France will cease over-the-counter sales of agrochemical giant Monsanto’s weedkiller brand Roundup, following a recent United Nations report that found the active ingredient, glyphosate, was “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
It’s the newest development in the growing international movement against Monsanto in general and Roundup in particular. French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal announced on Sunday that she had instructed garden centers to stop putting the herbicide on the shelves of their self-service aisles, stating, “France must be on the offensive with regards to the banning of pesticides.”
Colombian officials made similar statements in May, when they put a halt to U.S.-backed toxic fumigation of coca fields in the country, noting that a previous ruling by the Colombian Supreme Court called for an end to the aerial spraying program if health concerns over glyphosate were discovered.
They were. As Common Dreams reported in March, the UN’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is based in France, found in its study that:
“[L]imited evidence” exists to show the herbicide can cause non-Hodgkins lymphoma in humans and additional “convincing evidence” that it can cause other forms of cancer in both rats and mice. Researchers noted that glyphosate has been found in the blood and urine of agricultural workers, showing the chemical has been absorbed by the bodies of those who work most with it.
The new policy reportedly came in response to French consumer protection group