Juggling with glyphosate

January 2018

Not, perhaps, the best way to start a new year is the announcement that the European Commission has re-approved the use of glyphosate herbicide for five years.

This means that responsibility for the consequences of this highly controversial weedkiller is off-loaded onto Member States: France and Italy immediately announced their intention to phase out glyphosate over the next three years, and Austria is set to join them.

Glyphosate infusion into the world

October 2016

Photo Creative Commons

Glyphosate herbicide usage has got so out of control, it seems to have taken on a life of its own.

Most of the livestock which provide us with our meat, dairy and eggs are fed maize, soya and cotton seed. Most of these three crops are liberally sprayed with glyphosate because they've been genetically transformed to accumulate this weedkiller.

Livestock aren't the only animals eating GM crops. Bees can forage over several miles, and monocultures of GM maize, soya, cotton, and oilseed rape in flower provide a bees' banquet. Hardly surprising then that American honey is ubiquitously contaminated with the herbicide.

Glyphosate attitude shift

May 2016

March 2016 could prove a turning point for the fortunes of 'glyphosate', the weed-killer which has provided leverage for the commercial production of 80% of current GM crops, and is worth $5 billion to its major manufacturer.

It seems to have started with a spat in 2015 when the World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that the strength of the scientific evidence indicated that glyphosate is a "probable carcinogen" [1].

The IARC conclusion was published just at the same time as the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which was preparing to re-licence glyphosate, declared it "unlikely" to be carcinogenic.

To understand how two such authoritative bodies could arrive at such opposing conclusions on the scientific evidence, all you need to do is look at the actual evidence considered by the two.

Glyphosate fest

April 2016

The world-renowned German beer industry reacted with shocked disbelief to the finding of glyphosate in 14 of its most popular beers.

Hardly surprising according to The German Brewers Association because 

"the herbicide is now found virtually everywhere after decades of use in agriculture".

German herd sickened by Bt silage

March 2016

One GM-crop enthusiast in Germany has tried it, tested it, looked at the outcome, and changed his mind.

Farmer Glöckner is an experienced dairy farmer with an award for high productivity and a masters degree in Agricultural Sciences. He was one of the first to work with the biotech industry and to trial GM crops. From 1998 to 2002, he grew Syngenta's Bt176 GM maize and prepared silage from it to feed his herd. Progressively increasing amounts of the maize were included in the feed, so that by 2000, the maize content of the feed (40% of the total) was entirely Bt.

Glöckner kept meticulous records, was quick to notice changes in his herd, and quick to call for veterinary and laboratory support. When things had clearly gone wrong, he sued Syngenta and received partial compensation.

What had gone wrong with the Bt-fed herd has been summarised and reported in the scientific literature by Professor Giles-Éric Séralini, a scientist who has long had doubts about industry claims of GM feed safety.

Germany shows the way to GM-free soya

December 2015

We're at last beginning to face up to the reality that the world's natural resources are finite and that we're choking to death in waste of our own creation. The buzz-word du jour is 'sustainability', because without it, we're doomed.

Sustainability of our food crop production is of course a multi-dimensional issue.

Ombudsman rules universities biased

September 2015

Photo Creative Commons

NGOs, MEPs, and journalists who do their homework have been raising concerns for some years that 'independent' advisers to government are failing to use independent sources to inform themselves.

For example, when Germany reviewed glyphosate herbicide for re-authorisation in the EU, it based its recommendation on a report prepared by the 'Glyphosate Task Force'; this is an organisation set up by agrichemical companies specifically to promote the re-registration of glyphosate, a chemical central to their GM crops and profits.

In the latter case there was a blatant conflict of interest, but it isn't always so obvious.

GM crops compromise science

September 2015

Photo Creative Commons

The recent analysis of rodent chow used by laboratories and breeders which found multiple toxic contamination in all samples tested from all over the world has cast doubt on an awful lot of science [1].

If both test and control (comparator) animals in an experiment are consuming a back-ground level of toxins, any additional effect arising from the test-substance (a GM food or a pesticide, for example) will have to be massive to stand out above the noise.

The upshot is that regulators can wrongly conclude a substance under test is safe because the 'science' shows there's no significant difference between the exposed animals and the unexposed controls ... because they're both sick.

Genes know no boundaries

July 2015

GMO protest. Photo Creative Commons

How many random GM plants are kicking around in the food chain?

We've already had two indications of just how bad things might be. 'Starlink' Bt-insecticidal maize which was approved for animal feed only was found to be widespread in maize for human consumption after only two growing seasons, and later turned up in seven countries. Ten years after the first contamination alert, Starlink was found in Saudi Arabia. Two strains of experimental GM rice (one in China, one in America) which were grown in short trials over a very limited area nevertheless succeeded in contaminating global rice supplies.

German Roundup ban

November 2014

Crop spraying. CC photo by Tim Parkinson on Flickr

In 2014, Germany, as Rapporteur Member State for the introduction of glyphosate herbicide into Europe, carried out a routine re-assessment of the chemical and pronounced it safe.

With global sales of the most-used glyphosate-containing herbicide, Monsanto's 'Roundup', reaching $5.46 billion in 2012 and expected to reach $8.79 billion by 2019, it would take some courage for Europe to declare the chemical unsafe. Add to this that glyphosate-tolerance is the most common GM trait being added into crops of all kinds: removing glyphosate from the GM equation at this stage would spell disaster for agriculture in the Americas and elsewhere. 

Germany is not only being politically correct in pronouncing glyphosate safe: the chemical, in pure form, isn't at all bad as these things go. It's easy to pander to big business and avoid offending the US by generating a positive risk assessment for glyhphosate. 

However, the reality of this cynical political posturing to uphold trade has recently become evident.

Independent scientists have repeatedly warned that the risk assessment of glyphosate has been applied out of context and is, simply, wrong.

Germany demands GM-free animal feed

September 2014



Photo by Greenpeace

In April 2013, four major UK supermarkets announced, in concert, that their poultry products would no longer come from livestock fed GM-free feed [1].

The move followed a direct approach to supermarkets from one large soya supplier which had decided to discontinue its non-GM soya line. This was shortly followed by an appeal to retailers from major farmers' representatives for a lifting of the ban on GM feed. The reasons given were cost and a shortage of supplies.

Risk avoidance made easy

September 2014

Crop spraying. CC photo by Tamina Miller on Flickr

Risk-assessment of a substance is carried out by examining all the inherent dangers posed by it, and factoring in how likely it is that anyone will actually be exposed to these dangers.

 

A risk-assessment obviously can't be done without looking at the real-life context in which the substance is used.

 

Glyphosate herbicide, widely used on GM crops, is very safe as these things go, providing you're not a plant or a micro-organism.

 

This fact seems to have been exploited by German assessors when they recommended the re-approval and increased 'Acceptable Daily Intake' of the herbicide earlier this year [1].

A preposterous approval

September 2014


Crop spraying. CC photo by CropShot on Flickr

Glyphosate herbicide (see below) has just been re-approved for use in the EU along with a 67% increase in its 'acceptable daily intake' (ADI).   

The report submitted to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recommending re-approval and upping the ADI was prepared by Germany, the rapporteur Member State for this herbicide.
 

Germany's overall findings were that the herbicide poses no unacceptable risks.  Specifically, glyphosate is not metabolised (chemically changed by the body) nor accumulated in the body.  It's not toxic to genes, nor carcinogenic, nor endocrine disrupting, and has no reproductive toxicity.  The only human health risks noted were that glyphosate is a severe eye irritant. 
 

Issues that could not be finalised included the relevance of impurities and microbial effects. 
 

The Institute of Science in Society described these conclusions as 'preposterous'.