Proponents of mandatory labeling of food products made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) rolled out a trio of academics Wednesday in a bid to raise public awareness of the public health and environmental costs of herbicides used in the production of genetically engineered crops.

 

The panelists at a Washington breakfast sponsored by the Just Label It campaign included Charles Benbrook with the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University; Alex Lu, an associate professor in the Department of Public Health at Harvard University; and David Mortenson, professor of weed and applied plant ecology at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

 

Their main target was U.S. agriculture's increasing use of glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide and a chemical that has been classified as “probably carcinogenic” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization.