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The Rights of People and Bees
By: Ross Conrad
In the latest red flag that should cause even the most earnest pesticide advocate to seriously question and reject the current U.S. regulatory process as fatally flawed, the editors of the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology have retracted a widely cited paper first published in 2000. The paper titled“Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans” has been referred to for decades in support of the argument that glyphosate is safe and does not cause cancer. (Williams et al., 2000)
We have reviewed some of the harmful impacts resulting in honey bee exposure to Roundup previously here in Bee Culture. (Conrad, 2018) Effects include cognitive decline and impaired learning and memory, negative effects on the honey bee gut biome which can impair bee development and nutrition, and premature aging when exposed to sub-lethal doses of Roundup.
As beekeepers, we are told to trust the process. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reviewed the science. Pesticides are safe as long as we follow the instructions on the label. If there is a problem it is because the user did not follow the directions.
Despite assurances to the contrary, there have been numerous road signs over the decades that have warned of the folly of accepting such statements including: various EPA whistleblowers warning of pesticides and chemicals being approved by top EPA administrators against the recommendation of agency scientists; formerly approved pesticides being pulled from the market after causing harm to people and animals; and highly flawed and poorly conducted studies passed off as definitive science that is used by the EPA to approve chemical use.
Serious Ethical Concerns
The retraction states that the safety evaluation was not based upon peer-reviewed published studies but instead “solely based on unpublished studies” conducted by the inventor of glyphosate, Monsanto, the company that was bought up and absorbed by the German multinational corporation Bayer, known as Bayer Aktiengesellschaft (aka Bayer AG). Bayer also is a major player in the pharmaceutical industry.
This is a fantastically profitable business model. The company sells billions of dollars in pesticide products that make people and bees sick (glyphosate and neonicotinoids), and then makes billions more selling the drugs and treatments to those who are suffering from the pesticide’s effects. (Yes, I know Bayer’s CheckMite+ is for varroa control and not the effect of pesticides directly, but there is scientific evidence that non-lethal pesticide exposure can weaken the honey bees’ immune response making them more susceptible to mite damage).
The retraction notice goes on to note that “the authors did not include multiple other long-term chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity studies, that were already done at the time of writing their review in 1999.” In the original article the authors stated that they were aware of other studies, but those studies were unpublished and not available. As a result, the risk assessment relied on Monsanto studies alone and ignored the numerous independent studies that were finding serious cause for concern.
The journal’s retraction also maintains that Monsanto employees helped to write the safety evaluation and risk assessment without disclosing their involvement. This serious conflict of interest and deception was clearly done to improve the perceived objectivity of the paper in an effort to give it more weight and influence than it deserved. The paper’s authors also apparently received financial compensation from Monsanto for their work on the article. The fact that this compensation was not disclosed raises serious concerns about the objectivity of the study’s authors.
Furthermore, in assessing the safety and risk of glyphosate, the authors used a weight-of-evidence approach to evaluate the chemicals carcinogenicity (potential to cause cancer) and genotoxicity (potential to cause genetic damage which can lead to inherited mutations and disease in children). In regard to the weight-of-evidence approach, the retraction notice states with typical scientific understatement, “While this methodology is sound in principle, the potential biases introduced by undisclosed contributions from Monsanto employees and the exclusion of other existing long-term carcinogenicity studies may have skewed the interpretation of the data.”
Why now?
While it is better late than never, why are these revelations coming out now? We can thank those Davids among us that have taken on the Goliath Monsanto and persevered over many years navigating our criminal justice system. Such litigation is what revealed the documents and other materials that brought to light the ethical lapses (should these be called crimes?) described above.
These disclosures are extremely important because glyphosate is one of the most widely used herbicides in the world; It is applied to millions of acres annually and woven into the fabric of our food system. Today for example, it is common for grain growers to apply Roundup to their crop (wheat, oats, rye, etc.) after it has matured and shortly before harvesting. This way the plants die back and start to dry out prior to harvest. This makes it faster for the farmer to complete the drying process and saves them a lot of money. Unfortunately, this also means that the majority of our nation’s grains, and the products produced from them, are contaminated with glyphosate residues.
Monsanto’s legal issues have been a huge headache to the company’s new owner Bayer AG. Despite all the efforts to create an image of safety and non-toxicity, over 165,000 law suits involving Roundup and glyphosate are reported to have been filed against the company. The retracted article noted above was one of the cornerstones that the U.S. EPA relied on in its assessment of glyphosate’s safety.
Of course, the EPA will tell you that the levels of glyphosate related residues found in your food fall below the safety level that has been established by science so you have no need to worry. This is not reassuring however given that U.S. safety levels for chemical residues like glyphosate in food tend to be much higher than those found in many other countries such as throughout the European Union.
One might get the impression that in the U.S. safety levels established for chemical and pesticide residues have more to do with setting a level that will protect corporations from liability issues, than what is safe from a health perspective for the consuming public. The only way to be reasonably sure that your food does not contain dangerous levels of toxic residues is to either grow the food yourself, or to eat food that has been produced using organic, biodynamic or permaculture practices.
The editors of the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology deserve a lot of credit for acting upon this newly revealed information. By pulling the article in question they act to preserve the scientific integrity of their journal. One might expect that the EPA would similarly reevaluate their long-standing approval for glyphosate based products, and possibly remove them from the marketplace. However, there are billions of dollars on the line. Recently the EPA has experienced dramatic cutbacks in staff and funding. In addition, the agency is reliant upon the industries they regulate since their pesticide program is partially funded by industry fees. Meaningful reevaluation? I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Ethical win for Amazonian bees
While the rights of the people of North America to have their health and safety protected from corporate greed and corruption continues to be neglected and degraded, the rights of bees in South America are being recognized.
For the first time in history, an insect, the stingless bee found in the Peruvian Amazon has been granted legal rights. (Funnell, 2026) After all, if we can grant legal rights to corporations that don’t really exist except on paper and are simply ideas around which people, materials and resources are organized, why not grant rights to actual real live organisms?
Peru is home to over 170 species of stingless bee. While stingless bees do have stingers, they are small and ineffective, so the bees use their mandibles which are equipped with tiny teeth for biting as their primary form of defense. At the time of this writing (the first week of January), two regions of Peru have passed ordinances protecting the rights of stingless bees: Satipo province located in the Central Amazon rainforest of Peru; and the town of Nauta in Northeastern Peru.
Like native bees everywhere, the stingless bee is in decline as they face the combined threats of decreasing forage and habitat (aka deforestation), climate destabilization, and pesticide exposure. The stingless bee pollinates dozens of crops including cacao, coffee and avocados and plays a critical role in maintaining rainforest diversity as they are responsible for pollinating the majority of the region’s flora. Like that of our European honey bee, the honey of the stingless bee has powerful medicinal properties which is part of the reason why the bee holds deep cultural and spiritual meaning for the indigenous people of the Amazon. An online petition is being circulated on the website Avaaz.org seeking to have Peru nationalize these laws and protect the rights of the stingless bee throughout the country.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40740333
Reference:
Conrad, R. (2018) Glyphosate: Safe for bees and beekeepers? Bee Culture, November, pp 80-82
Funnell, R. (2026) The planet’s oldest bee species has become the world’s first insect to be granted legal rights, iflScience, January, 2026
Williams, G.M., Kroes, R., Munro, I.C. (2000) Retraction notice to “Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans” (Regul. Toxicol. Pharm. 31:117–165), Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, Volume 165, 2026, 106006, ISSN 0273-2300, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yrtph.2025.106006.
