The United Kingdom was among twenty European Union nations voting earlier this week for Monsanto’s controversial ‘Roundup’ weedkiller, it has emerged.
The vote, held on Monday 6th June 2016, failed to authorise the use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and similar products from Synerga and Dow Chemicals.
Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Austria, Portugal and Luxembourg abstained from the vote in the EU’s Council of Ministers and Malta voted against. The abstensions mean the ‘yes’ vote did not meet the requirement of 65% of the EU’s population.
From the end of this month, weedkillers including glyphosate will be pulled from shelves in gardening centres and supermarkets across the EU.
REVOLVING DOOR
The United Kingdom’s support for glyphosate raises suspicions of Monsanto lobbyists having too close a relationship with our politicians.
Both David Cameron and Boris Johnson, in separate interviews on BBC’s Countryfile programme last Sunday (5th June 2016), expressed support for growing crops genetically-modified to be resistant to Roundup in the UK.
Fields of such ‘Roundup-ready’ crops may be sprayed with the weedkiller in the knowledge that the GM crop will stay standing while the weeds around it dies.
GLYPHOSATE FOUND IN BEER
Last year, the Munich Environmental Institute conducted a laboratory study of 14 of Germany’s most popular beers. They found glyphosate readings between 0.46 and 29.74 micrograms per litre.
The highest reading was 300 times the legal limit glyphosate in drinking water in Germany. The Institute concluded the results were ‘alarming’.
In March 2015, Glyphosate was classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an arm of the World Health Organisation (WHO), as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.
Were the high readings of glyphosate in German beer from residual levels of the weedkilling chemical in the soil, or is there another, more sinister route? Even with a ban on GM crops, Roundup may find its way into food by means of ‘dessication’. Farmers can spray fields of wheat, oats or barley with the weedkiller to kill and dry the crop to make it easier to harvest. The chemical is left on the grain.
SWITCH FOCUS TO WESTMINSTER
Monsanto actually recommends spraying with Roundup just before harvest to dessicate non-GM Canola (rapeseed), Flax (linseed), Peas, Lentils, non-GM Soybeans, Beans and Sugar Cane. It seems increasingly that the only way to be free of the stuff is to go organic. Or grow your own.
The EU Roundup affair and the comments of Messrs Cameron and Johnson illustrate the amount of work which will have to be done by environmentalists in the event of a vote later this month for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. The chemical is used liberally in the streets and parks of many UK towns and cities to control grass and weeds, as well as in agriculture and horticulture.
It would be a poor argument to remain in the EU because the UK Government can’t be trusted to protect the environment. Rather, activists and those who regard themselves as stewards of God’s creation will need to switch focus from Brussels to Westminster, if not now, then certainly if the UK votes ‘Leave’.
Genesis 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
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