Monsanto is finally being called to pay a first bill, $289 million, for concealing the health hazards of using glyphosate (or glyphosate). Peanuts, compared to the turnover of the Poison Corporation.
Glyphosate, a weapon of mass destruction
Weapon of Mass Destruction is the epithet that best suits glyphosate. The most common, among the
agrotoxics
broad-spectrum, after DDT (1) and paraquat sunset, pending dicamba.
Decades of research on the serious dangers to human and animal health were not enough to obtain a ban on the use of the agrotoxic under investigation. Which instead received support from every
lobby
including that of Copa-Cogeca, the confederation of farmers in Europe.
IARC’s tragic verdict – the U.N. Agency for Research on Cancer, which declared glyphosate carcinogenic, in 2015-has also been questioned by ECHA, the European Chemical Agency. Based only on data offered by the manufacturer, moreover suspected of falsehoods and omissions.
Glyphosate, the historical judgment
One lawsuit, of more than 5,000 filed so far in the various U.S. Courts, reached its destiny on 11.8.18 in the San Francisco Court. Just now that Monsanto has been acquired by Germany’s Bayer, Judge Vince Chhabria has ordered it to pay $289 million in damages.
A
exemplary sanction
was imposed to symbolically refresh the life of a 46-year-old former gardener, Dewayne Johnson. Who, after years of using glyphosate at work, was stricken with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. And it offered opportunity for the questioned judge to alter the course of history.
The St. Louis, Missouri, giant had precise knowledge of the health risks associated with ‘Roundup,’ that’s the famous brand name for the agrotoxic. Research had been initiated, sometimes deliberately aborted, often shared with complacent Environment Protection Agency (EPA) officials.
I ‘
Monsanto papers
‘ were supposed to form the basis for the scientific risk assessment, to be submitted for public consultation. Instead, in addition to being essentially ignored, they have been concealed by the public agency itself, under the pretext of respecting the manufacturer’s ‘trade secret’.
‘There is now an enormous cache of evidence on both scientific and legal grounds that Monsanto in fact conducted numerous studies in the 1970s and 1980s on glyphosate’s toxicity and health risks and intentionally sealed this research from independent and public review and scrutiny.’
Bayer’s stock plummeted 10 points in just a few hours, below its lowest level in two years. It had just this year concluded its US$63 billion acquisition of Monsanto, and is already paying for its poisons.
Glyphosate, disaster foretold
Judge Vince Chhabria, like David vs. Goliath, dealt a severe blow to the head of an enemy of mankind who it is always good to remember for his contribution to the H-bomb, the devising of DDT, Agent Orange and paraquat, the leadership in dioxins, saccharin, aspartame and synthetic bovine growth hormone.
Moreover, the U.S. market, where glyphosate was patented and licensed in 1974, consumes about 127,000 tons a year to date, 19 percent of global consumption. As the first producer of ‘Roundup-ready‘ soybeans and corn. GMOs designed as the only plants capable of surviving generous sprays of Roundup, the king of pesticides. (2)
The level of glyphosate in drinking water tolerated in the US is 0.7 ug/l, seven times higher than the limit set in the EU. This threshold was set by the EPA in 1994 and has never been revised, despite studies over the years on the toxicity of the agrotoxic. Big Ag ‘s shadowy lobbies (3) have been able to influence every government-even under pseudo-democratic presidencies, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama-with no one ever looking out for public health.
In Europe things didn’t get any better. As the writer reports and denounces
For a decade or so
now, the European Commission and the German Consumer Protection and Food Safety Authority (which it has delegated to assess risks on pesticides) have deliberately failed to consider important studies on the hazardousness of
glyphosate
.
Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis and member state governments recently came to grant an additional five-year renewal to the ‘glyph’ use authorization. That it thus continues to pollute our lands, water and air, animals and finally us.
Dario Dongo
Notes
(1) Almost half a century after its ban (1969), DDT still resides in 15 percent of surface waters in Italy. Atrazine, banned since 1992, in more than half of groundwater. Glyphosate, in 50% in surface ones. ISPRA data. See the article https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/progresso/biologico-reg-ue-2018-848
(2) For more on the vicious relationship between pesticides and GMOs, we recommend reading our free ebook ‘
GMOs the Big Scam
‘, at
https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/libri/ogm-la-grande-truffa
(3) Big Ag, Big Agriculture, the group of 6 Corporations that controls 75 percent of the global seed and agrotoxin market, is meant. BASF, Bayer – Monsanto, Dupont, Dow Chemical Company, Syngenta
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.