{"id":101665,"date":"2017-11-13T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2017-11-13T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=101665"},"modified":"2017-11-20T19:13:19","modified_gmt":"2017-11-20T19:13:19","slug":"controversial-monsanto-weed-killer-banned-in-europe-doesnt-get-enough-eu-votes-for-renewal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/11\/controversial-monsanto-weed-killer-banned-in-europe-doesnt-get-enough-eu-votes-for-renewal\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversial Monsanto Weed-Killer Banned in Europe: Doesn’t Get Enough EU Votes for Renewal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Faced with mounting outrage over the alleged health risks associated with\u00a0glyphosate, including cancer, experts balked at renewing the licence.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Monsanto’s logo appears on a screen at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, U.S. | Photo: Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

9 Nov 2017 – <\/em>A bid to renew a five-year license for Monsanto’s controversial weedkiller Roundup, which has been linked to cancer by the World Health Organization (WHO), has been foiled by\u00a0the European Union.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Monsanto Banned from EU Parliament for Missing Roundup Trial<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The European Commission fell short of the majority needed to renew the license allowing the\u00a0use of glyphosate \u2013 a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and crop desiccant \u2013 when it expires December 15. Only half of the 28 member states voted in favour of the\u00a0proposal.<\/p>\n

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Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ pesticide.
Photographer: Philippe Huguen\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

“Given that a qualified majority could not be reached… the result of the vote is ‘no opinion,'” the commission said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Luxembourg Environment Minister Carole Dieschbourg, who welcomed the outcome, was among\u00a0the first to tweet the result.\u00a0“Luxembourg voted against renewal and prolongation. Good outcome for our health and environment!” she said.<\/p>\n

States\u00a0voting\u00a0in favour of the renewal\u00a0included\u00a0Denmark, Britain and the Netherlands. The nine voting against\u00a0included\u00a0Belgium, France and Italy. Five states abstained, including Bulgaria, Poland and Portugal.<\/p>\n

The commission had originally recommended approving the herbicide’s use for another decade, despite the EU Parliament recently voting against the measure.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, more than a\u00a0million people signed a petition\u00a0demanding the EU ban glyphosate because of the alleged health risks, most notably cancer.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=81H9zJxhfZQ<\/p>\n

Faced with\u00a0mounting outrage over the alleged health risks associated with\u00a0glyphosate, experts balked last month at renewing the license. The commission then proposed reducing the timeframe from ten years to five years.<\/p>\n

Greenpeace and other environmental campaigners, meanwhile,\u00a0are calling for the compound to be\u00a0banned throughout the continent.\u00a0They cite\u00a0a 2015 study by the World Health Organization’s\u00a0International Agency for Research on Cancer which\u00a0concluded\u00a0glyphosate\u00a0is “probably carcinogenic.”<\/p>\n

However, both the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency insist\u00a0glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer in humans, a statement contained\u00a0in\u00a0a\u00a02016 review by WHO experts and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.<\/p>\n

The herbicide is used primarily on maize, cotton, soy\u00a0bean, oilseed and sugar beet crops, all of which have been genetically engineered to resist the weedkiller.<\/p>\n

Environmentalists say the compound\u00a0is less selective with other natural foliage\u00a0and can\u00a0kill trees, causing\u00a0irreversible damage to habitats and biodiversity.<\/p>\n

Recent statistics show that traces of the herbicide were found in 45 percent of Europe\u2019s topsoil, 60 percent of grain products in the United Kingdom and in the urine of three-quarters of Germans participating in the research project.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 telesurtv.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

9 Nov 2017 – A bid to renew a five-year license for Monsanto’s controversial weedkiller Roundup, which has been linked to cancer by the World Health Organization, has been foiled by the European Union. Recent statistics show that traces of the herbicide were found in 45 percent of Europe\u2019s topsoil, 60 percent of grain products in the United Kingdom and in the urine of three-quarters of Germans participating in the research project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,51,140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-europe","category-organic-gmo-genetic-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}