Won’t someone please think of the children! If only Maude Flanders were alive to remind the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), which was asked to assess the potential health risk of glyphosate after EU countries failed to agree on a re-authorization for Roundup last year, despite a positive recommendation from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
ECHA went on to recommend glyphosate as safe, and was even found to have copied pages of a report directly from Monsanto, according to The Guardian.
Last month, a number of European countries blocked the attempt to issue glyphosate a 10-year licence, a sign that EU member states in the future could be doing more to protect their citizens against corporate human rights abuses via exposure to toxic chemicals, including pesticides.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is a human rights treaty that requires states to protect children from exposure to toxic chemicals in the form of contaminated food and polluted water, as well as to ensure that each child can reach the highest possible standard of health. These and many other rights of the child are abused by the current pesticide regime, said Baskut Tuncak, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights and hazardous substances and wastes.
Monsanto, of course, denies that glyphosate is carcinogenic (cancer-causing) and stands behind the academic research it underwrites.
EPA scientist Marion Copley said it was “essentially certain” that glyphosate caused cancer.
Copley, who has since died of cancer herself, made several conflicts of interests allegations.
“I have cancer and I don’t want these serious issues in HED [health effects division] to go unaddressed before I go to my grave,” she wrote in her valedictory letter. “I have done my duty.”
Almost half a million people have signed the petition to date, calling for an across-the-board European ban on glyphosate, regulatory reform and mandatory targets for reducing pesticides use.
Source: The Guardian