Editor, The Times:
Food and Water Watch in Europe is asking the European Commission to conduct a critical safety assessment of the world’s most widely sold weed killer, Roundup. This product is linked by growing scientific evidence to cancer, birth defects and nervous disorders like Parkinson’s disease.
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, is used around the world to kill weeds in crops like corn, soy, cotton, and oilseed rape (colza). It is especially used on crops that have been genetically modified to tolerate the chemical while surrounding weeds are killed. Residues of this chemical are in our food. Because plants absorb glyphosate, it cannot be completely removed by washing or peeling produce or by processing grains. And it is poorly monitored; even though more and more of it is being used every year. What’s worse, just as scientific studies from around the world are linking glyphosate to a growing list of environmental and health problems, the EC postponed a key safety reassessment until 2015. This is scary.
Are you sure that the food you eat is as close to being ‘good for you’ as it can be? Between the residues left on the plants from “spraying” and the “lack of labeling” of products made from genetically modified crops we are blindly heading for the future. What does that entail in your life? We are, after all, what we eat.
Cheryl Thomas
Clearwater, B.C.
