GEORGE TOWN: The Consumers' Association of Penang (CAP) has called for a ban on glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides because of its toxic effects on human health, animals and the environment.
Its president Mohideen Abdul Kader said CAP had submitted a memorandum on the matter to the Agriculture and Food Industries Ministry and the Pesticides Board last Friday.
He said CAP's memorandum to the authorities also highlighted findings that glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicide (GBH) were harmful to soil health, bees, amphibians as well as increase the rate of antibiotic resistance development in bacteria.
"Given the scientific evidence of the harm that glyphosate and GBH pose to human and environmental health, local authorities as well as national governments in about 40 countries have issued outright bans on glyphosate, imposed restrictions or have issued statements of intention to ban or restrict glyphosate-based herbicides.
"In view of its toxicity, Malaysia should immediately take measures to ban GBH and any food and feed produced using glyphosate, including genetically engineered (GE) glyphosate-tolerant food and feed.
"The Department of Biosafety of Malaysia should review and revoke the approvals for glyphosate-tolerant GE food and feed products in light of the increasing evidence of harm from glyphosate and GBH," he said today.
Glyphosate, categorised as a probable human carcinogen, is increasingly associated with health problems.
Mohideen said it was found that people with high exposures to the herbicide had increased risk of developing a type of cancer called non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
"This evidence is alarming as glyphosate is the most used herbicide in human history," he said, adding that a common GBH is Roundup, developed by Monsanto, which Bayer acquired in 2018.
Overall, it is reported that some 8.6 billion kilogrammes of GBHs have been sprayed worldwide since 1974.
In addition, glyphosate use has increased 15-fold since GE crops were introduced in 1996, the majority of which are glyphosate-tolerant (GT) GE plants.
Concerns over the health impacts of glyphosate, Mohideen said, came to a head with the World Health Organisation's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer's (IARC) categorisation of the herbicide as a probable carcinogen to humans in 2015, and had been growing since with increasing evidence of harm to humans, culminating in legal suits against its producer, Monsanto.
According to him, a meta-analysis which evaluated all published human studies, had found compelling evidence that people with high exposures to GBH, had a 41 per cent increase risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), with researchers concluding that there was "a compelling link" between the two factors.
It was reported that Monsanto and its German-owner, Bayer AG, faced more than 9,000 lawsuits in the United States of America, brought by people suffering from NHL, who blame Monsanto's GBH for their disease.
In March 2019, a federal jury ruled that Monsanto was liable for a California man's cancer and ordered the company to pay US$80 million in damages. The jury ruled that Roundup's design was "defective", that the product lacked sufficient cancer warnings, and that Monsanto was negligent in its failure to warn the plaintiff of the NHL risk.
"As consumers, we may think that we are safe because we are not exposed directly to glyphosate during the spraying of the herbicide.
"Nonetheless, we are exposed to glyphosate residues in or on crops, particularly GE crops, that enters through the food (and feed) chain.
"Glyphosate residues are neither removed by washing or broken down by cooking," he added.
The Department of Biosafety, Malaysia website reveals that 40 genetically engineered crops have been approved for food, feed and processing, of which 11 are glyphosate-tolerant.
"Consumers must not assume that approval of the herbicide-tolerant GE food or feed products by regulatory bodies is tantamount to a clean bill of health," he stressed.