Why is glyphosate still not banned? This is the nagging question addressed by the victims of the use of this herbicide to political leaders while the European Commission has just extended its authorization for ten years. Euronews takes stock in France.
A powerful herbicide, glyphosate is the most used pesticide in the world. It was put on the market in 1974. At the time, its effects on health were not suspected. Today, while its victims demand justice, the European Union has just renewed its authorization for ten years.
The World Health Organization classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015.
The fight of Ludovic, a former landscaper suffering from cancer
In Quiberon, we meet Ludovic Maugé, 52 years old and a former landscaper. Glyphosate literally destroyed his life. “I have cancer that I caught from pesticides while working,” he tells us. Since 2020, his life has become a daily struggle. He spent six months in intensive care and had to go through twelve successive chemotherapies. “The disease was very complicated to find because it is a lymphoma which is very rare, so there were almost six or seven months of medical wandering,” he tells us.
Roundup, Gallup, Clipper and others… These glyphosate-based herbicides were considered harmless at the time, subject to some usual precautions. “Twenty years ago, we found (glyphosate) pretty much everywhere,there was no exemption as there must be now,” he points out. “We worked with a sprayer on our back, with a t-shirt underneath and we did it manually, without a mask, without gloves, without anything at all,” he explains.
“When I got sick, I didn’t really make the connection with glyphosate, until one point, of course, when the blood tests showed that I had glyphosate poisoned blood,” he says.
Ludovic receives compensation “very ridiculous”, he said. “Monsanto pays me 300 euros per month, for my compensation, for my illness,” he specifies before adding, moved: “I still lost my mind, I went for a moment without recognizing my wife, my children, it’s moving, very hard.”
Today, Ludovic no longer has the strength to pursue Monsanto. However, numerous lawsuits have been won around the world against the giant German firm Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018.
“A real pesticide lobby trying to hide their dangerousness”
In Paris, Me François Lafforgue is a lawyer specializing in these issues. He was the first to be able to make the link between the pathology of his clients and the use of herbicides and pesticides. He was the one who won the first case against Monsanto.
“We are faced with a real pesticide lobby trying to hide their dangerousness, so that they continue to be used by farmers and their employees,” Mr. Lafforgue tells us.
“This lobby intervenes at all levels,” he added. “It first intervenes at the European level at the time of approval of active substances: the studies which were taken into account for this renewal of approval are not conclusive and above all, the studies which should have been taken into account, which show the dangerousness of these active substances have been ruled out for the wrong reasons by the European authorities,” he says.
Two thirds of Europeans call for a total ban
We contacted Bayer and the pro-pesticide lobbies, none of whom gave us an interview.
Two thirds of European citizens call for a total ban on pesticides such as glyphosate according to a recent survey. This is also the case for NGOs and hundreds of citizens who took to the streets of Brussels recently to make themselves heard. Among the demonstrators, João Camargo, agribusiness researcher.
“We must continue to fight against glyphosate because the decision to approve and continue to promote this poison for another ten years is unacceptable,” he believes. “It’s a health problem, an agricultural question and a question of the future” according to him. “We must prevent this poison from continuing to spread,” he insists.
“It’s a food safety problem” for Gilles Lebreton, far-right MEP
At the European Parliament, we interview Gilles Lebreton, MEP from the French far-right party, Le Rassemblement National. His party is in favor of renewal, but for a period limited to 5 years. He recognizes, in fact, the harmfulness of glyphosate.
We ask him if it is possible to put economic interests ahead of public health. “For me, that’s not exactly how the problem arises because it’s not just economic interests,” he replies. “It’s also a food security problem: we need to produce enough cereals in particular to feed the population and that’s the problem with glyphosate,” he emphasizes.
We ask him about allegations that the European Commission has ignored certain studies. “I do not suspect on this issue, because I have no proof to do so, that there would be collusion between the Commission and the major laboratories,” assures Gilles Lebreton.
However, we remind him of the importance of lobbying. “Lobbying is something we all know,” he concedes. “For me, the real people responsible are those responsible for the common agricultural policy who, for years, pushed for industrial agriculture,” he assures.
A mother and her son have recognized the harm of glyphosate on unborn children
After fifteen years of struggle, Bayer must however face the opening of a new trial for malformation of the embryo, this time. It was initiated by a mother and her son whom we met a few kilometers from Vienna, south of Lyon.
But Sabine Grataloup and her son Théo have already won a great victory. For the first time in France, they recognized the harmfulness of glyphosate on the babies of pregnant women.
Sabine shows us the old horse riding quarry where, in the past, she applied glyphosate-based weedkiller. “Something I did regularly at the time, but now I happened to do it during the first month of my pregnancy,” she explains.
At the time, Sabine had no idea what she was exposing her body to. “All that is indicated is a pictogram stating that it is dangerous for aquatic organisms,” she indicates. “Most malformations occur during the first month of pregnancy, when the mother-to-be does not know that she is pregnant, so we cannot take precautions,” she denounces.
His son explains to us what he endured. “It was very complicated because at birth I should have died, a lot of operations were done from the start: in all, I underwent 54 general anesthesias,” he specifies. Even today, the young student can only breathe thanks to a tracheotomy.
“How long it takes before we ban it, it’s distressing!”
The young man receives monthly compensation of around 1,000 euros, the French compensation fund for pesticide victims having recognized the link between his malformations of the esophagus, trachea and larynx and the use of glyphosate by his mother. .
“For me, no one knew,” Sabine points out. “I had just noticed something and so I said to myself: We need to alert everyone because there are studies being done,” she says before citing the Monsanto Papers, an affair which broke out in 2017.
“We discovered false independent studies which were, of course, in favor of glyphosate, internal emails where they admitted that they had tested glyphosate alone, but not the formulation, for example and that, therefore, the product had been authorized on the basis of information which was, at the very least, partial, deliberately partial,” she recalls.
And Theo concludes: “The product itself is dangerous, yes, but it is above all the stupidity surrounding how it is managed which is much more revolting than the product itself. How long it takes before we ban it, it’s distressing!” he says.