LONDON — European regulators gave a Monsanto a boost on Wednesday after determining that the main ingredient in the company’s flagship weed killer should not be classified as causing cancer.
The decision was welcome for Monsanto, coming a day after unsealed records from a federal court in San Francisco raised questions about the safety of the weed killer, Roundup, and concerns about the company’s research practices. The European review was focused on the safety of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup.
The announcement in Europe was unlikely to end the debate over glyphosate, given the contents of the court records unsealed in San Francisco on Tuesday. Those records suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research attributed to academics and indicated that a senior E.P.A. official had worked to halt a review of glyphosate by the Department of Health and Human Services. The documents also revealed disagreement within the E.P.A. over its own safety assessment.
