Feeding Us Lies: The Roundup on AgriGiant Monsanto
On its Web site, agribusiness giant Monsanto touts Roundup—a herbicide and pesticide product it developed in 1974 and in varying formulations is used by farmers, landowners, homeowners and parks departments worldwide—as “important tools in their toolboxes for controlling weeds.”
The key active ingredient in Roundup and Roundup-based products is glyphosate, developed by Monsanto in 1970. Monsanto and several companies in China dominate the production of glyphosate, now the largest-selling agrochemical product worldwide, commanding 25 percent of the market and forecast at 1.35 million metric tons of production by 2017.
For years Monsanto has been dogged by questions about the safety of glyphosate for humans, animals and the environment, and for years the company has denied or dismissed claims of its products’ links to a range of serious side effects—including birth defects, cancer, autism, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, kidney disease, wildlife and aquatic abnormalities and death, and even the deaths of butterflies and bees.
But new information has come to light that shows Monsanto not only knew of the biochemical hazards of glyphosate, but did not reveal the results of its own studies that corroborated several scientific challenges to its product.
Dr. Gary Null, who broke the story on PRN’s “The Gary Null Show,” and leading scientist-researchers who unearthed and examined Monsanto’s secret reports discuss what they found.