Rachel Taketa
Rachel Taketa
Rachel is the Industry Documents Library Processing and Reference Archivist.

UCSF Chemical Industry Documents Archive Expands

Addition of Monsanto Papers and Agrichemical Industry Documents​

The UCSF Industry Documents Library (IDL) is pleased to announce the addition of two new collections to our Chemical Industry Documents Archive. These documents reveal the agrichemical industry’s scientific, legislative, regulatory and public relations activities in defense of its products and profits.

The Roundup Products Liability Litigation Documents
Known as ‘The Monsanto Papers,’ this collection contains a set of 118 significant internal company documents (1063 pages) obtained during the Roundup Products Liability Litigation – lead Case No. 3:16-md-02741-VC. Manufactured by the agrichemical giant Monsanto, Roundup contains the chemical herbicide glyphosate and is widely used by farmers, agricultural workers and the public throughout the United States. Studies have shown that exposure to glyphosate in Roundup can cause cancer and other serious health problems yet Monsanto has repeatedly denied these claims and worked to influence regulations that would address these harms.

The USRTK Agrichemical Collection
This collection includes over 1450 documents (37,149 pages) acquired by U.S. Right to Know through state public records requests, FOIA requests, whistleblowers, and the Roundup litigation. US Right to Know is a nonprofit consumer and public health watchdog group working for transparency and accountability in our nation’s food system. Collected by Gary Ruskin, Executive Director of US RTK, and Carey Gillam, Research Director of US RTK and author of Whitewash-The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer and the Corruption of Science, these materials are a mix of unsealed documents obtained from the Roundup/glyphosate cancer cases (the Monsanto Papers), communications to and from the EPA, FDA and US Department of Agriculture regarding glyphosate and herbicides, and emails between key academics and industry PR staff from Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, Ketchum, Bayer and the Council for Biotechnology Information.

Topics include pesticides, GMOs, glyphosate, key front groups, academic partnerships with industry public relations staff, and efforts to manage the Monsanto sponsored website ‘GMO Answers’.

These documents have been used as the source for a number of publications including:
New York Times: Food Industry Enlisted Academics in G.M.O. Lobbying War, Emails Show, by Eric Lipton
Mother Jones: These Emails Show Monsanto Leaning on Professors to Fight the GMO PR War, by Tom Philpott
Le Monde: La Discrète Influence de Monsanto, by Stéphane Foucart

The UCSF Chemical Industry Documents Archive has been developed in partnership with UCSF’s Environmental Health Initiative with grants from the Marisla Foundation and Rachel’s Network.