"NGOs sue Monsanto over pesticide safety", 2 Mar 2016

A group of European NGOs on Wednesday sued agri-giant Monsanto and the EU's food safety watchdog for allegedly distorting scientific data on the carcinogenic effects of controversial weedkiller glyphosate, ahead of a key EU vote to renew its approval for another 10 years.

The legal complaint was filed in Vienna by Austrian environmental group Global 2000, which spearheads the movement against Monsanto and the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA).
"There are suspicions that EU authorities and the industry tried on the basis of incorrect data analysis to keep glyphosate in the European market despite its likely carcinogenic effects on humans," said Global 2000's lawyer, Josef Unterweger...

[I]n more recent times its usage has sparked controversy, in particular after the UN's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said last March that Roundup and similar products were "probably" carcinogenic.

However, the EFSA -- which advises the European Commission, the EU's executive body -- found in November 2015 that glyphosate was "unlikely" to cause cancer...

Global 2000 and other European NGOs... accuse the EFSA of basing its findings entirely on a study provided by the German food safety authority (BfR), which in turn "obtained its data directly from Monsanto".