Dear Editor:
April showers may bring May flowers, yet on this day, we pray for April showers to send away the traces of snow on the soil, tho’ not in too big a hurry. No need for destruction of any sort.
The growing visibility of bare soil reminds me once again that much of our local food is grown with the use of RoundUp, which has been proven over and over again to be a probable carcinogen. My concern is that local farmers may consider continuing on with this path, no matter what the recent court rulings are finding in California.
In the most recent case, and second major loss for Monsanto, Judge Vince Chhabria fined Monsanto/Bayer over $80 million for RoundUp causing another groundskeeper to suffer from Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, a form of cancer. The judge said there were “large swaths of evidence” showing that the company’s herbicides could cause cancer. He also said there was “a great deal of evidence that Monsanto has not taken a responsible, objective approach to the safety of its product . . . and does not particularly care whether its product is in fact giving people cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about the issue.”
Having access to Monsanto’s internal documents subpoenaed for both cases, it was revealed that RoundUp has been approved for over 40 years based only on Monsanto’s short term testing of only one of its constituent chemicals: glyphosate. There were no tests done on the effects of the mix of chemicals in the product, yet governments accepted Monsanto’s claim of safety. Monsanto’s Head Toxicologist Donna Farmer, PhD, when advising executives on public messaging about Roundup®, wrote in an internal email: “…you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen … we have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement.”
I am grateful that local farmers must be trained in careful protections in the use of agri-chemicals and are mostly taking due precautions. We cannot afford to lose our local farmers, especially at a time when gas prices are going up, which will drive up the costs of imported foods.
Three years ago, over 150, 000 metric tonnes of RoundUp were sprayed on North American soils and crops. Where does that poison end up? In soils, in drinking water, on our food and in our bodies. Tests are revealing glyphosate in everything from bread to cereal to snack bars to fruit juices to baby foods to beer and wine. We’re back to being guinea pigs with the fox guarding the hen house.
What both of these trials have made very clear is that overwhelming evidence points to RoundUp as a cause of cancer. It’s also been clearly shown that Monsanto has known this for 40 years and has spent millions of dollars to hide that evidence from the public. Monsanto’s documents even show that when the International Agency for Research on Cancer pronounced in 2015 that glyphosate was a probable human carcinogen, Monsanto allocated $16 million for its scientists to ghost-wrote rebuttals saying glyphosate was actually safe. The proof came out in court.
When will Health Canada free itself from Monsanto/Bayer’s control and prioritize the health of Canada’s people, especially Canadian farmers? As SNC-Lavalin’s case has proven, these big corporations exert big negative influence on all parties in government.
Meanwhile, a third Monsanto product liability lawsuit has already begin, and Bayer/Monsanto stock values have dropped about 20% in the last month. 11,000 more cases await their turn in court.
To your health,
Robbie Anderman
Killaloe ON
