"a bi-monthly journal of environmental news and commentary..."

Worse GMOs Coming to Your Table

While over a quarter million citizens signed the whitehouse.gov petition to stop the approval of Dow Chemical's new Enlist Duo herbicide, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved it on October 15, 2014. Enlist Duo is a mixture of glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup) and the even more toxic chemical 2,4-D, a component of Agent Orange that was used to defoliate the forests of Vietnam.

In response to the growing superweeds issue resulting from organisms that evolve resistance to Roundup, Enlist Duo will be used to kill weeds in Dow's Enlist corn and soybeans which are genetically engineered to withstand both glyphosate and 2,4-D.

A relatively volatile herbicide, 2,4-D is long associated with drift damage to sensitive crops such as grapes and citrus. It has been linked to cancers, Parkinson's disease, endocrine disruption, neurologic damage and reproductive problems in exposed humans. By the EPA's own estimation, approval of Enlist Duo for use on GM corn and soybeans will cause up to a seven-fold increase in use of 2,4-D.

Scientists concur that, like Roundup, use of Enlist Duo will increase the prevalence of herbicide-resistant weeds. To continue killing weeds, Dow will have to engineer crops resistant to even more herbicides, and more toxic chemical cocktails to apply to them.

The US federal government failed the voice of the people in approving the use of this chemical cocktail on Dow's genetically engineered crops, they ignored over a million public comments to the EPA, letters from scientists and health care professionals, and a letter signed by 60 members of Congress. The federal government is clearly listening to the chemical companies and not the scientists, doctors, lawmakers and citizens who know that more chemicals are not prudent on many levels, most significantly for the health and wellbeing of all living creatures and this great planet we call home.

This article is excerpted with permission from a message from the Institute for Responsible Technology, PO Box 469, Fairfield, Iowa 52556, a small nonprofit organization.


Back to Home page.


Copyright © 2024 - All Rights Reserved
Updated 2015/01/07 21:14:22