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To: Homebase, B & Q, Waitrose
Don't make gardeners & farmers use more poisonous weedkillers
Please don't force gardeners and farmers to use more dangerous weedkillers. Keep the very safe herbicide glyphosate on the shelves.
Why is this important?
Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide on the market. Herbicides containing glyphosate are sold under a variety of names, and are made by a large number of different manufacturers, but the most well known is RoundUp, made by Monsanto. Gardeners and farmers choose to use glyphosate herbicides because they are both very effective, and have a very low toxicity to people and animals.
Despite the fact that there is very clear scientific evidence that herbicides containing glyphosate are safe, and don't cause cancer (see sources at the bottom), and even though multiple well-respected international scientific bodies have examined all of the evidence and also concluded there is no link between glyphosate and cancer, a jury in California decided that a man's cancer was caused by it.
As a result companies like B&Q and Homebase are considering removing glyphosate herbicides from their shelves. Waitrose is already doing it. If glyphosate herbicides are taken away, gardeners and farmers will have no alternative but to switch to other, more toxic herbicides, like pyraflufen ethyl (2x more toxic than glyphosate), dicamba (about 6 times more toxic than glyphosate), or diquat (almost 40 times more toxic than glyphosate).
As a gardener, I use glyphosate for weed control, particularly invasive, difficult to get rid of ones like Ground Elder and Bindweed. Farmers are increasingly using it as part of no-till farming, to avoid having to break up soil which leads to soil degradation and erosion.
Why should my health and well-being, and the safety of my family be put at risk by knee-jerk responses to a poorly made judgement in a foreign court? Gardeners and farmers should be allowed to decide for ourselves if we want to continue to use RoundUp and other glyphosate herbicides, rather than having it imposed on us.
Courts are not good places to determine scientific issues. Juries can be swayed by emotions (a dying man vs a large faceless, not particularly trusted corporation), and because juries don’t generally consist of scientific experts, and therefore, like the rest of us, they aren't in a position to properly evaluate scientific evidence, particularly in a courtroom where they're under pressure to try and decide between 2 competing stories. So when the science says glyphosate is safe, I believe companies should trust the science, rather than relying on a single flawed court case that is being appealed.
Sources:
- Andreotti et al. 2017. A large, long-term cohort study with over 50,000 participants that wasn’t funded by Monsanto, which failed to find an association between glyphosate use and cancer among farmers.
- Mink et al. 2012. A meta-analysis of 21 cohort and case-controlled studies in humans concluded that there is "no consistent pattern of positive associations indicating a causal relationship between total cancer (in adults or children) or any site-specific cancer and exposure to glyphosate".
- Regulatory oversight agencies in the US, Europe and elsewhere in the world, including the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (acting on behalf of European Commission and European Food Safety Authority), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and World Health Organization Core Assessment Group, the European Union, the World Health Organization International Programme on Chemical Safety, the EPA, and the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority have all reviewed the over 800 studies on glyphosate (many of which are independent) and concluded there is no link between glyphosate and cancer.
(Declaration of interest: I have never worked for or receive any money from Monsanto or any other chemical or agricultural company.)
Despite the fact that there is very clear scientific evidence that herbicides containing glyphosate are safe, and don't cause cancer (see sources at the bottom), and even though multiple well-respected international scientific bodies have examined all of the evidence and also concluded there is no link between glyphosate and cancer, a jury in California decided that a man's cancer was caused by it.
As a result companies like B&Q and Homebase are considering removing glyphosate herbicides from their shelves. Waitrose is already doing it. If glyphosate herbicides are taken away, gardeners and farmers will have no alternative but to switch to other, more toxic herbicides, like pyraflufen ethyl (2x more toxic than glyphosate), dicamba (about 6 times more toxic than glyphosate), or diquat (almost 40 times more toxic than glyphosate).
As a gardener, I use glyphosate for weed control, particularly invasive, difficult to get rid of ones like Ground Elder and Bindweed. Farmers are increasingly using it as part of no-till farming, to avoid having to break up soil which leads to soil degradation and erosion.
Why should my health and well-being, and the safety of my family be put at risk by knee-jerk responses to a poorly made judgement in a foreign court? Gardeners and farmers should be allowed to decide for ourselves if we want to continue to use RoundUp and other glyphosate herbicides, rather than having it imposed on us.
Courts are not good places to determine scientific issues. Juries can be swayed by emotions (a dying man vs a large faceless, not particularly trusted corporation), and because juries don’t generally consist of scientific experts, and therefore, like the rest of us, they aren't in a position to properly evaluate scientific evidence, particularly in a courtroom where they're under pressure to try and decide between 2 competing stories. So when the science says glyphosate is safe, I believe companies should trust the science, rather than relying on a single flawed court case that is being appealed.
Sources:
- Andreotti et al. 2017. A large, long-term cohort study with over 50,000 participants that wasn’t funded by Monsanto, which failed to find an association between glyphosate use and cancer among farmers.
- Mink et al. 2012. A meta-analysis of 21 cohort and case-controlled studies in humans concluded that there is "no consistent pattern of positive associations indicating a causal relationship between total cancer (in adults or children) or any site-specific cancer and exposure to glyphosate".
- Regulatory oversight agencies in the US, Europe and elsewhere in the world, including the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (acting on behalf of European Commission and European Food Safety Authority), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and World Health Organization Core Assessment Group, the European Union, the World Health Organization International Programme on Chemical Safety, the EPA, and the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority have all reviewed the over 800 studies on glyphosate (many of which are independent) and concluded there is no link between glyphosate and cancer.
(Declaration of interest: I have never worked for or receive any money from Monsanto or any other chemical or agricultural company.)
