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THE IRISH GOVERNMENT has no plans to ban glyphosate, after Austria became the first EU country to approve a ban of the controversial herbicide.
Austrian members of parliament earlier this week approved a total ban on glyphosate, putting the country on track to becoming the first EU member to forbid all use of it.
Deputies voted in favour of a bill brought by the Social Democratic party to ban glyphosate products, suspected of causing cancer, as a “precautionary” measure.
The weedkiller has been closely connected with Roundup, a flagship product marketed worldwide by US giant Monsanto which was taken over by Germany’s Bayer in 2018.
Under fire for the takeover, the German company has vowed more “transparency” during the process of renewing the licence of glyphosate in the European Union.
In November 2017, EU states renewed the licence for the controversial weedkiller for another five years.
When its previous 15-year licence expired, an 18-month extension was granted while a deadlock in the EU dragged from June 2016, until Germany dropped its opposition to the pesticide.
Carcinogenic
A 2015 study by the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer found that the herbicide glyphosate was classified as probably carcinogenic to humans, with a Group 2A classification.
Group 2A means that the agent probably has the potential to cause cancer in humans. This category is used when there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals.
The EU’s executive body, the European Commission, pointed to the approval of glyphosate by its two scientific agencies, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Chemicals Agency, which do not classify the substance as carcinogenic.
But the EFSA’s independence was questioned after media reports suggested that pages of its report were copied and pasted from analyses in a 2012 Monsanto study.
Ireland use
In Ireland, Dublin City Council last year announced that it will trial alternatives to the use of glyphosate as a weedkiller on streets and in parks in Dublin.
In a statement to TheJournal.ie a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture said that decision on the approval of and use of pesticides are “based on the scientific consensus view of all the relevant technical information from all sources”.
The spokesperson referenced the EFSA and ECHA saying that both had concluded “that glyphosate can be used safely without putting consumers or users at risk”.
“This process guided the decision to renew the authorisation of glyphosate within the European Union in 2017,” the spokesperson said.
The process for further renewal will begin in December of this year, with a full dossier submitted to the Member States Assessment Group on Glyphosate (France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Sweden) by 15 June 2020.
“The Department will continue to monitor international peer-reviewed scientific evidence and the guidance provided by EFSA and ECHA,” the spokesperson said.
Roundup
Roundup has been the subject of three costly judgements in California in recent months and is now the subject of more than 13,000 claims in the United States.
Among Austria’s EU partners, France said in 2017 it hoped to ban glyphosate within three years, but President Emmanuel Macron has since said such a move could not be “100%”.
Critics of the Austrian parliament’s decision say that it might be illegal under EU law for individual members to ban substances that have been approved for use by the union as a whole.
The Austrian vote was made possible by the fall of a conservative government in May that left a void pending anticipated elections in September.
An ad-hoc grouping of social democrats, the far-right FPOe, ecologists and liberals managed to pass the bill during the last week of the country’s truncated legislative session.
With reporting from AFP
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The mindless distruction of Wood Quay by Dublin City Council deprived future generations of what was possibly the most important archaeological site in western Europe and a major lucrative tourist attraction. Instead we have possibly the ugliest building in Europe.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: Agreed. http://www.historyireland.com/volume-22/heritage-outrage-wood-quay/
@Honeybadger197: I was on that march, thanks for the link.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: Good man, no problem.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: Absolutely 110% correct. This was mindless vandalism by Dublin City Council and if The Minister of Arts and Heritage has her way they will destroy the Moore Street 1916 Battlefield site too. Our future generations heritage is in the hands of mindless individuals who’s motivations are seriously suspect.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: didn’t the Danish government lobby the oiks here in trying to realize the significant nature of woodquay
What happened at Wood Quay is one of the greatest scandals in modern Irish history, the largest Viking Settlement in Europe discovered in our capital city, the revenue that could have been made from tourism, and they built that horrendous obscenity on top of it. The DCC offices should be torn down and the site preserved.
During the time of Brown Envelopes
@Mick Cullen: you say that as if somehow it were in the past Mick. It isn’t. It’s the same as ever and with NAMA getting worse no doubt. Unaccountable, enormously wealthy NAMA. The ultimate ‘hong bao’ (red packet) as they say in China. But plenty more besides it.
Caffrey (my own mother’s surname) stems from the son of Godfred (Viking). McAuliffe, from son of Olaf. McAuley, also from Olaf. In the Irish language, we have margadh, scilling, bád, garraí, seol, etc. They left a very rich heritage in our history. Doyle, Gallagher, etc. have also been linked to the Vikings, but we’re not 100% certain
We know one thing. Sam Stephenson proved them bones dem bones dem dry bones make great hardcore for office block foundations.
Amazing really. To look at those bones and reflect that when they were animated it was in a world so far removed from ours, topographically and geographically the same but in every other aspect far removed as ours as the next habitable planet from us is. To look at their goods and see they’re not so different from ours yet though. Those are the goods of civilized people, at least civilized towards each other and perfectly barbaric to everyone else. And are we so different today, with our foreign wars and colonisations (as in we in the West)? But we absorbed them, despite two hundred years of largely turning the other cheek it seems to me, booted them out at Clontarf and kept what they left behind. So they’re us too. We should have respect for them even if they, setting fires at the bottom of round towers and smashing up the altar vessels while robbing the gold and silver, killing the monks and burning their books of knowledge that were the only things preserved the accumulated wisdom of the Classical Age, did not much respect us. Suppose few hundred years from now archaeologists will be excavating the ruins of Anglo-Irish houses and churchyards and we’ll be saying the same and holding no heart hearts towards their descendants in England no more than we do to the Vikings now. Time heals all as it erodes all.
@John O’Driscoll: well written
It was the Vikings that brought red hair to this country, now every c#nt on the planet thinks everyone with red hair is Irish. Thanks a bunch Vikings
@Blue Moon rising: And the cancer gene as some believe? But is red hair not Celts???
@Blue Moon rising: Did you mean to say blue eyed and blond?
@Alois Irlmaier: I had that perception too until a visit to Denmark; I was expecting blonde & fair but was surprised to discover that red hair & freckles predominates
Those two buildings should be to torn down what lies beneath is worth more to Dublin now and in the future than for office space for civil servants
Very interesting, thank you. A word of caution though. Radiocarbon dating has a pretty wide potential error margin. During the Early Medieval period written historical evidence is usually far more reliable for chronological stuff in Ireland in particular. Wish it weren’t so, to cast doubt on such a good story, but lets enjoy the possibility anyway…..
Well their hardly going to meander into the national history museum and say pull a chair up we have something to tell you lovely people of Ireland. The Vikings were savage they played a part in this world but there gone.
The part about the man getting on with it in spite of having a bad back is definitely appropriate to me. Since 2015 I’m waiting for help with a bad back and still waiting under the HSE. I guess I’ll take it to to my grave like this guy. The only difference is my grave won’t be robbed because the Viking dies with more possessions than I have.
The Viking’s were not really see off there were other settlements around the place apart from Dublin
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