German multinational Bayer is one of the biggest pharmaceutical and agricultural companies in the world, employing over 100,000 people globally. In a new report, Corporate Europe Observatory examines the toxic trails left behind by Bayer throughout its long history, and its plans to stay afloat in a volatile future – from pushing glyphosate and new GMOs, to claiming its agricultural model is "climate smart". The company’s modus operandi is to cosy up to different political regimes or carefully generate political pressure to push through its products and its monopoly model, using market power, size, financial assets and lobbying as key tools. Corporate Europe Observatory

 

 

The amount of pesticide residue allowed on scores of food types in England, Wales and Scotland has soared since Brexit, analysis reveals, with some now thousands of times higher. Changes to regulations in Great Britain mean more than 100 items are now allowed to carry more pesticides when sold to the public, ranging from potatoes to onions, grapes to avocados, and coffee to rice. For tea, the maximum residue level (MRL) was increased by 4,000 times for both the insecticide chlorantraniliprole and the fungicide boscalid. For the controversial weedkiller glyphosate, classed as a “probable human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization (WHO), the MRL for beans was raised by 7.5 times. The new, weaker MRLs adopted by Great Britain come from the Codex Alimentarius, a set of international food standards produced by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the WHO. The Codex has been criticised by campaigners for “a history of setting weaker safety standards than European counterparts due to the influence of US and corporate lobbying”. Strikingly, the UK chose to adopt the Codex MRLs only where they offered lower protection to consumers. Where the Codex standard was stricter, the HSE decided to retain the weaker British MRL. The Guardian

 

 

Cotton farmers in Africa’s most populous nation were excited in 2018 when GM cotton seeds were introduced for cultivation, raising hopes of bumper harvest and pest-free cotton regimes. Six years later, however, the introduction of the GM seeds failed to increase the cotton yield per hectare and revive the dying industry. According to Anibe Achimugu, president of the National Cotton Association of Nigeria (NACOTAN), farmers who cultivated the two GM strains did not record any significant increase in yields compared to the local seed varieties – "and it is difficult for farmers to be able to cope due to how expensive it is... when we did a comparison, no farm could get up to four tons per hectare while local seeds produced up to four to five tons per hectare.” Abdulsalam Musa, a cotton farmer in Katsina, said no other plant has been able to germinate on the farmlands where the GM seeds were planted, even after four years. “The farm where we planted the GM seeds can no longer germinate our local seeds anymore. The land has been destroyed,” he said. Business Day

 

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