The House of Representatives has rejected a petition from various organisations such as Greenpeace and the Consumers’ Association for French-speaking Switzerland, which have been calling for a ban on the use of all synthetic chemical pesticides, such as the weed-killer ingredient glyphosate.
A majority of parliamentarians said on [Sept. 30] there was insufficient scientific evidence to justify a ban on the general use of glyphosate, especially for farming. The Swiss government is due to publish a study on the impact of glyphosate in Switzerland.
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Glyphosate, which is used in Roundup as well as other companies’ weed-killers, is at the heart of a dispute in Europe and United States about whether its wide-spread use as a weed-killer on crops could heighten cancer risks.
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In March 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization (WHO), said glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic”.
This finding was at odds with previous risk assessment in Germany and the United States and was followed seven months later by EFSA’s own assessment of glyphosate as “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans”.
