Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, patented by Monsanto in 1974. It is now the world’s most widely used weed killer. About 100 million pounds are applied to U.S. farms and lawns every year, according to the EPA. Farmers sprayed enough of the chemical to cover every acre of cropland in the entire world with nearly a half-pound of Roundup, according to a 2016 study published in the Journal “Environmental Sciences Europe”.
Roundup is used not only in industrial agriculture but on vineyards, golf courses, public parks and in schools, in road maintenance and by back yard gardeners. Curiously the more modest uses in schools and gardens have recently come to national attention.
In May 2019 a jury in Oakland, Calif., ordered Monsanto to pay a husband and wife more than $2 billion in damages after finding that its Roundup weed killer caused their cancer. This is the third jury to conclude that Monsanto failed to warn consumers of its flagship product’s dangers. The juries were presented evidence that Glyphosate caused the breakdown of their immune systems and led to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Thousands of additional lawsuits against Monsanto, which the Bayer corporation acquired for $66 billion in 2018, are queued up in state and federal courts.
Monsanto’s claim that Roundup was safe for human beings is now being challenged and the question raised – who and what else is impacted by glyphosate and the other ingredients in Roundup.
Don Huber is Professor emeritus at Purdue University. He studied Roundup and later the associated Roundup ready crops and the risks to farm animals begin fed roundup ready soy, corn and alfalfa beginning in 1974. He is the scientist who raised the safety issue of glyphosate in 2011 with the US Secretary of agriculture and made headlines all over the world. Hubers’ warning was ignored by the Obama administration.
Don Huber says that the herbicide Glyphosate kills by giving plants a heightened form of AIDS. Glyphosate affects bacteria by killing some that are essential to the plant and to humans and animals that consume them; while at the same time strengthening pathogens that are harming plants and soil.
Don Huber was interviewed via a somewhat scratchy Skype connection by Uwe Alschner, publisher of the Vitalstoff Blog that focussed on nutrition in the European Union on June 2, 2018.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)
