The debate over Glyphosate and genetically engineered crops is no longer a rational one in that scientific evidence has not driven the agenda for many years and the fact that the matter has become highly political and very polarized. (Note, here I'm deliberately not siding one way or other with the arguments as I'm insufficiently knowledgeable about the science to do so.)

A large part of the reason was the widespread reaction to Monsanto's nasty aggressive marketing of Glyphosate and its maniacal and obsessive pursuit of any farmer who it considered violated its GM patents by having so much as a single GM plant on his/her property without a Monsanto license—even if the farmer was unaware that his farm had been inadvertently contaminated from nearby GM farms. Had Monsanto cooled its outrageous behaviour and let the science speak from the very outset then its PR would have been much better and we may even be closer to knowing for certain whether Glyphosate is truly safe or not.

Other reasons include Monsanto's political lobbying to reduce or avoid additional scrutiny from regulators and the fact that it appears to have been less than fully open with the truth about Glyphosate.

Like many multinationals that think normal rules don't apply to them, Monsanto played dirty and ran roughshod over everyone who seemingly got in its way. Now, fortunately, it's getting its comeuppance—or should I say its new owner Bayer is.

Mind you, Monsanto and Bayer make good bedfellows. Bayer too has had a long lineage of unethical marketing that goes back to 1895 in that it forced dangerous and unsafe product on the public: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin (see the History section).

"If you drink it, we'll reverse the ban."

Edit: "Monsanto Lobbyist Claims Roundup Is Safe To Drink – Refuses To Drink It" https://youtu.be/AbfJ4VwHIqw

Once a MLM agent came to my door promoting some "non-toxic" cleaning solution. Turns out, some of those guys will drink their cleaning products when asked. smh.

I agree with the general sentiment and not trusting a word a lobbyist is paid to say, but this is just TV theatrics and absurd drama. Just because he says it’s safe does not mean that he should be able to drink a glass of it. It’s like saying to prove that paracetamol is safe, one must be willing to eat a 500g serving on TV.

Give him food that was grown with the recommended dosage of the fertiliser, and ask him to eat, then we are talking sense.

He explicitly stated he could drink a quart of it and it wouldn’t harm you.

If you take the title at face value, the lobbyist explicitly states that it is safe to drink. Asking him to drink up is no longer particularly extreme to me.

Some historic theatrics

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgely

Damn interestingly more context

https://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth/

Glyphosate it certainly not benign, but it is a lot safer than most of the alternative chemicals used in agriculture. It's also more environmentally friendly than the main organic alternative, tillage.

The side effects of this ban will be worse than the benefits.

Did you know that they now use glyphosate to kill crops faster at the end of the harvest[1]. Its as widespread industry practice. Specifically for oats, instead of just waiting for them to die / dry out (or whatever they used to do), they now purposely spray glyphosate on them right before harvest, simply to save some money.

This isn't done early in the season, where rain or whatever can wash the crops off. Spray and Harvest.

I understand herbicides when the alternative is manually picking weeds (aka greatly increasing the cost), but to me this just screams over-use. Someone did a basic cost analysis, probably realized its 10% cheaper to use the herbicide, and done.

1. https://www.asyousow.org/blog/2020/6/23/kelloggs-glyphosate-...

And that stuff saturates the soil. This is especially problematic for legumes, as they soak it all up. It is not uncommon for cotton and legumes to be alternating crops.

By environmentally friendly, I assume you're speaking of CO2 emissions? Because there are other environmental impacts that makes glyphosate worse than tillage, such as the degradation of soil life.

There are other alternatives to tillage, but they generally require more manual labor and large farms want as little of that as possible.

You should look into conservation agriculture. It's less oil, less labor, less fertilizer, less pesticides than organic agriculture (and better soils). Only downside, lot of mice.

The conservation agriculture I'm familiar with uses less fuel, less labour, less fertilizer, less tillage but more pesticide than either conventional or organic agriculture. Another name for this type of agriculture is zero-till.

I was mostly thinking about soil loss. Tillage results in a massive loss of topsoil through erosion.

Tillage is also devastating for animal life in the soil.

This is the issue, what will replace Glyphosate? I think it peak naivete to argue it will be replaced by soap and vinegar.

With everything that has occurred over the past 20 years, from the collapse of bee colonies, to the alarming decrease in fertility and disruptions to our endocrine systems, I think it’s clear that something is going on. Pesticides would logically seem a good place to start eliminating until we better understand what these chemicals are doing to our bodies overtime.

> I think it’s clear that something is going on.

I'd start at compulsory water fluoridation. Here's a pretty decent synopsis (though now dated): https://web.archive.org/web/20140313192649/http://archive.le... . Bonus: Edward Bernays makes a special guest appearance in this tragedy.

How on earth did you link the content of the article to colony collapse disorder? The author seems to be a tin-foil hat wearer who talks about why we started to fluoridate our water --nothing about bees.

Except glyphostate has been around since 1950, in heavy use since the late 1990s, and most importantly of all - it is a herbicide. Not a pesticide. It is not the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder.

It's marketed as a herbicide, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have an impact elsewhere.

For instance, we know that the gut microbiome has wide-ranging effects from digestive disorders to arthritis and auto-immune problems to obesity as well as mood and cognition. Here's a university study showing 54% of the bacteria in human gut microbiome are sensitive to glyphosate: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201120095858.h...

It may be the case that the skyrocketing rates of obesity or depression/anxiety or other chronic conditions have roots in chemicals like glyphosate disrupting gut microbiome or endocrine systems.

nit: glyphosate is a pesticide. just not an insecticide. the "pests" are the weeds

pesticide == (herbicide || insecticide)