Marketed in 1974 under the brand name Roundup, glyphosate has been praised for several decades for its unique herbicidal qualities and its good toxicological and ecotoxic profile. It quickly established itself in the world as a weedkiller with multiple uses for farmers and well beyond, from amateur gardeners to the SNCF [railways].
Surprise in March 2015: the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) classified glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen”, a classification immediately contested by all French, European and international health agencies, including the WHO (World Health Organization), IARC’s parent company. But for militant environmental organizations opposed to the use of plant protection products, this is an unexpected opportunity to disqualify the famous weedkiller based exclusively on the classification of the IARC.
Red meat is also classified as a “probable carcinogen” by the IARC, but ecologists and political leaders will pretend to ignore it to focus on glyphosate, which is immediately cataloged as a carcinogen and thrown into public opinion.
The IARC will be accused of lack of neutrality and patent conflicts of interest of some of its members, so many serious criticisms never taken into account by opponents of glyphosate nor, more seriously, by political leaders and most of the media.
Even greater surprise, on November 27, 2017, when we discovered President Macron’s tweet: “I have asked the government to take the necessary measures to ensure that the use of glyphosate is prohibited in France as soon as alternatives have been found and at the later in 3 years”.
A thoughtless and strictly political decision taken under pressure from ecologists and the Minister of State and Ecology Nicolas Hulot, without any scientific basis, without consultation with experts and professionals, without the slightest risk/benefit balance sheet, without taking taking into account the opinions of the competent health agencies or the exceptional feedback from glyphosate.
Why did President Macron and his ministers blindly follow anti-glyphosate environmentalists without taking into account the opinions of scientific experts from health agencies created by the politicians themselves to inform their decisions? Why didn’t they want to see the success of glyphosate in the major agricultural countries of the planet? How can they deviate from all rationality and the scientific approach when they regularly claim their faith in science?
And how naïve to hope to quickly find alternatives to glyphosate!
Five years after the President’s announcement, no alternative to glyphosate has been found, other than a return to tillage with all the well-known agronomic, economic and ecological disadvantages and in particular the absence of solutions to combat against perennial weeds such as quackgrass.
How did the President, his five successive Ministers of Agriculture and the many advisers fail to see that banning glyphosate goes against the stated objective of developing an agriculture that is both efficient and respectful of the environment ?
This is the case with the agronomic technique known as “soil conservation”, based on the elimination of tillage and its plant cover in intercropping, developed in several countries but also in France by groups of pioneer farmers. A technique that combines all the advantages to make it the reference agroecological method: reduction of costs for the farmer, improvement of biological life and soil fertility, reduction of erosion, carbon sequestration in the soil, biodiversity stimulated, reduction of CO2 emissions.
Requiring a low dose of glyphosate to destroy the weeds before sowing, this technique of the future risks being sacrificed despite all its agronomic, economic and ecological benefits! A new political aberration, rarely denounced, including by INRAE (National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment).
Far from agricultural reality and lacking in arguments, politicians will prefer to introduce an astonishing “exit from glyphosate” tax credit of €2,500 to encourage farmers to give up glyphosate in 2021 and/or 2022!
Glyphosate’s registration expired on December 15, 2022, but following the consultation organized by EFSA [European Food Safety Authority] and ECHA [European Chemicals Agency] which received “an unprecedented number of comments”, their final report is postponed to July 2023.
Glyphosate is one of the most studied chemicals in the world for over half a century. But under constant pressure from ecologists and even from militant researchers who are authors of work seeking to discredit glyphosate, political leaders are always demanding more studies ignoring those, very numerous, carried out for a quarter of a century in Europe and in the world.
On June 15, 2021, the Glyphosate Assessment Group formed by the four reporting countries (France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Hungary) submitted a 11,000-page document to the European assessment agencies, confirming once again that the ” classification of glyphosate for carcinogenicity is unjustified”.
On May 30, 2022, ECHA in turn confirms that “the classification as a carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic substance is not justified” and recalls however that glyphosate is toxic to aquatic life and can cause eye damage.
Logically, glyphosate should be reauthorized in July 2023 in the European Union, as is the case in the major agricultural countries of the world, but European political choices take great liberties with scientific expertise.
It is not rare to see decisions that go against the objectives defended by these same political leaders.
We have already seen this with the ban in France on genetically modified maize resistant to corn borer and sesamia, which makes it possible to eliminate insecticide treatments and improve the quality of maize, a technique commonly used in the world for 27 years. .
In another area, the premature shutdown of the Fessenheim nuclear power station when there was a shortage of electricity and the relaunch of the Saint-Avold coal-fired power station to maintain production is another example of the negligence of our rulers!
Back to glyphosate: its unjustified ban should have raised protests at least from scientific and agricultural organizations, and even from the media. This passivity is surprising. No great voice will come to shake the conditioning of the population or denounce the state scandal that is the ban on glyphosate by the Head of State! A ban that casts discredit or suspicion on all President Macron’s decisions!
Is it the influence of ecological ideology, the paralyzing cult of the precautionary principle, the abandonment of the critical spirit, intellectual laziness, ambient chemophobia or the resurgence of relativism suggesting that all opinions are equal?
The astonishing glyphosate saga clearly shows how easily public opinion can be manipulated.
Once again, France and the European Union are depriving their agriculture of innovative techniques and products, making it less competitive than that of its foreign competitors, which are more open to innovation and more efficient.
In December 2022, Marc Fesneau, Minister of Agriculture declared: “Agriculture must relate to society. But telling a story is not describing reality!
A disturbing admission for democracy, which can only live if public decision-making obeys the demand for truth!
[Editor’s note: This article has been translated from French and edited for clarity.]
