Same Old Pesticide Game With Glyphosate, Roundup

by Natasha Chart

categories: Corporate Kneebiters, Food Safety, Health, Pest Management, Pollution

Published June 09, 2009 @ 01:36PM PT

Proponents of GMO crops, the untested, unlabeled genetically engineered foodstuffs flooding our supermarket aisles, will tell you that Monsanto's Roundup Ready (TM) products are an environmental success story because they reduce pesticide use. Not the use of Roundup, whose prime active ingredient is glyphosate, but that's beside the point.

It reduces the use of pesticides that have been around long enough to have gotten as much bad press as the pesticides they replaced, which were claimed to be perfectly fine and dandy until that story collapsed under the weight of evidence. Are we seeing a pattern, here?

Though indeed, looking over the carefully done glyphosate wikipedia entry, you can see why its supporters are so enthusiastic about it. It doesn't bioaccumulate, it seems to break down in soil when it isn't adsorbed to soil particles (though it adheres fairly tenaciously to soil, fwiw) and it results in fewer hospitalizations than older pesticides.

But it's not without health effects, as noted by even the notoriously risk-declaration-averse EPA. In combination with other chemicals ('inactive' or 'inert' ingredients) that may be included in Roundup, or other generic formulations, it may even become more harmful than indicated. So while glyphosate itself is not considered a particular risk to aquatic organisms, it may become very toxic to fish and amphibians in combination with a common type of surfactant used in Roundup.

And is pure glyphosate generally used alone? No, no it isn't. Therefore safety data on glyphosate alone presents an incomplete picture of its health effects.

Consider that a surfactant is a chemical, natural or lab-created, whose effect is to increase solubility in water. Which is to say that one of glyphosate's main claims to fame - that it's unlikely to show up in water and pose a threat to aquatic organisms - is immediately undercut by the fact that it's commonly mixed with a surfactant.

Pat Thomas, writing in The Ecologist covers not only additional of these suspected health effects that have shown up in various studies, including a possible cancer link, but touches on the innate problem with pesticide-based agriculture:

... This irresponsible type of agriculture has led to increased resistance to the herbicide and the emergence of ‘superweeds’ – and thus increased sales of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, which farmers have to use more and more of in order to get the same effect. For instance, according to a new report by the US Center for Food Safety, per-acre applications of Roundup on soybeans rose by a factor of 2.5 (250 per cent) between 1994 and 2006. It took until 2002 for corn farmers truly to embrace GM, but between 2002 and 2005, glyphosate use on corn rose from 0.71 to 0.96lb/acre/year – a 35 per cent increase in just three years (see also box, opposite page). Thanks to Roundup, farmers worldwide are on a chemical treadmill they are finding it increasingly difficult to get off. ...

So not only have there been indications that it's unhealthier than suspected, it's already becoming less effective. Which means it will have to be replaced later on with some other as-yet-unknown chemical, though before that, not only is Roundup application likely to be stepped up, all the old pesticides Roundup was supposed to replace are going to have to be used alongside it to pick up the slack. The wikipedia entry provides this summary, taking it that next step, direct links to references added by me:

... The first documented cases of weed resistance to glyphosate were found in Australia, involving rigid ryegrass near Orange, New South Wales.[69] Some farmers in the United States have expressed concern that weeds are now developing with glyphosate resistance, with 13 states now reporting resistance, and this poses a problem to many farmers, including cotton farmers, that are now heavily dependent on glyphosate to control weeds.[70][71] Farmers associations are now reporting 103 biotypes of weeds within 63 weed species with herbicide resistance[70][71]. This problem is likely to be exacerbated by the use of roundup-ready crops [72]. ...

This story never seems to change. Though like a partner in an abusive relationship, the pesticide industry keeps coming back and saying that really, really honey, it's different this time. And their behavior in trying to gin up sympathy for these toxins hasn't changed since the publication of Silent Spring. The 1999 book, "Toxic Deception: How the chemical industry manipulates science, bends the law and endangers your health", has more:

... Carson's devastating critique plunged the industry into its first full-blown public relations crisis, and manufacturers, initially caught unprepared, quickly regrouped and responded with guns blazing. E. Bruce Harrison, a young public relations executive, was put in charge of managing the industry's response to Silent Spring. He engineered a series of attacks on Carson delivered by industry-friendly scientists in press interviews and in pamphlets and negative book reviews sent to thousands of prominent Americans. Monsanto distributed more than 35,000 copies of an acerbic rebuttal in its company magazine. Called "The Desolate Year," the article described a pesticide-free world in which insects ran rampant, spreading famine and disease.

The anti-Carson campaign was so effective that PR News, a trade publication, would later enshrine it in a collection of standout public-relations efforts. The industry's "brilliant PR performance," PR News said, "... has raised high a big 'Stop and Think' sign which has slowed hysterical, dangerous extremism."

Because of the impassioned response to Silent Spring, the nation's chemical industry would never again take public support for granted. It has poured billions of dollars into advertising and public relations campaigns as part of an all-encompassing strategy that has, for the most part, overwhelmed the efforts of independent scientists to present a balanced picture of the risks and benefits of man-made chemicals.

Harrison's counterattack against Silent Spring established a pattern that manufacturers would follow again and again: using the overwhelming power of public relations to blunt th eimpact of negative publicity - "crisis management," in the lexicon of the fast-growing environmental public relations industry.

... When the EPA was considering banning alachlor, for instance, Monsanto launched an all-out effort to galvanize the nation's farmers. George Fuller, th edirector of product registration and regulatory affairs for the company's agricultural division, explains its strategy this way: "There's not a lot of corn growing in Washington, D.C. There's not a lot of awareness of exactly whit it takes to grow corn and what are the issues that are facing corn farmers. What we wanted to do was create that awareness and have that be a part of the exchange of ideas." ...

The EPA now classes alachlor, which it once considered banning, as "slightly toxic." The European Union apparently outlawed it in 2006.

Pesticide research, release and regulation in the United States, as with the release and regulation of genetically modified organisms, as in the pharmaceutical sector, has been seriously corrupted by industry influence.

Yet a comprehensive 2004 literature review by the Ontario College of Family Physicians concludes in certain terms that even minimal pesticide exposure from routine spraying of residential yards or indoor household use should be avoided, particularly by children, who could also be harmed by parental exposure. Charming. I'm sure Monsanto lobbyists wave a copy of this study at the Agriculture Committee every time they're in DC.

Instead of helping, or quietly allowing, the agriculture industry to switch over to less toxic, more sustainable farming methods, they create enough fear, uncertainty and doubt about the opposition that they can run the regulatory table. Then by the time enough evidence arises to conclusively damn their old products, they have new ones.

Over and over they do it, because it works and is enormously profitable.

They'd like us to wait and see, to extend a little benefit of the doubt their way. Maybe for another couple of decades while their uncontrolled public experiments play out.

Hey, Monsanto! Pull my finger.