children on the front line of chemical/biological poisonings

winter 2019     

  Le Monde exploring the multiple strategies Monsanto has used to “interfere with science, influence the regulatory process and orchestrate PR campaigns to defend their products”--a court case in the United States brought to light internal Monsanto documents showing that the company had held serious doubts about the safety of its product since the early 1980s….

  Monsanto’s ad campaign promoted the merits of its product Roundup, the “first biodegradable weed killer”.  Meanwhile in 2001 the American corporation had already been sued in France for false or misleading advertising.  The company, ordered to pay a €15,000 fine, appealed.  The Court of Cassation [France’s supreme court of appeal] upheld the penalty two years later….The “Monsanto Papers,” a series of investigative articles that began to appear several months earlier in French daily

  “When the whole population is exposed to a product that is known to be dangerous, how can it not be banned?  The government is not protecting us.” -Sandrine Grataloup  Must we wait until France becomes, like Argentina, the scene of a “silent genocide”? …

  “It was then that I understood we were not alone,” says Sabine Grataloup, who was able to testify alongside Argentines also affected by pesticides.  In that country where two-thirds of agricultural land is devoted to growing genetically modified soybeans and corn and where 240,000 tonnes of herbicides containing glyphosate are used each year – compared with 10,000 tonnes in France – the damage to public health is considerable:  deformities are four times as high and childhood cancers are five times what they were before the days of glyphosate.  https://webdoc.france24.com/france-pesticide-generation-children-front-line-glyphosate-monsanto/