The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) experts shocked the agribusiness few days ago when it announced that two pesticides that are widely in use are carcinogenic to humans.

The international committee The Lancet and plans published a brief details explanation of its conclusions. It said that a book-length version of it will be released later this year.

The announcement soon raised several heated reaction, because one of these chemicals, is a pillar of large-scale farming.

Glyphosate which is commonly known as Roundup is the most popular weed killer in the world.

This weed killer is very famous farmers because many crops, including corn, soybeans and cotton, have been genetically modified to tolerate the chemical. Farmers usually spray it across entire field, and it kills the weeds enabling crops to survive.

The IARC also mentioned the insecticide malathion as a probable human carcinogen. Malathion is often used to control mosquitoes.

It was found that in 1980s, the insecticide was sprayed across several parts of California, including entire suburban communities, in an effort to eradicate the Mediterranean fruit fly.

Monsanto, the company that invented both glyphosate and Roundup Ready crops was found to be annoyed with IARC's announcement. The company even called IARC's assessment as Junk Science.

Monsanto's chief technology officer, Robb Fraley, said in a statement that the results given by IARC are a clear example of agenda-driven bias.

Fraley also said that IARC's assessment is not backed by any form of scientific data. Several regulatory authorities in many countries have repeatedly evaluated these studies and concluded that glyphosate is safe, he said.

Glyphosate has been widely considered among the safest pesticides when compared to other available agricultural chemicals, said Fraley.

But IARC assessment showed that glyphosate probably could cause cancer in humans, but not that it probably does.