A major new scientific study has confirmed growing conviction that the world’s most widely used chemical herbicide, Monsanto Corporation’s Roundup is toxic and a danger to human as well as animal organisms. The latest scientific research carried out by a multinational scientific team headed by Professor Andrés Carrasco, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Embryology at the University of Buenos Aires Medical School and member of Argentina’s National Council of Scientific and Technical Research, presents alarming demonstration that Monsanto and the GMO agribusiness industry have systematically lied about the safety of their Roundup. Roundup in far lower concentrations than used in agriculture is linked to birth defects. The health implications are huge. All major GMO crops on the market today are genetically manipulated to “tolerate” the herbicide Roundup.

Glyphosate was patented by Monsanto in the 1970’s well before GMO was commercialized, as a so-called broad-spectrum weed killer. It is typically sprayed and absorbed through the leaves, or used as a forestry herbicide. It was initially patented and sold by Monsanto under the trade name Roundup, which also contains non-disclosed added chemicals the company refuses to divulge for “trade secret” reasons. As of 2005, 87% of  all US soybean fields were planted with glyphosate-resistant varieties of GMO soybeans and sprayed with Roundup.

Because the seeds of Monsanto Roundup Ready GMO soybeans or other crops have been manipulated solely to be “resistant” to Roundup herbicide, while all other plant life in the field is killed by Roundup, farmers using Roundup Ready seeds must also purchase Roundup herbicide, making a captive market for both seed and chemicals.

The problem with this cozy arrangement, aside from the fact that Roundup-resistant “super-weeds” are emerging as a new biological catastrophe (see  Katastrophale Folgen von GVO-Pflanzen in den USA – eine Lektion für die EU), is that Glyphosate has now been demonstrated to be linked to birth defects as one of the most highly toxic substances in agriculture. The US Government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), nonetheless continues to regard Roundup as “relatively low in toxicity, and without carcinogenic or teratogenic effects.” In the United States the US Government notoriously relies on test data from Monsanto and the agribusiness industry to make safety rulings, under the 1992 doctrine of Substantial Equivalence which asserts that GMO seeds are “substantially equivalent” to ordinary seeds and thereby need no independent health or safety tests. While herbicides are treated slightly different, the fact that the agribusiness industry influences much of US Government policy has insured the most benign regulatory treatment of Roundup to date.

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