News from Germany suggest that Glyphosate’s dangerous side-effects and environmental consequences are moving into the limelight in that European country.
Glyphosate Dangers, Damage to Worldwide Bee Populations Moving to Focus
A number of news outlets in Germany increasingly focus on the dangers of Glyphosate and suspicions that a recently recorded dramatic drop in bee populations worldwide may have been caused by the widespread use of the pesticide. This even includes a number of educational websites targeted at school students and educating young readers about risks involved with Glyphosate use and its harmful effects on birds, insects, and the environment in general the chemical has already caused. This new focus may have been triggered by a groundbreaking new law in neighbouring Austria altogether banning Glyphosate use in the Alpine country from 2021.
What Glyphosate Is
Glyphosate is the main component in a weed-killer invented and sold by Monsanto in their Roundup pesticide. It had earlier been developed for the Agent Orange chemical weapon deployed by the United States during the Vietnam war. Agent Orange was used to make enemy combattants visible by killing the foil on jungle trees and was suspected to have caused genetic damage in significant numbers of soldiers exposed to the chemical compound on both sides.
While selling that originally military product twice may make financial sense from Monsanto’s point of view, especially after apparently having enjoyed a free ride using Uncle Sam’s money through Pentagon financing, spraying a chemical weapon onto food crops cannot be in any population’s best interest. The biological and chemical effects of Glyphosate occur whether or not those particular products have been re-branded an accepted agricultural tool, which has been achieved due to significant marketing effort, manipulated Wikipedia entries and other fake news engineered by Monsanto.
Effects of Glyphosate, Global Pesticides Over-Use
Glyphosate usage has increased worldwide after the initial Roundup patent expired in the late 1990s. Particularly China, the U. S., Canada, Ireland and Britain are avid users of agricultural Glyphosate. In the U. S., the entire Missisippi valley is heavily contaminated with the runoff from agricultural Glyphosate use from the Great Plains onward to the Deep South. In Ireland, a few mystery outbreaks of red algae in the lower parts of the River Shannon have been spotted in recent years. On top of that, the compound is also found in many so-called household pesticides applied by ignorant users to “keep driveways clean” and by equally ignorant local councils for “cleaning up sidewalks”. After the merger of Monsanto with Germany-based Bayer AG, Roundup has now technically become a “German product”.
Austria First-Mover to Contain and Solve Glyphosate Problem
As it is beyond reason to recklessly dump billions of pounds of a known deadly substance on our planet, the focus of some parts of the media in Germany is an urgently needed first step for reigning in the damage caused by Glyphosate. The particular outlets reporting on Glyphosate may have been triggered by news of Austria enacting a nationwide law banning Glyphosate use in both agriculture and public areas maintained by local councils. The law in Austria has been initiated by the Freedom Party, who are a junior partner in a coalition-government with the ÖVP, and will come into effect in 2021.
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