The multiple findings can make it “difficult for people to make sense of what can seem to be conflicting messages on food”, said Duane Mellor, a dietician at Britain’s Aston University who was not directly involved with either study.

But looking at the research in the round, he and others said, moderation may be the best way forward.

“In this case eating moderate amounts of meat, including red meat (less than three ounces per day), is likely to be safe,” Mellor said.

“However, in the interest of sustainability as well as health, reducing meat intake… to the recommended less than 70 g per day would be sensible.”

An evidence review published in September 2019 found that cutting back on red and processed meat brings few if any health benefits — but those findings contradicted dietary advice of international agencies and prompted much criticism.

This latest research, conducted by scientists at the United States’ Northwestern and Cornell universities and published on Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, found that eating two servings a week of red meat, processed meat or poultry was linked to a three to seven per cent higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

It also found that eating two servings a week of red meat or processed meat — but not poultry or fish — was associated with a three per cent higher risk of all causes of death.

“It’s a small difference, but it’s worth trying to reduce red meat and processed meat,” said Norrina Allen, an associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern who co-led the study. She added that eating red meat “also is consistently linked to other health problems like cancer.”

The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) says red and processed meat may or can cause cancer. It advises eating only moderate amounts of red meat, such as beef, pork and lamb — with an upper limit of 500 g cooked weight per week — and “little, if any” processed meat.

A panel of experts writing in The Lancet in January outlined an “ideal diet” for human health and the planet that said global average red meat consumption should be cut by 50 per cent and consumption of nuts, fruits, vegetables and legumes should double.

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

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Most people can continue to eat red and processed meat at current average intake, typically three or four times a week for adults in North America and Europe, said a study’s authors, who also made new recommendations based on the analysis.

“Based on the research, we cannot say with any certainty that eating red or processed meat causes cancer, diabetes or heart disease,” said Bradley Johnston, an associate professor at Halifax’s Dalhousie University, who co-led the review published on Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal.

However, in what amounts to a scientific food fight, a group of doctors from Harvard, Yale, Stanford and elsewhere, including one of the study authors, requested in a letter to the journal that it “pre-emptively retract publication” of the papers pending further review, and said revised guidelines that could lead to increased consumption of red and processed meats would be irresponsible.

A statement scheduled for publication by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, shared with Reuters by Dr. Frank Hu, chair of the Department of Nutrition, said, “from a public health point of view, it is irresponsible and unethical to issue dietary guidelines that are tantamount to promoting meat consumption, even if there is still some uncertainty about the strength of the evidence.”

Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center at the Yale University School of Medicine, cited “grave concerns about the potential for damage to public understanding, and public health.”

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) both say red and processed meat may or can cause cancer.

The WCRF advises eating only “moderate amounts” of red meat, such as beef, pork and lamb — with an upper limit of 500 grams cooked weight per week — and “little, if any” processed meat.

A panel of experts writing in The Lancet in January outlined an “ideal diet” for human health and the planet that said global average red meat consumption should be cut by 50 per cent and consumption of nuts, fruits, vegetables and legumes should double.

For the latest analysis, researchers from Canada, Spain and Poland conducted a series of reviews of both randomized controlled trials and observational studies looking at the possible health impact of eating red and processed meat.

Among the randomized trials they selected for analysis, which included around 54,000 people, they found no statistically significant link between eating meat and the risk of heart disease, diabetes, or cancer.

Among the observational studies, which covered millions of people, they did find “a very small reduction in risk” in those who ate three fewer servings of red or processed meat a week, but said that this association “was very uncertain.”

‘Best approach’

“Our bottom line recommendation … is that for the majority of people, but not everyone, continuing their red and processed meat consumption is the best approach,” Johnston said.

Some experts not directly involved with the reviews said the work was a comprehensive, well-conducted analysis of the available evidence on eating meat and human health.

“This study will, I hope, help to eliminate the incorrect impression… that some meat products are as carcinogenic as cigarette smoke, and to discourage dramatic media headlines claiming that ‘bacon is killing us’,” said Ian Johnson, a nutrition expert at Britain’s Quadram Institute of bioscience.

Christine Laine, editor in chief of Annals of Internal Medicine, noted that nutrition studies are challenging as they are usually not randomized controlled trials and often depend on participants’ memories.

“There may be lots of reasons to decrease meat in your diet, but if you’re decreasing it to improve your health, we don’t have a lot of strong evidence to support that,” Laine said. “To be honest with our patients and the public, we shouldn’t be making recommendations that sound like they’re based on solid evidence.”

Quadram’s Johnson said people who choose to cut down their meat intake might still improve their health by doing so. “There are (also) strong environmental and ethical arguments for reducing meat consumption in the modern world.”

Eating more plant-based foods can help to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, scientists say.

— Kate Kelland is a Reuters health and science correspondent in London; additional reporting by Linda Carroll in Mannington, N.J.

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The first of the transgenic chicks will be hatched later this year at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, said Wendy Barclay, a professor of virology at Imperial College London who is co-leading the project.

The birds’ DNA has been altered using a new gene editing technology known as CRISPR. In this case the “edits” are to remove parts of a protein on which the flu virus normally depends, making the chickens totally flu-resistant.

The idea is to generate poultry that cannot get flu and would form a “buffer between wild birds and humans,” Barclay said.

Global health and infectious disease specialists cite the threat of a human flu pandemic as one of their biggest concerns.

The death toll in the last flu pandemic in 2009-10 — caused by the H1N1 strain and considered to be relatively mild — was around half a million people worldwide. The historic 1918 Spanish flu killed around 50 million people.

The greatest fear now is that a deadly strain could jump from wild birds via poultry into humans, and then mutate into a pandemic airborne form that can pass easily between people.

“If we could prevent influenza virus crossing from wild birds into chickens, we would stop the next pandemic at source,” said Barclay.

In research published in 2016 in the journal Nature, Barclay’s team found that a gene present in chickens called ANP32 encodes a protein that all flu viruses depend on to infect a host. Laboratory tests of cells engineered to lack the gene showed they cannot be infected with flu.

Teaming up scientists at the Roslin, Barclay said the plan is to use CRISPR to edit the chicks’ DNA so that only one part of the key protein is changed, leaving the rest of the bird exactly the same, genetically, as it was before.

“We have identified the smallest change that will stop the virus in its tracks,” she said.

Roslin Institute scientists gained fame in 1996 as creators of “Dolly the sheep,” the world’s first cloned animal. They have also created gene-edited pigs to make them resistant to a virus.

Barclay said one of the biggest hurdles to this approach would be poultry producers’ concerns about public acceptance. “People eat food from farmed animals that have been altered by decades of traditional breeding,” she said. “But they might be nervous about eating gene-edited food.”

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

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Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI), the study found there was no association between glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s popular herbicide RoundUp, “and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including non-Hogkin Lymphoma (NHL) and its subtypes”.

It said there was “some evidence of increased risk of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) among the highest exposed group”, but added this association was not “statistically significant” and would require more research to be confirmed.

The findings are likely to impact legal proceedings taking place in the United States against Monsanto, in which more than 180 plaintiffs are claiming exposure to RoundUp gave them cancer – allegations that Monsanto denies.

The findings may also influence a crucial decision due by the end of the year on whether glyphosate should be re-licensed for sale across the European Union.

EU countries had been due to vote on the issue on Thursday, but again failed to agree to a proposal for a five-year extension.

The EU decision has been delayed for several years after the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reviewed glyphosate in 2015 and concluded it was “probably carcinogenic” to humans. Other bodies, such as the European Food Safety Authority, have concluded glyphosate is safe to use.

The research is part of a large and important project known as the Agricultural Health Study (AHS), which has been tracking the health of tens of thousands of agricultural workers, farmers and their families in Iowa and North Carolina.

Since the early 1990s, it has gathered and analysed detailed information on the health of participants and their families, and their use of pesticides, including glyphosate.

Reuters reported in June how an influential scientist was aware of new AHS data while he was chairing a panel of experts reviewing evidence on glyphosate for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in early 2015.

But since it had not at that time been published, he did not tell the expert panel about it and IARC’s review did not take it into account.

The publishing of the study on Thursday comes more than four years since drafts based on the AHS data on glyphosate and other pesticides were circulating in February and March 2013.

In a summary conclusion of the results, the researchers, led by Laura Beane Freeman, the principal investigator of the AHS at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, reported that among 54,251 (pesticide) applicators in the study, 44,932, or 82.9 percent of them used glyphosate.

“Glyphosate was not statistically significantly associated with cancer at any site,” the conclusion said.

The researchers said they believed the study was the first to report a possible association between glyphosate and AML, but that it could be the result of chance and should be treated with caution.

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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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The studies, one conducted across three European countries and another in Canada, found some negative effects after exposure to neonicotinoids in wild and honeybee populations, but also some positives, depending on the environmental context.

Scientists who conducted the European research — in Britain, Hungary and Germany — told reporters their overall findings suggested neonicotinoids are harmful to honeybee and wild bee populations and are “a cause for concern.”

But scientists representing companies who funded the work — Germany’s Bayer and Switerland’s Syngenta — said the results showed “no consistent effect.”

Several independent experts said the findings were mixed or inconclusive.

The European Union has since 2014 had a moratorium on use of neonicotinoids — made and sold by various companies including Bayer and Syngenta — after lab research pointed to potential risks for bees, crucial for pollinating crops.

But crop chemical companies say real-world evidence is not there to blame a global plunge in bee numbers in recent years on neonicotinoid pesticides alone. They argue it is a complex phenomenon due to multiple factors.

A spokesman for the EU’s food safety watchdog EFSA, said the agency is in the process of assessing all studies and data for a full re-evaluation of neonicotinoids, expected in November.

EFSA’s scientific assessment will be crucial to a European Commission decision in consultation with EU states on whether the moratorium on neonicotinoid use should remain in place.

The two studies, published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Science, are important because they were field studies that sought to examine the real-world exposure of bees to pesticides in nature.

Researchers who led the Canadian study concluded that worker bees exposed to neonicotinoids — which they said often came from contaminated pollen from nearby plants, not from treated crops — had lower life expectancies and their colonies were more likely to suffer from a loss of queen bees.

On the findings of the European study, researchers told a briefing in London that exposure to neonicotinoid crops harmed honeybee colonies in two of the three countries and reduced the reproductive success of wild bees across all three.

They noted, however, that results from Germany showed a positive effect on bees exposed to neonicotinoids, although they said this was temporary and the reasons behind it were unclear.

“This represents the complexity of the real world,” said Richard Pywell, a professor at Britain’s Centre of Ecology and Hydrology who co-led the work. “In certain circumstances, you may have a positive effect … and in other circumstances you may have a negative effect”

Overall, however, he said: “We are showing significant negative effects on (bees’) critical life-cycle stages, which is a cause for concern.”

Several specialists with no direct involvement in the study who were asked to assess its findings said they were mixed.

Rob Smith, a professor at Britain’s University of Huddersfield, said the results were “important in showing that there are detectable effects of neonicotinoid treatments on honeybees in the real world,” but added: “These effects are not consistent.”

Lynn Dicks at the University of East Anglia said the findings “illustrate the complexity of environmental science.”

“If there was a really big effect of neonicotinoids on bees, in whatever circumstances they were used, it would have shown up in both of these studies,” she said.

Norman Carreck, an insect expert at Britain’s Sussex University, said: “Whilst adding to our knowledge, the study throws up more questions than it answers.”

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

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A row over possible effects of glyphosate — an ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup — has prompted investigations by congressional committees in the U.S. and forced a delay in Europe to a decision on whether it should be banned or re-licensed for sale.

Giving details and preliminary findings of the latest study to Reuters, Italian scientist Fiorella Belpoggi said experimental rats exposed to the herbicide at levels equivalent to those allowed in humans showed no initial adverse reaction.

“Exposed animals had no evident differences from non-exposed animals,” Belpoggi, who is director of the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Centre at the Ramazzini Institute in Italy, said in a telephone interview.

“But this tells us very little at the moment, because the examinations of key parameters that could be affected by exposure are still being done (and) we are waiting for those results,” Belpoggi added.

Those parameters include any genetic changes, as well as potential toxic effects on measures related to fertility, such as sperm, embryo development and offspring growth, she said.

Argument over glyphosate centres on whether it is carcinogenic. Scientists at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) say it probably does cause cancer, putting them at odds with scientists at the European Food Safety Authority, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and multiple other safety and regulatory agencies around the world, who say it likely doesn’t.

Congressional committees in the U.S. have raised questions about the work and funding of IARC, which is based in Lyon, France, and the Ramazzini Institute, based in Bologna.

IARC and Ramazzini defend the independence of their work and say their research is conducted to the highest scientific standards.

Decades of research

A spokesman for Monsanto said: “There are nearly a thousand scientific studies from decades of research that are already available to every regulatory agency in the world, which have all concluded that glyphosate is safe to use.”

According to data published by IARC, glyphosate was registered in more than 130 countries as of 2010 and is one of the most heavily used weedkillers in the world. Analysts have estimated Monsanto could lose out on up to US$100 million of sales if glyphosate were banned in Europe.

Belpoggi said her team decided to conduct their trial to produce fresh, independent results in an effort to settle differences over glyphosate’s health effect.

But she stressed that due to time constraints, the study is not able to analyse the weed killer’s potential carcinogenicity, which would take several years to research properly, given the time any tumours might take to develop and grow.

“We are focused on reproductive and developmental issues, in other words, whether glyphosate… affects the development of embryos, foetuses and pups,” she said.

Chemicals that can affect hormones and reproduction are known as endocrine disruptors and, like carcinogens, are subject to strict regulations in the European Union.

This study involves scientists working at five laboratories, Belpoggi’s and one other in Italy, and three outside the country. “This was to ensure we would have the best experts analyze each end point,” Belpoggi said. The study is funded by the Ramazzini Institute, a research co-operative of around 28,000 members who are its co-owners and raise funds for its work.

Using laboratory rodents known as Sprague Dawley rats, the researchers exposed them to low levels of glyphosate and its formulation Roundup in their diet, equivalent to U.S. acceptable daily intake (ADI) levels permitted in humans.

The U.S. ADI for glyphosate is 1.75 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day while the European Union ADI for consumers is 0.5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.

Full results should be available by June, Belpoggi said, and will be submitted in a paper for peer review and publication in a scientific journal. A draft copy of the results will be sent at the same time to the European Commission.

The Commission has said it expects to restart talks with EU member states by August on re-approving the use of glyphosate in herbicides. A decision is due before the end of 2017.

“We would like to have the results in time to help regulators have a good judgment about this chemical,” Belpoggi said. “If it is negative (no effect), then I will be happy because I am also exposed. But if there is some damage, then we would like everyone to know.”

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

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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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