Tag: glyphosate

Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir have published two new interactive maps showing where glyphosate is being sprayed in California’s Bay Area and Portland.

Glyphosate has been linked to increases in levels of breast, thyroid, kidney, pancreatic, liver and bladder cancers and is being served for breakfast, lunch and dinner around the world.

Monsanto maintains that their product is safe, and that the recent arguments over glyphosate or purely “political.”

Besides the potential contamination of local maize varieties, the groups argued that the health risks of introducing GMO maize into Nigeria could be “enormous” considering that maize is a staple food in their diet.

This move by France and their EU partners will hit the biotech giant Monsanto and other large pesticide companies which rely on glyphosate-based herbicides for a large percentage of their global profits.

While the pre-harvest use of glyphosate may account for a small amount of overall use of the herbicide, this still has a huge impact.

Public pressure against glyphosate in countries across Europe has been intense, with nearly 1.5 million people petitioning the EU’s health commissioner for a ban on the substance.

The German Brewers’ Association admitted that low residues of the probable human carcinogen glyphosate could not be prevented, because “the herbicide is now found virtually everywhere after decades of use in agriculture”.

The federal agency already tests for residues of many agricultural chemicals on food. Now it will include the widely used weed killer linked to cancer.

Monsanto has long maintained the safety of their widely popular product. The agribusiness giant has also vehemently denied glyphosate’s link to cancer.