Name: Bloomberg - Does the World’s Top Weed Killer Cause Cancer?
Uploaded: 2017-07-17T02:41:56.000Z
Duration: 3 min 12 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

It’s in cookies, breads, corn, crackers, chips, breakfast cereals, and beer.

The active ingredient in RoundUp is called glyphosate, and it’s used by backyard gardeners

and industrial farmers alike to kill invasive weeds.

And whether glyphosate is harmful to humans or not

is something of a 66 billion dollar question

Commercial: There’s never been a herbicide like it before.

Glyphosate was originally introduced in 1974 by Monsanto.

Its use in American agriculture has soared nearly tenfold since Monsanto introduced the

first genetically-modified RoundUp Ready seeds in 1996.

Glyphosate is now used in more than 160 countries, with more than 1.4 billion pounds applied per year.

And while Monsanto lost patent protection over glyphosate herbicides in 2000, the company

still has about 40 percent of the 8 billion dollar global herbicide market because of

Monsanto sells its genetically modified RoundUp-ready seeds to produce cotton, corn and other commodities

to make them resistant to glyphosate’s herbicidal effects.

More sales of the GMO seeds beget more use of Roundup; more herbicide use drives up demand

For 25 years that cycle has enjoyed an unblemished run in our crops, soil, and food.

Now Monsanto has its own invasive species creeping in: doubt.

On its website, Monsanto says glyphosate is “about half as toxic as table salt and more

More than 1,000 farmers and herbicide applicators stricken with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma disagree.

Hundreds of plaintiffs with cancer have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company.

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, known as IARC, determined glyphosate

That’s where this comes in. It’s how much Bayer is offering to buy Monsanto for, but

if glyphosate is thought of as cancer-causing, it may back out of the deal completely.

But what would life without glyphosate look like?

According to Bloomberg agriculture expert Christopher Perrella, it wouldn’t be pretty.

And it would definitely affect farmers, income, their profitability, the way they do business.

Eventually filters down to the consumer in terms of higher prices for meats… for all food products.

The question now, after the EPA's own hand-picked experts have also voiced concerns, is what

But with administrations from Clinton to Bush to Obama promoting GMOs, it seems unlikely

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Bloomberg - Does the World’s Top Weed Killer Cause Cancer?

eventually

ingredient

alternative

determine