An influential research article that claimed a popular weed-killer was safe has been retracted 25 years after it was published, prompting environment groups in Canada to ask the federal government to review the science on glyphosate use.
If you're in the EU and interested in stopping Glyphosate, here's the online petition. Signing it only takes 10 seconds. #fuckmonsanto #fuckbayer
Proposed headlines for future news articles about the class-action against Monsanto/Bayer:
→ "Class action alleges another product from the producers of Agent Orange causes cancer"
→ "Monsanto/Bayer who maintain $1.5 billion payout fund, maintain popular herbicide Roundup doesn't cause non-Hodgkin's lymphoma"
→ "Most noxious company in the world (literally & figuratively), Monsanto/Bayer, maintain their products don't cause cancer."
The Monsanto Papers - ABC Australia / Four Corners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JszHrMZ7dx4
Four Corners investigates the secret tactics used by global chemical giant #Monsanto to protect its billion-dollar business and its star product, the weed killer #RoundUp
Increased mortality of honey bee colonies has been attributed to several factors but is not fully understood. The herbicide glyphosate is expected to be innocuous to animals, including bees, because it targets an enzyme only found in plants and microorganisms. However, bees rely on a specialized gut microbiota that benefits growth and provides defense against pathogens. Most bee gut bacteria contain the enzyme targeted by glyphosate, but vary in whether they possess susceptible versions and, correspondingly, in tolerance to glyphosate. Exposing bees to glyphosate alters the bee gut community and increases susceptibility to infection by opportunistic pathogens. Understanding how glyphosate impacts bee gut symbionts and bee health will help elucidate a possible role of this chemical in colony decline. Glyphosate, the primary herbicide used globally for weed control, targets the 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS) enzyme in the shikimate pathway found in plants and some microorganisms. Thus, glyphosate may affect bacterial symbionts of animals living near agricultural sites, including pollinators such as bees. The honey bee gut microbiota is dominated by eight bacterial species that promote weight gain and reduce pathogen susceptibility. The gene encoding EPSPS is present in almost all sequenced genomes of bee gut bacteria, indicating that they are potentially susceptible to glyphosate. We demonstrated that the relative and absolute abundances of dominant gut microbiota species are decreased in bees exposed to glyphosate at concentrations documented in the environment. Glyphosate exposure of young workers increased mortality of bees subsequently exposed to the opportunistic pathogen Serratia marcescens . Members of the bee gut microbiota varied in susceptibility to glyphosate, largely corresponding to whether they possessed an EPSPS of class I (sensitive to glyphosate) or class II (insensitive to glyphosate). This basis for differences in sensitivity was confirmed using in vitro experiments in which the EPSPS gene from bee gut bacteria was cloned into Escherichia coli . All strains of the core bee gut species, Snodgrassella alvi , encode a sensitive class I EPSPS, and reduction in S. alvi levels was a consistent experimental result. However, some S. alvi strains appear to possess an alternative mechanism of glyphosate resistance. Thus, exposure of bees to glyphosate can perturb their beneficial gut microbiota, potentially affecting bee health and their effectiveness as pollinators.
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