Brussels wants to authorize the controversial herbicide for ten more years. A vote is organized this Friday, October 13, 2023. The Twenty-Seven will have to make a choice.
The days of glyphosate could no longer be numbered… Indeed, this Friday October 13, 2023, the Twenty-Seven are called to express themselves on its future, while the European Commission proposed on September 20 to extend by ten years of its authorization within the Union. Initially the authorization was renewed for five years in 2017 and expired in December 2022 before finally being renewed for one year, the time necessary to obtain new evaluations.
What are the health dangers?
The International Agency for Research on Cancer, linked to the World Health Organization (WHO), categorized glyphosate in 2015 as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. As relayed The Dauphine, various studies carried out on professionals have highlighted an increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In 2021, an Inserm report also denounced the genotoxicity of the herbicide, namely the fact that it is likely to cause dysfunction or alteration of the genome by damaging DNA. Increased risks of multiple myeloma and leukemia were also pointed out, even if the results were less convincing.
A link between malformations and prenatal exposure to recognized weedkiller
A few days before the vote of the Twenty-Seven, the Grataloup family has decided to break the silence. Théo, the son, now 16 years old, has serious malformations of the larynx, esophagus and respiratory system. Potentially in question? Prenatal exposure to glyphosate. Experts from the Pesticide Victims Compensation Fund (FIVP) thus recognized in March 2022 “the possibility of a causal link between the child’s pathology and exposure to pesticides during the prenatal period due to the activity professional career of one or both parents.
A recognition which gave him compensation. A first in France, relays The world. Before, never had a herbicide been recognized as a cause of birth defects. “We could no longer remain silent. We could not let politicians and journalists continue to say that there was no problem with glyphosate,” confides to franceinfo Sabine, Théo’s mother, who denounces: “Behind the statistics, there are families, sick people […] We speak out so that decision-makers take into account the people who are suffering.”
So why continue to use glyphosate?
According to an opinion from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published in July 2023, glyphosate does not present a “point of major concern”. An opinion on which the European Commission has also decided to base itself to propose the extension of the use of the most used herbicide in the world.