28/July/22

 

A Swiss Civil Court in Basel handling three civil actions by one Indian farmer and two wives of deceased Indian farmers has ruled that the court has jurisdiction in the case and granted legal aid to all three plaintiffs to pursue their case in Switzerland against agrochemical company Syngenta. In autumn 2017, hundreds of farmers and farm workers suffered severe poisoning while spraying pesticides on cotton fields in the central Indian district of Yavatmal, with 23 of them dying. While Syngenta denies any responsibility for the events, official police records document that 96 cases of poisoning, two of which led to fatalities, were linked to the Syngenta insecticide called “Polo”. [GMW: The Yavatmal plaintiffs will have been Bt cotton farmers who'd been assured their GMO cotton was resistant to bollworms. So when they got an explosion of pink bollworm infestation, along with other pests, they sprayed Syngenta's Polo insecticide and suffered harm.] ECCHR

 

 

In Guernsey, Deputy David De Lisle insists that glyphosate herbicide should be completely banned to prevent contamination of the island's environment. He said that an announcement earlier this week that products containing glyphosate would soon be banned but only from retail sale was too little too late. And he is not ruling out taking another proposal to the States' Assembly to propose a complete ban, which would make glyphosate illegal when used by accredited professionals as well as amateur householders. Bailiwick Express

 

 

Pat Rafferty, Scottish secretary of trade union Unite — which campaigns for a ban on glyphosate — said that in his view, due to its association with cancer, it should be banned by the end of this year. He added, “We will now redouble our efforts to support workers to campaign for an end to widespread pesticide use and promote green alternatives.” The Ferret

 

 

A study by scientists at the University of Missouri (as reported in 2020) involved collecting rainwater weekly from 12 sites around the state in 2019 and testing it for dicamba and 2,4-D. The preliminary results show that dicamba was detectable in rainwater throughout the season at some sites. In the sites located in the southern corner of Missouri, known as the Bootheel, the dicamba amounts in the rain were high enough to injure sensitive crops, especially with multiple exposures. The results directly correlated with adoption rates of GM Xtend crops, which are engineered to tolerate being sprayed with dicamba. The researchers also detected 2,4-D in some of the rainwater samples, despite little to no Enlist acreage (GM crops engineered to tolerate 2,4-D) in the state that year, and the lead researcher warned that could increase as Enlist acreage expands. DTN Progressive Farmer

 

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