REVIEWS
Final answer? A
s Europe turned its clocks back an hour, the EU’s environmental politics were already in a shock state of dèja vu. With the debate over whether bisphenol
A causes cancer or neonicotinoids are killing bees still simmering, an important deadline was approaching that could forever change the direction of agriculture. Would the EU licence for glyphosate, the ac-
tive ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, be extended until 2022, as the European Com- mission’s latest amended plan foresaw, or would it expire in-mid December? At the Commission meeting on 25 October, its Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed failed to pro- duce a qualified majority for any type of action as it had many times before. Hopes that buying more time would settle the
dispute again proved clearly illusory. No matter what the outcome of the next voting round, tentatively scheduled for 9 November as C&I goes to press, all uncertainty over the chemical’s safety may never be completely laid to rest. Any further authorisation to sell and use the herbicide may well be subject to revision. In the October round, the UK was too obsessed with Brexit to care much about glyphosate’s fate in the EU. As Germany’s agriculture and environment ministries as usual were on opposite sides, it abstained from voting. French or Italian attempts to find another short-time compromise met with little sympathy – though they might in the end, if the ‘jury’ is still out on final Decision Day, 15 December. Much is at stake. So widespread is glyphosate’s use that, if its registration is allowed to expire, the EU agricultural sector could be plunged into chaos. Also, Monsanto has made it clear it is prepared to sue. A final EU vote was supposed to have been taken two weeks earlier – or a year and a half earlier, or half a year before that. Glyphosate’s expiration date was the end of 2016 before its last extension. That its ‘D-Day’ came around again at the end of 2017, and may come again in a few more years, is part of the democratic process. But despite years of debate over its safety or if an alternative product exists or should be developed, member states have been unable to agree. Among questions not yet answered to
everyone’s satisfaction are whether glyphosate is a threat to human health and whether it contributes to sustainable agriculture. That it
Will the EU’s decision to extend registration on the herbicide glyphosate be final, and for how long?
does a thorough job of killing weeds is largely undisputed. A more philosophical question is whether its fate is up to science or politics. For years, corporate and environmental
interests have been touting their positions on glyphosate as the only correct one. Farmers, whose livelihood is most at stake, are caught in the middle. Though most prefer to err on the side of their wallets and maintain the status quo, others blame their serious illnesses on Roundup. A potential day of reckoning came in mid-
2015, when a study published by the Internation- al Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization (WHO), classified glyphosate as a possible carcinogen. IARC’s as- sessment contradicted earlier findings by the European Food Safety Authority that glyphosate is safe, and a subsequent review by the Euro- pean Chemicals Agency found that available not enough scientific evidence was available to clas- sify it as a carcinogen. The results and methodol- ogy as well as the scope of all studies to date have been questioned by environmentalists, with some claiming parts of the European studies were lifted from a Monsanto text. As with many chemical products, another question is how much attention should be paid to hype, pro or con. In the run-up to the current EU vote on glyphosate, some scientific and industry organisations insisted that NGOs and parts of the public were engaged in a ‘war on science’. In their promotions, producers of fertilisers or crop protectants suggest their goal is to abolish world hunger rather than embracing the same logic as farmers: this is our livelihood. At the opposite end, more strident environmen-
tal advocates maintain that the use of chemicals in agriculture will poison us all, rather than admitting that – with today’s already highly-mechanised farming – spreading manure on crops can hardly be an option. Much could be won, incorrigible optimists say, if all parties to the discussion, including governments, were to bury the hype and throw their support behind companies developing sustainable and realistic agricultural solutions. Soon, if all goes to plan, Monsanto will no
longer be Monsanto. Arguably, the ‘bogeyman’ will be called Bayer. This begs yet another question many have asked since the transatlantic mega-merger was announced: How sustainable will the future of the world’s food supply be if the products most crucial to its development are made by one super-sized company?
Dede Williams is a journalist specialising in the chemicals sector, based in Frankfurt, Germany
Europe
So wides- pread is glyphosate’s use that if its registration is allowed to expire, the EU agricultural sector could be plunged into chaos. Also, Monsanto has made it clear it is prepared to sue
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