The Amazing Glyphosate Revolt Grows
By F. William engdahl
23 May 2016
I must make a confession. I never thought it would get this far. There is an absolutely amazing international revolt against the most deadly and most widely used weed killer in world agriculture–glyphosate. Those of you who have followed my earlier writings can detect my feeling of pessimism that mere “democratic” grass-roots protest, combined with a scientific assessment from an agency of WHO that glyphosate was a “probable carcinogen” would be enough to stop the pending, twice-postponed EU Commission renewal of the expiring license for glyphosate in the EU. It almost doesn’t matter at this point what the ultimate vote is when the next EU Commission glyphosate meeting is convened. The genie is out of the bottle. One of the world’s most important eugenics projects to maim and ultimately reduce human population is on the brink of being banned much as DDT decades ago.
On May 19, a revised proposal by the European Commission to re-approve glyphosate for use in Europe for 9 more years (rather than the original 15 years), but with almost no restrictions on use, failed to secure the required qualified majority among EU governments. This is an amazing and very positive development for democratic empowerment against an institution increasingly seen–not only by the British population–as an anti-democratic, even totalitarian structure irresponsive to the most basic concerns for the health and safety of EU citizens
The agri-chemical industry bigs—Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and friends–are stunned at their failure. Corruption in government corridors whether in Berlin or Brussels seems to be losing its efficacy.
The next step for the troubled glyphosate renewal process will be for the EU Commission, those faceless, unelected bureaucrats, to come up with a new revised proposal that will bring Germany to approval by end of June when the old license expires or order glyphosate withdrawn from the entire EU market within six months according to Henry Rowlands’ international GMO watchdog media, Sustainable Pulse.
They cite Brussels EU Commission sources who report that the Commission did not even dare call for a formal vote, realizing that they would fail the EU requirement of Qualified Majority “yes” vote of the 28 EU states. France and Italy would have voted against in an informal polling. Germany would have abstained along with six other EU states.
Under current EU rules incorporated in the Treaty of Rome, a matter coming for a vote in the Council of Ministers of the 28 member states requiring a Qualified Majority approval, must satisfy two criteria. First, that 55% of member states vote in favor. Second, that the proposal is supported by member states representing at least 65% of the total EU population. Under the rules, an abstention under qualified majority voting counts as a vote against.
According to official statements of various EU governments in March before the latest May 19 meeting, in addition to open opposition to glyphosate license renewal on EU Commission terms expressed by France, Sweden and the Netherlands, the governments of Bulgaria, Denmark, Austria, Belgium and Italy had joined the “no” group. Their combined populations equal 53% of total EU population when Germany as abstainer is added. In that case the “yes” to glyphosate side would have a mere 47% not the required 65%.
An EU glyphosate ban today could deal a possible death blow to the global GMO project as more of the world wakes up to the fact that the entire GMO crop cultivation is part and parcel of the consumption of deadly glyphosate. It can be said that the Rockefeller Foundation’s funding of genetic manipulation, of genetics since World War II, as I document in my Seeds of Destruction book, is about eugenics or race purity as the Nazis practiced during the Third Reich. Little known is the fact that the Nazi eugenics, otherwise known as creation of the “Master Race,” was financed by…the Rockefeller Foundation. Monsanto has been in the orbit of Rockefeller core assets, now joined by Bill Gates, since World War I.
Industry Panic
At this point the global agrichemical cartel–one getting dramatically smaller from proposed mergers between ChinaChem with Syngenta and now Bayer AG with Monsanto are approved–is in a clear panic mode, and making stupid mistakes in the process. What’s at stake is huge for the health and safety of world citizens and for the future of the deadly agrichemicals industry. Glyphosate is the major component of Monsanto’s proven-toxic Roundup, the most profitable product of the GMO giant and the world’s most widely-used weed-killer.
Now Washington wants the EU to drop all health and environmental safeguards on GMOs to pave the way for a transatlantic trade agreement (TTIP). TTIP negotiations started on 25 April in New York. EU Health Commissioner Andriukaitis’ rush to ram through a re-licensing of glyphosate in May, shortly after his New York TTIP talks, was clearly another reflection of immense Washington pressure on the unaccountable EU Commission bureaucracy.
On May 16, timed for release just hours before the scheduled EU Council of Ministers vote on approval of glyphosate license renewal, the FAO/WHO Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) released what it claimed was a scientific study. They admit in the first sentence that it was rushed to publication. The study concluded regarding glyphosate:
“The overall weight of evidence indicates that administration of glyphosate and its formulation products at doses as high as 2000 mg/kg body weight by the oral route, the route most relevant to human dietary exposure, was not associated with genotoxic effects in an overwhelming majority of studies conducted in mammals, a model considered to be appropriate for assessing genotoxic risks to humans. The Meeting concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to be genotoxic at anticipated dietary exposures…the meeting concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet .”
This means that one part of the WHO says glyphosate is “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet,” while another arm of WHO, the very respected World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has determined that glyphosate, the weed-killer used in most every GMO plant worldwide, and most other crops and even home gardens as well, was a “probable human carcinogen.”
The new FAO/WHO rush job however is no science. It’s fatally flawed bought-and-paid for prostitution science, with no offense to the world’s oldest profession meant.
As one critic points out, “this announcement was made without one single regulatory or industry glyphosate study ever having been performed at a real-life dietary exposure level (under 3 mg/kg body weight/day). This is a huge hole in the risk assessment process for glyphosate, as low levels of the herbicide may hack hormones even more than high levels and hormone hacking chemicals are often carcinogens .”
Conflicts of Interest
Moreover, the FAO/WHO rush job study committee is riddled with members with glaring conflicts of interest in terms of ties to the chemical industry desperately trying to ram through glyphosate re-approval until 2031. According to a report in the UK Guardian, Professor Alan Boobis, who chaired the UN’s joint FAO/WHO meeting on glyphosate, is vice-president of the International Life Science Institute (ILSI) Europe. The co-chair of the sessions was Professor Angelo Moretto, a board member of ILSI’s Health and Environmental Services Institute, and of its Risk21 steering group too, which Boobis also co-chairs. The Guardian report pointed out that in 2012, “the ILSI group took a $500,000 (£344,234) donation from Monsanto and a $528,500 donation from the industry group Croplife International, which represents Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta and others, according to documents obtained by the US Right to Know campaign .”
So a group of manifestly immoral scientists led the Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR). Vito Buonsante, a lawyer for the ClientEarth group in reference to the suspiciously-timed FAO/WHO report stated, “There is a clear conflict of interest here if the review of the safety of glyphosate is carried out by scientists that directly get money from industry .”
In 2012, the European Parliament suspended funding to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for six months over multiple conflicts of interest allegations involving ILSI members on the board of EFSA and on its committees.
Adding to the stench of corruption and conflict of interest in the agrichemical industry’s attempt to ram through EU re-approval of glyphosate, most scientists involved in the 2015 glyphosate assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) used by the EU Commission to back re-approval of glyphosate, and which also contradicted the WHO’s IARC cancer warning, refused to be named.
Last year the EU Commission had recommended approval of another 15-year license for the controversial glyphosate based on the suspicious determination by the EU’s corrupt EFSA that there was no reason to believe glyphosate is a carcinogen. That determination, not backed up by open disclosure of the relevant health and safety studies EFSA claimed to rely on, went totally against the 2015 determination by the World Health Organization’s respected International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate, the weed-killer used in most every GMO plant worldwide and most other crops and even home gardens as well, was a “probable carcinogen.” The EFSA based its controversial conclusion on a report by Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), which in turn was given it by Monsanto and other agrichemical industry groups .
What goes around comes around, and here it seems to be an inordinate amount of fecal matter from the agrichemical cartel behind glyphosate clogging the pipes of the EU Commission. What is amazing about the entire ongoing battle over glyphosate re-approval is that opposition and awareness that the EU Commission is willing by any means possible to bow to the chemical industry glyphosate weed-killer cartel and approve a probable carcinogen, is growing by leaps and bounds, and internationally. That awareness is in turn bring light to the very dark corners of the world of GMO itself, something that Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Monsanto, Syngenta and friends are none too able to withstand.
To date the EU Commission has received a staggering 1.5 million citizen petitions demanding they not re-approve glyphosate. The opposition to EU Commission approval of glyphosate has taken on a self-expanding character and that has the agribusiness weed-killer cartel alarmed. The process is exposing to the general public, for the first time in such a clear manner, the degree of corruption in not only Brussels but also in the so-called scientific bodies that advise it on what is safe and what not.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”