Concerns over links to cancer and infertility have prompted regulators to conduct a formal review of the herbicide Roundup, produced by Monsanto:
Amid rising voices of alarm, regulators in the United States and Canada are conducting a formal review of glyphosate's safety, lawsuits are pending and some groups are calling for a global ban.
"Glyphosate's days are numbered," said Paul Achitoff, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that last month sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture in part over concerns about heavy glyphosate use...
Environmentalists, consumer groups and plant scientists from several countries are warning that heavy use of the chemical over the years is causing dangerous problems for plants, people and animals alike.
Earlier this year, a plant scientist from Purdue University wrote a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture warning of new evidence of a dangerous microscopic organism associated with glyphosate:
Dr. Don Huber did not seek fame when he quietly penned a confidential letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in January of this year, warning Vilsack of preliminary evidence of a microscopic organism that appears in high concentrations in genetically modified Roundup Ready corn and soybeans and "appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals and probably human beings." Huber, a retired Purdue University professor of plant pathology and U.S. Army colonel, requested the USDA's help in researching the matter and suggested Vilsack wait until the research was concluded before deregulating Roundup Ready alfalfa...
First of all, he points out, evidence began to emerge in the 1980s that "what glyphosate does is, essentially, give a plant AIDS." Just like AIDS, which cripples a human's immune system, glyphosate makes plants unable to mount a defense against pathogens in the soil. Without its defense mechanisms functioning, the plants succumb to pathogens in the soil and die. Furthermore, glyphosate has an impact on microorganisms in the soil, helping some and hurting others. This is potentially problematic for farmers, as the last thing one would want is a buildup of pathogens in the soil where they grow crops...
He continues, saying, "We have witnessed a deterioration in the plant health of corn, soybean, wheat and other crops recently with unexplained epidemics of sudden death syndrome of soybean (SDS), Goss' wilt of corn, and take-all of small grain crops the last two years. At the same time, there has been an increasing frequency of previously unexplained animal (cattle, pig, horse, poultry) infertility and [miscarriages]. These situations are threatening the economic viability of both crop and animal producers."
In the past, the industry has been heavily insulated from criticism. A Wikileaks document dump revealed that the U.S. State Department used its intelligence gathering authority to ensure that foreign regimes were accepting genetically modified crops. It even threatened a military-style trade war against the European Union for its opposition. The indigenous people of Colombia have also long complained about the deleterious effects of US-led spraying.
In 2008, a film called The World According to Monsanto took an in-depth look at the company's chilling history: