Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

India does not test for feared carcinogen in food -Reena Gupta

-Newsclick.in

Glyphosate use exposes India’s broken pesticide-herbicide regulations.

Glyphosate has been in the news in the past few months for all the wrong reasons. In three separate verdicts in California, courts have held the herbicide responsible for causing cancer. In the latest case, the jury has awarded more than $2 billion to a couple who claimed that exposure to glyphosate triggered their cancer.

These cases mark the first time that citizens have successfully established that a chemical was responsible for causing cancer. Experts have always raised concerns about the safety of glyphosate and several other chemicals that are continuously being pumped into the food chain. However, big corporations, with their close ties to governments and mainstream media, have made sure that any research that impacts their interests remains out of the public domain.

When corporations such as Monsanto (recently bought over by the Bayer group) introduce a new pesticide into the market, the government must ensure that all the research data involved in the decision to allow this is out in the public domain. Usually, this data is kept secret and is immensely difficult to access for anyone wanting to know the safety standards of these chemicals. Why so much secrecy?

I, along with many other people, have been trying to access the data presented by Monsanto to gain approval to bring glyphosate to the Indian market, but it is simply not available in the public domain. The reason is for anyone to guess.

Please click here to read more.