The “Toxin-Free Nation” & Its Black-Market In Glyphosate

By Chandre Dharmawardana –AUGUST 31, 2017

Prof. Chandre Dharmawardana

The government banned  the popular herbicide  known as “Glyphosate” in 2105 using the epidemic of Kidney Disease in the Rajarata as justification for its drastic action. It proposed to create a “toxin free nation” eventually banning agrochemicals. Ven. Athuraliye Rathana is Sri Lanka’s presidential adviser on agriculture, promising to “rid the country of toxins”. He angrily and passionately holds forth like a modern-day Savonarola. But, unlike Savonarola’s  moral anger, Ven. Ratana’s anger is based on  misinformation  that  totally dominates the internet, and the rejection of main-stream scientific opinion. Having embraced  fake news and exploiting  public fear as its selling point, Ven. Rathana talks of glyphosate killing all bacteria, microbes and soil organisms when it is used in agriculture. In fact earthworms and other soil organisms thrive better in its presence. But he has come forward as the saviour of the nation against this alleged “evil toxin  poisoning the whole environment and the food chain, triggering  innumerable diseases including the chronic kidney disease ravaging the Rajarata”!

On 23rd August the Derana TV  program “Aluth Parlimenthuwa” had assembled a discussion panel  led by Ven. Rathana. Others were an ex-minister of agriculture, i.e., Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena(MYA), Namal Karunaratne (NK) of the “Samastha Govijana Sammelanaya” (a Farmers’ League) , Dr. Priyanka Yapa (PY) of the  Sabaragamuwa University, and Asoka Abeygunawardana (AA). The latter is a government ideologue pushing “sustainable agriculture” and  a so-called  “strategic enterprise management agency” –  SEMA. To some extent Asoka A  is  what Lysenko was to Soviet agriculture.  There was also a  selected set of   “members of the audience”  brought from Trincomalee, Dambulla  Kurunegala etc. Their role was  to ask  rhetorical  “questions” vigorously supporting the  “doing away with all agrochemicals”, not just glyphosate. The  veteran  figures from  Sri Lanka’s science, agriculture,  health,  or experts from  the plantation institutes or the WHO  were conspicuously absent and presumably not invited. In my view, only the ex-minister MYA talked some sense, i.e., stated scientifically valid things about toxins. Namal Karunaratne correctly described the plight of the farmers;  but he as well as his co-panelists were totally wrong on toxicology and agrochemicals.

Namal Karunaratne correctly pointed out that Sri Lanka  has been importing Soya products and soya milk grown using glyphosate technology from the West  for many years. He raised the specter of a poisoned nation ranging from babies to grand mothers. And yet, given decades of such soya consumption, we cannot find anyone stricken down by the alleged toxicity of glyphosate! None  noted that Sri Lanka has consumed Canadian Lentils (“parippu”)  and Canola oil for decades, grown with GM (“genetically modified”) agricultural  technologies intensively using glyphosate.

Nalaka Karunaratne noted that 40% of the fruits and vegetables produced by our farmers go waste due to lack of food preservation technologies and markets. Minutes before, it was noted that a fruit imported from Australia would remain on the table for “months” while the Sri Lanka fruit which rots  in a few  days was claimed to be healthy, “natural” and safer to eat. Not one “expert” panelist noted that the Australian fruit is simply coated with a layer of perfectly harmless wax which seals its aroma, its moisture, and prevents pathogens and mold spores from attacking the fruit. The wax can be washed off with hot water! But then, the toxin-free nation wants natural untreated fruits and nothing less. Let the farmers loose 40% of their produce!

Priyanka Yapa and Asoka A uttered the usual litany of lies about the green revolution and the capabilities of “alternative agriculture” that I have heard from Californian activists, revealing the source of their  borrowed ideas. Dr. Yapa even stated that he “learned organic agriculture” from the West, while attacking Glyphosate as a “Western product”. Amazingly,  he was willing to accept a toxin if produced in Sri Lanka itself!   Priyanka Y mentioned several “alternative techniques” for killing weeds using equipment imported from China (not the West!) as alternatives to glyphosate. Every one of them are well known to most of us old hands, as being  environmentally very harmful and rather ineffective, unlike glyphosate which is effective, inexpensive and environmentally friendly. These alternatives proposed by Priyanka Yapa, e.g., infrared rays, or flames, microwaves  attack all bugs, good and bad, in trying to “burn” the weeds. Gyphosate  acts only on green plants, and does not harm worms, beetles, and other organisms (as long as they do not use photosynthesis- i.e., not in the plant kingdom). Far from killing micro-organisms and earthworms, glyphosate actually helps to remove metal toxins like cadmium (by chelation) from the soil  and allows earth worms to flourish in soils inhospitable to organic life before the use of glyphosate, as has been demonstrated by Chinese scientists who studied extremely contaminated soils (see. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. Volume 33, pages 2351–2357, year 2014.)

I have always held that the ban on glyphosate should never have been imposed. It should be lifted, NOT  just for the benefit of the big tea plantations, but for the small-scale farmer, the vegetable farmer and all others. MYA (the ex-Minister) admitted that even after the ban, most practical-minded farmers (including himself) without ideological blinkers have used the glyphosate freely available at black-market in “the toxin-free nation” of Venerable Rathana, just as duty-free cars of MPs are available in the black market.

While Ven. Rathana and his team regard  Glyphosate as the very devil itself, the  vast majority of scientists (including those in Sri Lanka) consider glyphosate to be benign and NOT a health risk. Its “toxicity” is similar to that of Lifebuoy soap. The International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) of the WHO declared it a class-II hazard (i.e., similar to “eating red meat” in the ability to cause cancer) in 2014. The WHO and the FAO clarify that it is not a health risk at all and issued a press release on 16th May 2016. The FAO-WHO Joint Committee on Pesticide Residues effectively says that even a few tea spoons of full strength glyphosate consumed daily is quite safe!  It is so safe that it may be sprayed without wearing gloves and goggles, even using  formulations like “Roundup” which contain  toxic additives like tallowamine to help bind to  leaves. This is  because the quantity in the spray is miniscule, unlike the amount of toxins absorbed by the farmer by inhaling diesel fumes from his own tractor. In 2004 Professor Acquavela  and collaborators made an extended study of farmers in S. Carolina and Minnesota who used no goggles or gloves in spraying glyphosate. He  found a maximum of 223 parts per billion (ppb) of glyphosate in urine, and a mean value of  3 ppb, i.e., well below the US threshold of 700 ppb, showing that the ingestion of glyphosate  is negligible while the ingestion  of the adjuvents is even smaller.

The nonscientific public has misunderstood the IARC classification and concluded that glyphosate is a dangerous carcinogenic toxin. The toxins produced by Ven. Ratana’s duty free cars sold to the public at various times produce more harm to the environment than all the glyphosate used in the ex-minister MYA’s 30 acre tea estate in ten years.

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