The European Union defines whether or not to continue allowing Glyphosate

The European Union defines whether or not to continue allowing Glyphosate

Given its possible carcinogenic effects, several countries want to ban the use of glyphosate but the new licenses will only be defined in November.

In the European Union, the debate on whether or not to use the most widely used herbicide in the world is heated. France and Belgium want a total ban due to its classification as "probable carcinogenic" according to the AIIC (International Agency for Research on Cancer)

From Argentina the controversy is also heated. This country is one of the largest consumers of agrochemicals in the world since the 1990s when it incorporated transgenics. The use of Glyphosate increased 983 percent in 25 years to go from about 38,000 tons in 1990 to 370,000 in 2015 according to estimates by the University Network for Environment and Health.

In recent years in Argentina, complaints and pressures on the State have multiplied in relation to the fumigations with agrochemicals.

The multisectoral Paren de Fumigarnos presented a project that includes new distance limits for fumigations, promotion of agroecology and regulation of silos and grain and pesticide deposits in urban centers, but no progress has been made yet.

In the week, the European Union decided to postpone until next month the decision on whether to continue to allow the use of the herbicide, as the license to use glyphosate in Europe expires at the end of this year. If it is not renewed, the product should - in principle - be withdrawn from the market. But there is still no agreement between the different European bodies regarding what decision to take: on the one hand, the European Commission had requested another ten years of license, while the parliament requested its gradual withdrawal from the market before 2022.

For now, there is no consensus among the different European agencies regarding the dangerous effects of Glyphosate both in humans and in the environment, since although for the AICC it is "probable carcinogenic", other institutional actors such as the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency ruled out these effects.

However, an investigation called "Monsanto Papers" led by the French newspaper Le Monde established that the multinational seed company manipulated the reports of the allegedly independent experts on Glyphosate, who were actually acting as "ghost writers" of the bodies that should control them.

In addition to its political and technical side, the decision of the experts also has an economic aspect to take into account since the agrochemical sector is in full concentration with the purchase of Monsanto by the German Bayer, from the Swiss firm Syngenta for part of the Chinese ChemChina and as a result of the merger of the American giants Dow and Dupont.

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