Dive Brief:
- Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), an environmental activist group that advocates for researchers, filed a petition with the USDA requesting new regulations that protect government scientists and their research.
- The petition pushes the USDA to place rules to avert "political suppression or alteration of studies and to lay out clear procedures for investigating allegations of scientific misconduct," reported Reuters.
- According to Reuters, PEER's executive director Jeff Ruch, "said his organization had received mounting complaints over the last year from USDA scientists claiming they have been ordered to retract studies, water down findings, remove their names from authorship and experienced delays in approvals for publication of research papers."
Dive Insight:
PEER brought the petition to the USDA less than a week after glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup, which is the world's leading weed killer, was labeled "probably carcinogenic" by the World Health Organization.
"A USDA spokesman said the agency values the integrity of its scientists and the quality of their research," reports Reuters.
The USDA said its policy does not need updating to bolster it.