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A Pesticide Banned, or Not, Underscores Trans-Atlantic Trade Sensitivities
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: March 8th, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/business/international/a-p...
Syngenta, a Swiss chemicals company, produces one of Americas most popular herbicides. It is called atrazine, and 73.7 million pounds of the chemical compound were applied in the United States in 2013. It was used on more than half of all corn crops, two-thirds of sorghum and up to 90 percent of sugar cane. The weed killer is banned as a pesticide in the European Union as well as in Switzerland over concerns that it is a groundwater contaminant. Syngenta, however, did not get the memo. Even though the European Union banned atrazine over a decade ago, the company has long insisted that the pesticide was not banned. Sensitivity over regulatory gaps between the United States and Europe has flared during trans-Atlantic trade talks, which have been underway since 2013. An increasing number of critics of the process are concerned that the outcome could favor corporations more than consumers. Advocacy groups have particularly focused on chemicals, given the disparities in policy. Baskut O. Tuncak, a senior lawyer at the Center for International Environmental Law, said that in his view the chemical proposals that have surfaced so far reflect a lot of industrys demands and their concerns with more protective E.U. policies. He added that proposed changes could slow or stop and possibly weaken efforts to develop stronger chemical regulation in either the E.U. or the U.S.
Note: Syngenta did everything in its power to discredit atrazine researcher Tyrone Hayes after Hayes published science proving that Syngenta's products were poisonous. The New Yorker published a detailed article on Syngenta's smear campaign. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
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