Monsanto in center of GMO, glyphosate storm

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.

Monsanto has been reeling from a number of setbacks around the globe in 2015.

In March, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), said that the controversial herbicide glyphosate — the main ingredient in Monsanto’s popular weedkiller Roundup — is “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

In April, U.S. citizens filed a class action lawsuit against Monsanto, claiming that the company is guilty of false advertising by claiming that glyphosate targets an enzyme only found in plants and not in humans or animals. And in September, a French appeals court confirmed that Monsanto was guilty of chemical poisoning.

Monsanto recently posted a tweet, asking if people has questions about glyphosate. The tweet wasn’t the PR success that the company had hoped for. Instead it became a target for the Monsanto-hating Twitterati.

In addition, Monsanto has had to deal with GMO crop bans in several EU countries. Monsanto told Reuters: “We regret that some countries are deviating from a science-based approach to innovation in agriculture and have elected to prohibit the cultivation of a successful GM product on arbitrary political grounds.”

In fact, David Zilberman, an agricultural and environmental economist at the University of California at Berkeley says that the use of GM crops “has increased farmer safety by allowing them to use less pesticide. It has raised the output of corn, cotton and soy by 20 to 30 percent. If it were more widely adopted around the world, the price [of food] would go lower, and fewer people would die of hunger.”

For now, the GMO debate rages on. It remains to be seen how Monsanto will be impacted by the persticide and GMO backlash.

Read full, original post: Monsanto’s migraine: The biotech giant is facing one fiasco after another

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