City councils in Sydney, Australia and four other neighboring cities are considering phasing out glyphosate, including Bayer's Roundup product containing it. Australian farmers are already testing alternative drugs, Reuters reported, citing city officials.
The reason was a familiar problem with cancer, which hundreds of thousands of drug users around the world complain about. According to an agency source, hundreds of farmers began testing alternative products this week. Roundup was a necessary tool because mulching, manual weeding and other “clean” methods did not help yields. Also, on the eve of the strike of more than 40 thousand farmers because of unwillingness to use the product.
According to toxicologist Ian Musgrave of the University of Adelaide, this decision is associated with enormous pressure on farmers from opponents of the Roundup. The expert believes that negative rumors about the carcinogenicity of the drug and numerous lawsuits on this matter are stirring up the situation. Musgrave believes that farmers and authorities must make decisions based on scientific research.
Now the carcinogenicity of the drug is unequivocally stated only by farmers and gardeners suffering from cancer, who explain their symptoms by its prolonged use. Leading agencies are not as radical in their assessments. For example, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (a structure of the WHO) in 2015 named the drug only "probably carcinogenic to humans." WHO itself, as well as the UN FAO and the European Food Safety and Chemicals agencies, generally consider it perfectly safe.
Recall that in the United States alone against the manufacturing company of glyphosate more than 12 thousand lawsuits were filed in California, Missouri, San Francisco and other states. In addition to toxicity, the drug also causes great harm to the environment. For example, only last year its share in the Missouri water area has grown more than eight times since using GMOs.
Source: https://rosng.ru/