabilities can overwhelm the strategic benefits of a corporate merger.

For many investors, the deal represents one of the clearest examples of value destruction caused by underestimated litigation risk.

THE PARADOX: THE AGRICULTURAL BUSINESS ACTUALLY PERFORMED WELL.

Ironically, Bayer’s core agricultural strategy was not the problem.

The company’s Crop Science division has delivered stronger growth than several other business segments since the acquisition. Since 2018, sales within the agricultural unit have increased by roughly 2% annually on average, outperforming Bayer’s pharmaceutical business, which has experienced relatively flat growth.

This paradox underscores a key lesson for agribusiness executives and investors: the acquisition itself generated operational benefits, but the legal liabilities attached to Monsanto dramatically altered the economics of the transaction.

Had Bayer negotiated a lower purchase price, obtained specialized litigation insurance, or conducted deeper legal risk assessments, analysts argue that the outcome might have been significantly different.

Today, the Bayer-Monsanto transaction is studied in business schools and boardrooms as a landmark example of the importance of due diligence in major acquisitions.

Read the original article on AgroLatam »

The Right Chemistry: Putting Concerns about Weed Killer Glyphosate into Perspective

By Joe Schwarcz
Published March 20, 2026 on The Montreal Gazette

I don’t often quote the Bible, but I’ll snip a phrase from Matthew 7:7: “Seek and you shall find.” Matthew did not have chemistry in mind, but of course I do.

My take is that if you test a chemical with enough doses and endpoints in rodents, you will often find some statistically significant effect. The key question, though, is whether that effect is biologically meaningful and relevant to human exposure. That question repeatedly comes up in discussions of glyphosate, the most widely-used weed killer in the world.

Knee-Jerk Reaction to Glyphosate

I have followed the glyphosate story closely since the 1990s when the first crops that were genetically engineered to resist this herbicide were introduced. Almost immediately there was a knee-jerk reaction against genetic engineering, as is commonly seen with the introduction of any novel technology be it vaccination, microwave ovens or cellphones.

Farmers, however, welcomed the new technology because it meant that fields could be sprayed with glyphosate to eliminate weeds without causing harm to crops. But this also meant greater use of glyphosate and that precipitated literally hundreds of studies about the risks of occupational exposure to glyphosate as well as of the consequences of consuming trace residues in food.

Obviously, I haven’t read all the papers that have been published about this chemical, but I think I have read enough to form an opinion. I’ve looked at numerous rodent feeding studies, tests for glyphosate in people’s urine and epidemiological investigations of cancer rates among applicators. 

My conclusion? Dietary residues present no risk to the consumer, but a small risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in applicators who do not use proper protective equipment cannot be ruled out.

In 2012, the media fawned all over a paper published by Gilles-Éric Séralini and his group that showed pictures of large tumours on rats that had been fed corn genetically modified to resist glyphosate. The study was widely criticized within the scientific community for using too few animals and using a type of rat prone to spontaneous tumours.

There were also criticisms of the researchers’ statistics with some scientists pointing out that there was actually no statistical difference in tumour incidence in the experimental and control groups. The paper was eventually retracted because the evidence was deemed to be “inconclusive.” Nevertheless, the idea that glyphosate is linked to cancer was implanted in the public mind.

Misunderstanding About Carcinogenic Classification

The controversy picked up steam in 2015 when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) placed glyphosate in its category 2A, reserved for substances that are “probably carcinogenic to humans.” There is much misunderstanding about this classification, which is based on hazard, not risk. Hazard means that a substance has the capability of causing cancer under some condition. That may be the fostering the growth of cancer cells in a Petri dish or triggering a tumour by feeding extremely high doses to test animals. Risk is a determination of whether a substance can cause cancer under real-world conditions.

Any novel pharmaceutical, food additive or pesticide that is introduced requires a determination of the acceptable daily intake (ADI), expressed as mg/kg body weight/day. This is the amount that can be consumed every day, over a lifetime, without appreciable health risk. This is determined by toxicity, reproductive and genotoxic studies in rodents fed different doses of the substance. An important determination is that of the no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL), the maximum amount that has no effect on the test animals.

After everything has been factored in, the ADI for glyphosate, as determined by the most stringent regulatory agencies, is 0.5 mg/kg/day. Based on residues in food, a typical daily dietary exposure for people has been found to be 0.001 mg/kg, which is 1/500th of the ADI. Furthermore, carcinogenicity in rodents begins at a dose that is roughly 100,000 times greater than the estimated daily glyphosate residue in the human diet. That is why I don’t think there is a need to be concerned about food residues.

Occupational Exposure is a Different Story

There are a few case-control studies in which patients diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma were compared with people free of this disease and were also surveyed about their use of glyphosate. The natural incidence of this cancer is about two per cent, and among the heaviest applicators it was found to be 2.6 per cent, which means roughly an extra six cases in 1,000 people over a lifetime. These would be people who use glyphosate occupationally at exposures never encountered by the general public. And, of course, an association can never prove a cause-and-effect relationship. Workers occupationally exposed to glyphosate may be exposed to various other agrochemicals as well.

The problem with case-control studies is that they are based on human memory, which is not very reliable. People diagnosed with cancer are more likely to dredge their memory for substances that they think may have caused the disease, and because they may have heard of a link to glyphosate, they may report having used it while healthy people are less likely to report its use.

Far more reliable are prospective studies in which subjects record their use of a substance over years and researchers then look at their documented health records to see if there is a link. The most famous such study is the Agricultural Health Study in the U.S. that followed tens of thousands of pesticide applicators, and found no statistically significant association between glyphosate use and overall cancer or non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Given that the evidence of glyphosate being a health concern for humans ranges from scant for occupational exposure to none for consumer exposure, how do we account for the fact that Bayer — the marketer of Roundup, the most popular glyphosate formulation — has paid out billions of dollars to settle lawsuits that claimed injury due to the chemical?

Courts Don’t Necessarily Follow Science

Unfortunately, courts do not make judgements solely on the basis of science. Juries can be swayed by compelling anecdotes, emotional narratives, cherry-picked data, and especially by what is seen as misconduct by big companies.

A major paper published in 2000 that was widely quoted to demonstrate the safety of glyphosate was recently retracted because of potential ghostwriting by employees of Monsanto, the producer of Roundup at the time. There were also concerns about undisclosed financial compensation to the listed authors and too much reliance on unpublished data supplied by the company. The paper was retracted because of these ethical concerns, not because of falsified data as some have claimed.

Finally, consider that glyphosate is just one of the thousands of chemicals to which we are regularly exposed and I suspect that if each of these were tested with the same rigour as glyphosate, some adverse effect at some dose in some species would be detected.

“Seek and you shall find.”

Read the original article on The Montreal Gazette »

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