The group of scientists, regulators and vaccine manufacturers meets twice a year to decide which strain of seasonal flu to include in the vaccine for the upcoming winter season, in this case for the Northern Hemisphere.

But it is also a chance to discuss the risk of animal viruses spilling over to humans and causing a pandemic. At this week’s meeting, H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b was a key topic, the World Health Organization (WHO) and global flu experts told Reuters. They will brief reporters on both the seasonal flu vaccine composition and spillover risks later on Friday.

“We are more prepared (than for COVID), but even if we are more prepared, we are not yet prepared enough,” Sylvie Briand, WHO director of global infectious hazard preparedness, said ahead of the meeting. “We need to really continue the efforts for a flu pandemic.”

Experts have been tracking H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b since it emerged in 2020, but recent reports of mass deaths in infected mammals from seals to bears, as well as potential mammal-to-mammal transmission on a Spanish mink farm last year, have raised concern.

However, there have been very few human cases, and the WHO currently assesses the threat to humans as low.

“This is a natural experiment playing out in front of us, and I don’t think we are complacent,” said Nicola Lewis, director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Influenza at the Crick Institute in London. Speaking before the meeting, she said it would include assessments of the situation worldwide.

Experts also discussed potential vaccine development.

WHO-affiliated labs already hold two flu virus strains that are closely related to the circulating H5N1 virus, which could be used by vaccine manufacturers to create a human vaccine if needed. One of them was added after the previous WHO flu meeting in September 2022, and labs around the world are currently testing how closely both subtypes match the strain spreading among animals to determine whether any more updates are necessary.

A number of companies that produce seasonal flu vaccines can also make pandemic flu vaccines. For example, GSK and CSL Seqirus are already working with the United States Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to test shots based on one of the closely-related strains.

Having these strains ready could save around two months in the development of a vaccine, said the WHO’s Briand. But getting enough vaccine developed quickly would still remain a challenge in a pandemic situation, the experts said.

— Jennifer Rigby is Reuters’ global health correspondent in London, England.

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In his ruling, U.S. District Judge William Shubb called California’s cancer warning misleading and said the state’s label is not backed up by regulatory findings.

Regulators worldwide have determined glyphosate to be safe with the exception of the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, which determined the herbicide to be a “probable carcinogen” in 2015.

Shubb on Monday said that finding alone did not support California’s requirement to label glyphosate products with the term “known to the state of California to cause cancer.”

Bayer in a statement welcomed the decision, calling the ruling very important for California agriculture and for science.

The ruling, which permanently bars California from requiring a cancer warning on glyphosate-based products, is separate from the wider litigation over whether Roundup causes a type of blood cancer.

Bayer, which acquired Roundup with its US$63 billion purchase of Monsanto in 2018, faces lawsuits by more than 52,500 U.S. Roundup users, and juries in three trials have ordered the company to pay billions after finding the product caused cancer. Plaintiffs allege that Bayer manipulated studies and deceived the scientific community.

Bayer, which is appealing the verdicts, denies the claims and insists glyphosate does not cause cancer and is safe for people to use.

The company is pursuing an out-of-court settlement of the litigation, which analysts estimate could result in a US$10 billion agreement.

The office for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

More than a dozen agricultural groups together with Bayer sued California in 2017, saying the warning label threatens significant disruptions to the U.S. food production supply chain if farmers are no longer able to use glyphosate.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tina Bellon in Warwick, Rhode Island; additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York.

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The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a semi-autonomous unit of the WHO, is currently under scrutiny by influential members of the United States Congress, who in the past year have launched investigations into the way it conducts its assessments.

Led by Wild since 2009, IARC wields great influence with its classifications of carcinogens. It describes its mission as “to coordinate and conduct research on the causes of human cancer, the mechanisms of carcinogenesis, and to develop scientific strategies for cancer control”.

A job advert posted on IARC’s website invited candidates to send applications to the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, by a deadline of mid-February 2018.

It said the new IARC director would be appointed in May 2018 for a five-year term starting Jan. 1, 2019. The candidate may be eligible for one further five-year term, it added.

A spokesman for the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva declined to give details on the timing of or reason for the job posting, but said it “should be a regular turnover”. He referred further questions to IARC, but IARC did not respond to Reuters emails.

Known as Monographs, IARC’s assessments are designed to review scientific evidence and classify whether a substance can cause cancer in people.

They have prompted some controversy, with critics accusing IARC of lacking transparency and being too quick to conclude that substances might cause cancer, sparking unnecessary health scares.

IARC is also at odds with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and U.N. and U.S. regulators over glyphosate, a widely used weedkiller developed by Monsanto.

Wild has defended IARC’s work, saying the Monographs are “widely respected for their scientific rigour, standardised and transparent process and … freedom from conflicts of interest”.

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Describing a lack of effective antibiotics for humans as “a security threat” on a par with “a sudden and deadly disease outbreak”, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “strong and sustained action across all sectors” was vital to turn back the tide of resistance and “keep the world safe”.

The WHO “strongly recommends an overall reduction in the use of all classes of medically important antibiotics in food-producing animals, including complete restriction of these antibiotics for growth promotion and disease prevention without diagnosis,” the United Nations agency said in a statement.

Any use of antibiotics promotes the development and spread of so-called superbugs — multi-drug-resistant infections that can evade the medicines designed to kill them.

According to the WHO’s statement, in some countries, around 80 percent of total consumption of medically important antibiotics is in the animal sector. They are largely used in healthy animals to stop them getting sick and to speed up their growth.

The WHO said such use should be halted completely. In sick animals, it added, wherever possible, tests should first be conducted to determine the most effective and prudent antibiotic to treat their specific infection.

Some countries have already taken action to reduce the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals. The European Union has since 2006 banned the use of the drugs for growth promotion.

Consumers are also driving a demand for meat raised without routine use of antibiotics, with some major food chains adopting ‘antibiotic-free’ policies for meat supplies.

The WHO said alternatives to using antibiotics for disease prevention in animals include improving hygiene and farming practices, and making better use of vaccines.

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Documents seen by Reuters show how a draft of a key section of the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) assessment of glyphosate — a report that has prompted international disputes and multi-million-dollar lawsuits — underwent significant changes and deletions before the report was finalized and made public.

IARC, based in Lyon, France, wields huge influence as a semi-autonomous unit of the WHO, the United Nations health agency. It issued a report on its assessment of glyphosate — a key ingredient in Monsanto’s top-selling herbicide Roundup — in March 2015. It ranked glyphosate a Group 2a carcinogen, a substance that probably causes cancer in people.

That conclusion was based on its experts’ view that there was “sufficient evidence” glyphosate causes cancer in animals and “limited evidence” it can do so in humans. The Group 2a classification has prompted mass litigation in the U.S. against Monsanto and could lead to a ban on glyphosate sales across the European Union from the start of next year.

The edits identified by Reuters occurred in the chapter of IARC’s review focusing on animal studies. This chapter was important in IARC’s assessment of glyphosate, since it was in animal studies that IARC decided there was “sufficient” evidence of carcinogenicity.

One effect of the changes to the draft, reviewed by Reuters in a comparison with the published report, was the removal of multiple scientists’ conclusions that their studies had found no link between glyphosate and cancer in laboratory animals.

In one instance, a fresh statistical analysis was inserted — effectively reversing the original finding of a study being reviewed by IARC.

In another, a sentence in the draft referenced a pathology report ordered by experts at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It noted the report “firmly” and “unanimously” agreed that the “compound” — glyphosate — had not caused abnormal growths in the mice being studied. In the final published IARC monograph, this sentence had been deleted.

Reuters found 10 significant changes that were made between the draft chapter on animal studies and the published version of IARC’s glyphosate assessment. In each case, a negative conclusion about glyphosate leading to tumors was either deleted or replaced with a neutral or positive one. Reuters was unable to determine who made the changes.

IARC did not respond to questions about the alterations. It said the draft was “confidential” and “deliberative in nature.” After Reuters asked about the changes, the agency posted a statement on its website advising the scientists who participate in its working groups “not to feel pressured to discuss their deliberations” outside the confines of IARC.

Reuters contacted 16 scientists who served in the IARC expert working group that conducted the weedkiller review to ask them about the edits and deletions. Most did not respond; five said they could not answer questions about the draft; none was willing or able to say who made the changes, or why or when they were made.

The chairman of the IARC sub-group tasked with reviewing evidence of glyphosate’s effect on laboratory animals was Charles Jameson, an American toxicologist. In testimony as part of personal-injury lawsuits against Monsanto in the U.S., Jameson told lawyers for Monsanto he did not know when, why or by whom the edits had been made.

Monsanto is facing multiple legal claims in the U.S. from plaintiffs who allege glyphosate gave them or their loved ones cancer. Jameson is an expert witness for the plaintiffs. He did not respond to questions for this article.

Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s vice-president of global strategy, told Reuters the changes to the draft showed how “IARC members manipulated and distorted scientific data” in their glyphosate assessment.

IARC declined to comment.

Numerous national and international agencies have reviewed glyphosate. IARC is the only one to have declared the substance a probable carcinogen. Compared with other agencies, IARC has divulged little about its review process. Until now, it has been nearly impossible to see details, such as draft documents, of how IARC arrived at its decision.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said that in its assessment of the weedkiller, the scientific decision-making process “can be traced from start to finish.” Jose Tarazona, head of EFSA’s pesticides unit, told Reuters: “Anyone can go to EFSA’s website and review how the assessment evolved over time. So you can see clearly how experts… appraised each and every study and also how comments from the public consultation were incorporated into the scientific thinking.”

In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency published a full 1,261-page transcript of a three-day scientific advisory panel meeting on its ongoing evaluation of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate in December 2016.

No such record of the deliberations behind IARC’s monographs is published.

In a previous response to questions about the transparency of the IARC process, the agency’s director, Chris Wild, referred Reuters to a letter in which he said his agency’s assessments are “widely respected for their scientific rigor, standardized and transparent process.” Wild also said IARC’s methods are intended to allow scientists to engage in free scientific debate at its monograph meetings.

Deletions and additions

IARC says its working group scientists are selected for “their expertise and the absence of real or apparent conflicts of interest.” For the panel that evaluated glyphosate and four other pesticides in what is known as IARC’s Monograph 112, scientists from 11 countries met at the agency’s headquarters in Lyon for a week-long meeting starting on March 3, 2015. The meeting “followed nearly a year of review and preparation” by IARC staff and working group members, “including a comprehensive review of the latest available scientific evidence,” IARC said in a statement at the time.

In June, Reuters reported how the chairman of the IARC working group was aware of new data showing no link between glyphosate and cancer in humans, but the agency did not take it into account because it had not been published.

No drafts of IARC’s glyphosate assessment have surfaced before. However, a draft was obtained by Monsanto as part of the legal proceedings in the United States. Reuters reviewed chapter 3, the section on animal studies, which is the only section no longer covered by a confidentiality order of the court.

The glyphosate review in IARC’s Monograph 112 runs to 92 pages; the chapter on animal studies consists of just over 10 pages. Reuters has not seen any other sections of the draft and cannot say whether they also underwent significant edits.

In comparing draft and final versions of chapter 3, Reuters found that in several instances comments in the draft were removed; the comments noted that studies had concluded glyphosate was not carcinogenic. They were replaced in the final version with the sentence: “The Working Group was not able to evaluate this study because of the limited experimental data provided in the review article and supplemental information.”

This sentence was inserted six times into the final version. Each time it replaced a contrary conclusion, noted in the draft, by the original investigators on the study being considered, such as: “The authors concluded that glyphosate was not carcinogenic in Sprague Dawley rats”; “The authors concluded that glyphosate technical acid was not carcinogenic in Wistar rats”; and “The authors concluded that glyphosate was not carcinogenic in CD-1 mice in this study.”

Reuters also found changes to the conclusions and statistical significance of two mouse studies. These studies were cited in IARC’s ultimate finding of “sufficient” evidence that glyphosate causes cancer in animals.

One edit concerned a 1983 study in mice. IARC’s published monograph contains a fresh statistical analysis calculation as part of its review of that study. The original investigators found no statistically significant link between glyphosate and cancer in the mice. IARC’s new calculation reached the opposite conclusion, attributing statistical significance to it.

This new calculation was inserted into the final published assessment, but was not in the draft version seen by Reuters. The change gave the working group more evidence on which to base its conclusion that glyphosate was probably carcinogenic.

In further discussion of the same 1983 study, IARC’s final published report refers to expert pathologists on a panel commissioned to reanalyze the work of the original investigators. The IARC draft notes that these pathologists “unanimously” agreed with the original investigators that glyphosate was not related to potentially precancerous tissue growths in the mice. IARC’s final report deletes that sentence.

Reviewing a second mouse study, the IARC draft included a comment saying the incidence of a type of animal cancer known as haemangiosarcoma was “not significant” in both males and females. IARC’s published monograph, by contrast, inserts a fresh statistical analysis calculation on the data in male mice, and concludes that the findings were statistically significant.

Influential monograph

IARC’s assessment that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen is an outlier. In the 40 or so years since the weedkiller first came to the market, glyphosate has been repeatedly scrutinized and judged safe to use.

A year after IARC issued its evaluation, a joint United Nations and World Health Organization panel reviewed the potential for glyphosate in food to cause cancer in people. It concluded the weedkiller was “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which first assessed glyphosate in the 1980s and has reviewed it several times since, says it has “low toxicity for humans.” The European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency, which advise the 28 members of the EU, have also assessed glyphosate within the past two years and ruled it safe.

But IARC’s Monograph 112 has had great influence.

It is weighing heavily on a pending European Union decision — due by the end of the year and possibly to be made next week — on whether glyphosate should be relicensed for sale across the 28 member states. France, one of the bloc’s agricultural powerhouses, has said it wants the weedkiller phased out and then banned, provoking protests by its vocal farmers, who argue glyphosate is vital to their business.

A failure to renew glyphosate’s license by the end of the year would see an EU ban kick in on Jan. 1, 2018.

In the U.S., Monsanto — the firm that first developed and marketed glyphosate — is facing litigation in California involving at least 184 individual plaintiffs who cite the IARC assessment and claim exposure to RoundUp gave them a form of cancer known as non-Hodgkin lymphoma. They allege Monsanto failed to warn consumers of the risks. Monsanto denies the allegations. The case is ongoing.

Members of the U.S. Congress, concerned about what they described as IARC’s “inconsistent” standards and determinations for classifying substances as carcinogenic, last year launched investigations into American taxpayer funding of IARC. The investigations are ongoing.

In Europe, IARC has become embroiled in a public spat with experts at the European Food Safety Authority, which conducted its own review of glyphosate in November 2015 and found it “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans.”

With IARC monograph meetings, some outside observers are selected and allowed to witness proceedings, but they are banned from talking about what goes on. Journalists are generally not allowed in.

Last year, Reuters reported on an email sent by IARC to the experts on its glyphosate working group in which the agency advised them not to discuss their work or disclose documents. The email said IARC “does not encourage participants to retain working drafts or documents after the monograph has been published.”

Reuters sent questions about the draft version of the glyphosate assessment to members of the IARC working group that assessed the herbicide as well as to the head of IARC’s monograph program, Kurt Straif, and to Kathryn (Kate) Guyton, the staffer responsible for the glyphosate review. IARC responded by posting the following message on its website:

“Members of the IARC Monograph Working Group which evaluated glyphosate in March 2015 have expressed concern after being approached by various parties asking them to justify scientific positions in draft documents produced during the Monographs process. IARC would like to reiterate that draft versions of the Monographs are deliberative in nature and confidential. Scientists should not feel pressured to discuss their deliberations outside this particular forum.”

IARC answered none of Reuters’ specific questions about changes to the draft.

— Kate Kelland is a Reuters health and science correspondent based in London, England.

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Restaurant Brands International on Thursday released its first “Sustainability Report,” outlining its work during 2016 in support of “sustainable practices that promote positive change.”

Back in late December, Oakville, Ont.-based RBI announced its two chains would “eliminate the use of antibiotics deemed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as ‘critically important’ to human medicine” from its chicken supply lines.

At that time, it also said it would “work with our supply chain partners to support and implement these changes” in the U.S. in 2017, and in Canada in 2018.

In Thursday’s report, the company reiterated it’s “committed to using chicken that is raised without the use of antibiotics important to human medicine as defined by the (WHO)” but instead said “we intend to meet this commitment in U.S. and Canada by the end of 2018.”

However, the company on Thursday also made clear it will follow the WHO’s fifth revision to its document, Critically Important Antimicrobials for Human Medicine, which was released early this year.

To make that list, an antimicrobial must be both “the sole, or one of limited available therapies, to treat serious bacterial infections in people,” and used to treat infections in people caused either by bacteria humans can get from non-human sources, or by bacteria that can develop resistance genes from non-human sources.

In the document’s fourth revision last year, certain fluoroquinolones, third- and fourth-generation cephalosporins, macrolides and glycopeptides were recategorized to the “highest priority.”

In the fifth revision, polymyxins such as colistin are also moved to the “highest priority” classification, due to the “increasing usage of colistin to treat serious infections in humans in many parts of the world, the discovery of the mcr1 and mcr2 genes that confer transmissible resistance to colistin and the spread of colistin-resistant bacteria via the food chain,” the WHO said.

In Canada, the federal health department’s Veterinary Drugs Directorate places polymyxins in Category I (“very high importance”), the highest category in its list of antimicrobials based on their importance in human medicine.

RBI, in Thursday’s report, reiterated it “recognize(s) that antibiotics play an important and delicate role in animal well-being and human health. Antibiotics are sometimes required to control and treat disease to maintain animal health and welfare.”

The company said it “require(s) our vendors to purchase products only from farmers that administer antibiotics in a judicious and responsible manner when treatment is necessary, in keeping with veterinary and regulatory requirements.”

RBI made its 2016 pledge on antibiotics for chickens shortly before the company announced a deal to buy the Atlanta-based Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen chain, which includes over 2,600 restaurants, among them over 100 Canadian stores in Ontario and Alberta.

In an article Thursday on the sustainability report, Reuters’ Lisa Baertlein quoted RBI as saying the company intends to apply the new policy to all its brands over time. — AGCanada.com Network

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Outbreaks of H5 bird flu strains in poultry and wild birds across Europe, Africa and Asia are also raising concern, the WHO said, and while the human risk of these outbreaks is also low for now, vigilance is vital.

“Constant change is the nature of all influenza viruses — this makes influenza a persistent and significant threat to public health,” Wenqing Zhang, head of the WHO’s global influenza programme, told reporters on a telephone briefing.

China is currently seeing a fifth wave of H7N9 bird flu in humans — a virus that was first detected in people in 2013.

Since October 2016, a total of 460 laboratory-confirmed human H7N9 infections have been reported in China, a figure that exceeds previous seasons and accounts for more than a third of total cases since 2013. So far, H7N9 has killed around a third of people it has been known to infect.

While this surge is concerning, the WHO said, there is still no evidence that the epidemiological characteristics of human infections — such as the age and gender of those infected, their exposure history and the case fatality rate — are changing.

Zhang noted, however, that around seven per cent of the human cases of H7N9 this year are showing resistance to anti-viral drugs known as neuraminidase inhibitors. These medicines, including Roche’s well-known drug Tamiflu, or oseltamivir, are recommended as flu treatments.

The WHO said it was watching these developments, but said there was no reason to recommend changes in how patients are treated for now.

With H5 bird flu strains, multiple outbreaks have been reported in poultry farms and wild flocks across Europe, Africa and Asia in the past three months. The WHO said more than 1,000 outbreaks had been reported to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) in Paris.

Most involve strains that are low risk for humans, but virologists and public health specialists are worried that the sheer number of different types and their presence in so many parts of the world at the same time, increases the risk of viruses mixing and mutating, and possibly jumping to people.

The WHO noted that “so far, only H5N1 and H5N6 cause human infections”, but said it was working with the OIE to monitor the viruses’ evolution.

— Kate Kelland is a Reuters health and science correspondent based in London.

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More than 70 per cent of medically important antibiotics in the U.S. are sold for livestock use. Scientists have warned that the routine use of antibiotics to promote growth and prevent illness in healthy farms animals contributes to the rise of dangerous, antibiotic-resistant “superbug” infections, which kill at least 23,000 Americans each year and pose a significant threat to global health.

The Congregation of Benedictine Sisters of Boerne, Texas, asked directors at McDonald’s to prohibit the use of medically important antibiotics in its global poultry supply chain. McDonald’s already has adopted that policy for the chicken served in its U.S. restaurants.

The group also asking the fast-food chain to set global targets and timelines for switching to pork and beef raised without the non-therapeutic use of medically important antibiotics.

Just over 20 per cent of McDonald’s shareholders voted in favour of a similar proposal at this year’s annual meeting. The sisters pulled a prior resolution after McDonald’s announced its plans to change its policies on chicken in the U.S.

The sisters aim to have shareholders vote on the new proposal at McDonald’s 2017 annual meeting.

McDonald’s told Reuters it continues “to engage with key experts, including some who serve as advisors to the World Health Organization (WHO), to advance progress across the industry.”

The company said its current policy “provides guidance to our suppliers in parts of the world where the industry does not yet have systems in place that would allow them to verify compliance throughout the supply chain.”

Sister Susan Mika said the resolution is part of an ongoing process.

“I said we will be back,” Mika said in a phone interview. “We want them to set goals and to be moving in a certain direction. We expect them to be a leader in taking on these questions of our time.”

The sisters are part of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), which along with ShareAction, Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return (FAIRR) Initiative and As You Sow, also are targeting companies such as Sanderson Farms and Yum Brands with similar campaigns aimed at preserving the efficacy of antibiotics.

— Lisa Baertlein is a Reuters correspondent covering the restaurant and grocery retail sectors for Reuters from Los Angeles.

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In a letter and an email seen by Reuters, officials from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cautioned scientists who worked on a review in 2015 of the weedkiller glyphosate against releasing requested material.

The review, published in March 2015, concluded glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic,” putting IARC at odds with regulators around the world. Critics say they want the documents to find out more about how IARC reached its conclusion.

“IARC is the sole owner of such materials,” IARC told the experts. “IARC requests you and your institute not to release any (such) documents.”

Asked about its actions, the agency told Reuters on Tuesday it was seeking to protect its work from external interference and defending its panels’ freedom to debate evidence openly and critically.

In recent years IARC, a semi-autonomous unit of the WHO based in Lyon, France, has caused controversy over whether such things as coffee, mobile phones, red and processed meat and chemicals such as glyphosate cause cancer.

Its critics, including in industry, say the way IARC evaluates whether substances might be carcinogenic can cause unnecessary health scares. IARC assesses the risk of a substance being carcinogenic without taking account of typical human exposure to it.

Glyphosate is a key ingredient of the herbicide Roundup, sold by Monsanto. According to data published by IARC, glyphosate was registered in over 130 countries as of 2010 and is one of the most heavily used weedkillers in the world.

Pressure has been growing on the experts who worked on IARC’s glyphosate review in part because other regulators, including in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, say the herbicide is unlikely to pose a cancer risk to humans.

The conflicting scientific assessments have delayed a decision on whether glyphosate should be relicensed for sale in Europe, and prompted senior U.S. lawmakers to question whether IARC should receive funding from U.S. taxpayers.

IARC defends its methods as scientifically sound and says its monographs — the name it gives to its classifications of carcinogens — are “widely respected for their scientific rigor, standardized and transparent process and… freedom from conflicts of interest.”

IARC’s advice to experts not to release documents came in April after IARC said it learned that members of the scientific panel that reviewed glyphosate in 2015 had been issued with legal requests for information relating to their work.

Multiple subsequent freedom of information requests by the U.S. conservative advocacy group the Energy and Environment Legal Institute (E and E Legal) have since been turned down by agencies and universities citing IARC’s reasoning that it owns the documents.

David Schnare, general counsel of E and E Legal, told Reuters his group is now pursuing a legal challenge over whether the documents belong to IARC, or are the property of the U.S. federal and state institutions where the panel experts work.

He said E and E wants access to the documents and emails because it wants to know more about the way IARC reviews the scientific evidence, and about its relationship with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“Private emails”

An email dated April 1 was addressed to six members of the working group for monograph 112, which considered glyphosate, including experts at universities in Texas and Mississippi as well as scientists attached to the EPA.

Signed and sent by Kathryn (Kate) Guyton, the IARC staffer responsible for the glyphosate review, the email said IARC “does not encourage participants to retain working drafts or documents after the monograph has been published.”

Monsanto’s vice-president of strategy, Scott Partridge, told Reuters he considered IARC’s actions “ridiculous.”

“The public deserves a process that is guided by sound science, not IARC’s secret agendas,” he said.

Responding to Reuters’ questions about the letter and email, IARC said it had been previously informed by experts on the panel who “had been approached by interested parties, including lawyers representing Monsanto… and asked to release private emails as well as draft scientific documents.”

It said that as international agencies, both IARC and the WHO “have policies to protect their work, and the contributions of their expert Working Groups, from external interference.”

In a statement to Reuters, IARC said the letter and email were sanctioned by the agency’s director, Chris Wild. It added: “IARC staff did not instruct anyone not to comply with records requests made under national or local law.”

It said it is vital that scientists in its working groups “are able to openly and critically debate the scientific evidence.”

“IARC considers any measures that would discourage scientists from participating in Monographs or would detract from open scientific debate to be contrary to the best interests of international public health,” it added.

Ivan Rusyn, one of the recipients of the IARC’s April letter and email and a professor at Texas A and M University who worked on the glyphosate review, said he was glad to have IARC’s advice regarding whether documents should be released.

“I don’t see anything inappropriate here,” he told Reuters. “It’s very appropriate for IARC to advise its working group members as to what the procedures are.”

— Kate Kelland is a Reuters health and science correspondent based in London, England.

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The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) had previously rated coffee as “possibly carcinogenic” but has changed its mind.

It now says its latest review found “no conclusive evidence for a carcinogenic effect” of coffee drinking and pointed to some studies showing coffee may actually reduce the risk of developing certain types of cancer.

“(This) does not show that coffee is certainly safe… but there is less reason for concern today than there was before,” Dana Loomis, the deputy head of IARC’s Monograph classification department told a news conference.

At the same time, however, IARC presented other scientific evidence which suggests that drinking anything very hot — around 65 C or above — including water, coffee, tea and other beverages, probably does cause cancer of the oesophagus.

Lyon-based IARC, which last year prompted headlines worldwide by saying processed meat can cause cancer, reached its conclusions after reviewing more than 1,000 scientific studies in humans and animals. There was inadequate evidence for coffee to be classified as either carcinogenic or not carcinogenic.

IARC had previously put coffee as a “possible carcinogen” in its 2B category alongside chloroform, lead and many other substances.

The U.S. National Coffee Association welcomed the change in IARC’s classification as “great news for coffee drinkers.”

“We believe that this is the first time that IARC has completely turned its classification around, which is likely because of the great body of evidence showing the benefits of coffee consumption,” Lesya Balych-Cooper, interim president for the Coffee Association of Canada, said in a separate release.

The Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee, whose members are six of the major European coffee companies — illycaffè, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Lavazza, Nestlé , Paulig, and Tchibo — said IARC had found “no negative relationship between coffee consumption and cancer.”

Let it cool

In its evaluation of very hot drinks, IARC said animal studies suggest carcinogenic effects probably occur with drinking temperatures of 65 C or above. Some experiments with rats and mice found “very hot” liquids, including water, could promote the development of tumours, it said.

The agency said studies of hot drinks such as maté, an infusion consumed mainly in South America, tea and other drinks in several countries including China, Iran, Japan and Turkey, found the risk of oesophageal cancer “may increase with the temperature of the drink” above 65 C.

“These results suggest that drinking very hot beverages is one probable cause of oesophageal cancer and that it is the temperature, rather than the drinks themselves, that appears to be responsible,” said IARC’s director, Christopher Wild.

Oesophageal cancer is the eighth most common cause of cancer worldwide and one of the main causes of cancer death, with around 400,000 deaths recorded in 2012.

The WHO’s official spokesman in Geneva, Gregory Hartl, stressed that smoking and drinking alcohol were among the most serious risk factors for oesophageal cancer and urged people to focus on reducing these as a priority. He said IARC’s evaluation of hot drinks was based on limited available evidence in humans and animals and more research is needed.

“We say: be prudent, let hot drinks cool down,” he told Reuters, adding that the WHO’s advice was to “not consume foods or drinks when they are at a very hot — scalding hot — temperature.”

Drinking very hot beverages is now classified as probably carcinogenic in IARC’s group 2A category, alongside red meat and nitrogen mustard.

But David Spiegelhalter, a professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Britain’s University of Cambridge, said he was concerned that IARC’s review would confuse people.

“Last year the IARC said that bacon is carcinogenic, but it became clear that when eaten in moderation it is not very risky. In the case of very hot drinks, the IARC concludes they are probably hazardous, but can’t say how big the risk might be,” he said in an emailed comment.

“This may be interesting science, but makes it difficult to construct a sensible response.”

— Kate Kelland is a Reuters health and science correspondent in London, England. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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