Monsanto Banned
While a formal process still needs to be worked through, a spokesman for the parliament’s president Antonio Tajani said that the leaders of all major parliamentary blocks had backed the ban in a vote this morning. "One has to assume it is effective immediately," he said.
MEPs had been incensed at a Monsanto decision to shun a hearing organised by the environment and agriculture committees, with academics, regulators and campaigners, on 11 October. The meeting is expected to hear allegations that Monsanto unduly influenced regulatory studies into the safety of glyphosate, a key ingredient in its best-selling RoundUp weedkiller.
Eu report on weedkiller safety copied text from Monsanto study!
A Monsanto letter to MEPs said that the European parliament was not 'an appropriate forum' for discussion on the issues involved. The joint hearing could be viewed as the latest attempt by those opposed to modern agricultural practices to influence and frustrate the EU scientific and regulatory process to suit their own agenda.
(Also interesting: Monsanto, Seeds, GMOs, glyphosate: Roundup And Lawsuits)
"We have observed with increasing alarm the politicisation of the EU procedure on the renewal of glyphosate," wrote Monsanto’s vice president Philip Miller, "a procedure which should be scientific but which in many respects has been hijacked by populism."
Martin Pigeon, a spokesman for the NGO Corporate Europe Observatory, said it was "extremely important that parliament has been prepared to meet Monsanto’s unbelievable arrogance with real retaliation and consequences." Monsanto spends between €300,000-€400,000 annually on lobbying in Brussels, according to its self-declaration form in the EU transparency register.
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