The use of chemicals like glyphosate has to be banned because their production, promotion and use is tantamount to homicide by the herbicide. There is plenty of evidence to support this contention and they should be more than sufficient for reasonable men to ban glyphosate on its dangers to life forms and the environment at the present scale of use.
We have got used to talking about glyphosate, a chemical that is only a major constituent of currently used herbicides. Scientific observations and analyses too have been confined mostly to glyphosate simply because the agrochemical companies refer most of the time to glyphosate. That is because glyphosate is a mild poison in the short-term. They can deny it is harmful because that is all they have bothered to find out and do know. But it is definitely a deadly killer in the long-term.
Actually, glyphosate may not be even a 40-50% constituent of herbicides. The other constituents could be equally or more dangerous 2,4-D [2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid], glufosinate, POEA [polyethoxylated tallowamine] and many others. 2,4-D is already banned in several countries.
2,4-D is a poisonous constituent of “Agent Orange” used by the USA in the Viet-Nam war to defoliate jungles to expose hidden enemy formations and installations. It seriously affected millions of Vietnamese as well as thousands of allied soldiers. Now, 60 years after the cease-fire, there are hundreds of thousands of pitifully deformed, long-suffering, helpless human beings, some even in their youth – showing long-term adverse effects.
Glufosinate is like glyphosate. It is a non-selective herbicide that disrupts a biosynthetic pathway in plants. In other words, it kills all plants indiscriminately by disrupting an essential metabolic process in them. It will affect life forms, just like glyphosate.
Unfortunately, the TRI is supposed to be testing it for use as an alternative to glyphosate! We hope this will be stopped before that also becomes a dangerous long-term experiment with human lives.
Because of the notoriety acquired by glyphosate and its branded formulation Roundup, they were tested separately at the University of Caen in France.
It was found that Roundup was at least twice as harmful to life as glyphosate in dilutions far below those recommended for agriculture.
trade secrecy
There is no knowledge available on formulations because producer companies claim trade secrecy. As such, how can one get scientific proof of danger? The population is at the total mercy of the manufacturer with his purposely limited release of favourable scientific information and non-disclosure of the unfavourable scientific information. Scientifically analysing the formulations and researching their effects on the environment and life forms is impossible, impractical, useless. What do this business and their trade secrecy mean? They mean that for the sake of profits, money, companies can and do foist dangerous chemicals on us and the environment without extensive research, or after half-baked research, on the effects of these chemicals on life forms and the environment.
Isn’t this criminal capitalism? Even a decade of such observations may not be adequate to realize the full adverse impacts – as shown by the use of glyphosate, but safety is assured in “marketing drivel” after short-term testing of a few months, as in the case of glyphosate and Monsanto Corporation, the company that developed it as a herbicide.
Scientific proof is not possible. Not even a few of the relevant natural conditions can be replicated in a laboratory. Modern science has only a minuscular knowledge of the process of life, of metabolism. Apart from that, even if scientists know how to study the metabolic process, even in stages, they do not have the equipment to do it and natural conditions cannot be replicated in the laboratory. Furthermore, there are several formulations of glyphosate in the market. Only the manufacturers know their compositions. As admitted by Monsanto, these formulations have never been tested. They have been foisted on the public without any concern for possible health hazards.
Therefore, those who blindly call for solid scientific proof of the dangers of glyphosate formulations are fooling the people deliberately or through ignorance.
poisoning by glyphosate
The action of glyphosate on higher life-forms, particular humans, is insidiously adverse. Very much so, like the action of diabetes. This has been shown after a decade’s use in the USA, Canada, China, Argentina, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Puerto-Rico, etc.
More countries, including Brazil and European nations, have woken up to the danger and are pressing regulators to ban glyphosate. In Europe, it has been found in human urine and breast milk. In fact, the research at the University of Caen started after observations in Canada of increases in miscarriages, premature births, stillbirths etc. in farm families. Earlier in 2010, one province in Argentina, after similar experiences, banned the use of glyphosate within 875 yards of homes.
In 2011, a federal bill was introduced to ban the use of glyphosate herbicides within 109 yards of urban areas. Lawmakers were pushing for a 10-year phase-out of all glyphosate-containing products.
The situation in Argentina was tragic. Due to compelling economic reasons, Argentina started growing GMO crops for export. GMO crops are an evil creation to grow “food” in commercial quantities. They were created immune to glyphosate to permit the use of the very convenient glyphosate to kill weeds only - unlike before GMO when glyphosate killed all plants – crops and weeds. In other words, GMO is an evil created to enable the continued large-scale use of the other evil – glyphosate.
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