Latest attack will waste even more money, CropLife Canada says. Ottawa—A new report by U.S. government scientists has revived the contentious debate about the safety of the herbicide glyphosate even as a wide array of international and national health agencies defend its use. The new study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, said people exposed to the herbicide have biomarkers in body fluids or tissues linked to the development of cancer and other diseases. The study says that exposure to high levels of it were linked to a reaction that causes damage to DNA. Groups opposed to glyphosate's use in agriculture used the report's release to renew their calls for its ban and push for legal action against it. In response, Pierre Petelle, President and CEO of CropLife Canada, whose members include pesticide manufacturers, said their comments were “yet another example of activist groups turning to the courts when their scientific arguments fail. This litigious approach is modeled after what we see in the U.S. It wastes valuable donor dollars on legal cases without merit, while at the same time wasting taxpayer dollars by tying up government resources in legal matters rather than putting them to use on the important business of scientific assessments. “Glyphosate and other crop protection tools contribute to food security and affordability, family farm sustainability and economic growth,” he said. “Glyphosate is one of the safest and most studied pesticides ever developed. More than 160 regulatory agencies around the world agree that glyphosate is safe when used according to label directions.” Health Canada continues to approve the product's use as directed and stated it left no stone unturned in looking at the science behind glyphosate in its most recent re-evaluation decision, Petelle said. Bayer, which owns Monsanto, the manufacturer of glyphosate, says the increase in oxidative stress “found in the study could have been caused by any number of non-glyphosate-related factors or a combination of them, and the study does not support the conclusion that glyphosate is the cause. The study has significant methodological limitations.” People can be exposed to glyphosate by using products with the chemical in it and by eating food and drinking water polluted with it. While the study focused on farmers who were exposed to glyphosate when they sprayed it on their fields, the researchers said they found similar results in non-farmers. Health Canada is not alone in its stand on the glyphosate's safety. Research by the online Genetic Literacy Project has found health bodies around the globe including the World Health Organization say using the weed killer as directed on the label does not create health hazards. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and similar health authorities in Europe, Australia and Japan have also come to the same conclusion. Bayer still faces a long string of U.S. lawsuits from cancer patients who say exposure to glyphosate caused them to develop cancer. While the company has already agreed to pay over $11 billion to settle most of the claims, it did so without admitting its product was the culprit.