Is Glyphosate Safe (Oh My, Monsanto!)

Shocking allegations about a misinformation campaign around glyphosate and Roundup, the world’s most used agricultural chemical

The Australian countryside, where I spent time in the 1980s

I remember spraying Roundup on my friend’s farm as a teenager in 1985. We sprayed it from tanks worn as backpacks, from long metal wands with plastic trigger handles. We sprayed it in sheep paddocks and cow pastures, along fence lines, building perimeters and road verges to kill weeds. We sprayed it around like water.

We thought it was safe. Everyone did. Advertisements claimed that Roundup, a herbicide with the active ingredient glyphosate, was safer than table salt. My friend’s parents, and all their neighbours, bought it by the tanker load. They would have been surprised to learn that just one year before, in 1984, scientists at the US EPA had flagged glyphosate’s ability to cause cancer.

Glyphosate is Big Business

Glyphosate is the most widely used agricultural chemical in the world. Almost every GMO crop has been genetically engineered to be resistant to glyphosate. These are known as ‘Roundup Ready’ crops, Roundup being the brand name of Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide. Glyphosate use in US agriculture increased by 3,153% from 1990 to 2014, (yes, three thousand percent)…