With glyphosate back up for re-registration in the EU in the year after next, it might be expected that those global anti-forces who oppose it will become vocal again.

Many, especially farmers, will be very aware of the ongoing cancer-causing controversy around the active and the huge pay-outs that are ongoing from new owners, Bayer, in the US. But is there a twist appearing in the story?

New studies

A number of studies in recent years suggest that glyphosate products may actually prohibit cancer cell growth in humans, rather than promote it.

The most recent scientific paper was published last year in the Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part B.

The authors of this paper reported that the co-formulants used in some of the products actually inhibited the growth of cancerous cells in human liver, lung and nerve tissue, while glyphosate itself showed no effect either way.

Huge twist

If Roundup, or one of the ingredients in its formulation, is satisfactorily proven to be able to repel the growth of cancer cells, and possibly be useful as a cancer treatment, that would be a huge twist in the ongoing saga.

However, while these are the summarised findings from this research, a cancer treatment is certainly not yet an appropriate conclusion to draw from the research to date.

The studies are largely exploratory and most of them use in-vitro or cell culture studies. These involve the use of large doses of chemical to see what happens, and they are not a reliable way to assess toxicity in the real world.

Whether or not these suppressing effects are valid or recordable at concentrations that closer resemble the background traces in our environment remains to be seen.

It would be very inappropriate for an industry that wants best science to be used for decision-making to try to make too much out of these early findings.

But one conclusion in that paper may be valid and that is that "a new approach for the assessment of toxicity should be made for this active".