Quick Take — Glyphosate: one of the most influential studies ensuring the safety of the herbicide has been withdrawn, twenty-five years after its publication

A 2000 study concluding the safety of the well-known herbicide, widely cited since then, has just been officially refuted by the journal that published it. The scientists who signed the study are suspected of having endorsed a text prepared by Monsanto executives…

In 2017, in part of its investigation into the ‘Monsanto Papers’, Le Monde reported that Monsanto executives exchanged emails in 2015 on how to produce new summaries intended to prove the safety of glyphosate in the scientific literature. The aim was to convince regulatory agencies… According to a count by Le Monde, it is cited about forty times in the 2015 European expert report that led to the reauthorisation of the herbicide in 2017. Source: Le Monde

Monsanto’s Roundup was classified as ‘possibly carcinogenic’

Read about lobbying by Monsanto – now owned by Bayer – here.

Written on 13 December, updated on 16 December 2025. Below: Roundup sold on Walmart shelves.

 

JBS, the Brazilian meat giant to benefit from the treaty between Europe and Mercosur

Great attention should be paid to safeguard clauses and reciprocity agreements, but the EU-Mercosur agreement should not be erected as a totem against which to hurl one’s frustration at problems in the sector that actually have an entirely different origin: first and foremost, the low profitability of the land trades compared to the rest of the economy

Giuseppe Caprotti’s social commitment at Esselunga: caring for the environment, for people

The one related to care and concern for the environment is a project that goes back a long way, to the 1980s, the first years I spent at Esselunga, and began with organic and natural products in general. It is also the project I am most fond of because it had a soul, a social purpose, as well as a business purpose.

Quick Take — Tuscany: in less than 20 years it has lost half of its durum wheat cultivated areas

from 96,000 hectares in 2006 to 43,000 in 2024… “The crisis in cereals can be explained simply as follows: costs exceed revenues,’ says the president of Coldiretti Toscana, Letizia Cesani. ‘Today, with the volatility of prices, farms cannot even break even. In a country where a plate of pasta is never missing from the table, it would be natural to think that this is an important crop, but it is not so. In 2023, imports of Canadian wheat, for which glyphosate is used in the pre-harvest phase – glyphosate is a carcinogenic herbicide – increased by 68%’… On this topic read here

Quick Take — Pesticides: their use contributes significantly to the biodiversity crisis.

pesticides are causing devastating negative effects on hundreds of species of microbes, fungi, plants, insects, fish, birds and mammals, which should not be affected. Globally, their use contributes significantly to the biodiversity crisis.

Scientists analysed more than 1,700 laboratory and field studies on the impacts of 471 different types of pesticides (insecticides, fungicides and herbicides) used in agriculture, commercial or domestic settings. Far-reaching negative effects were observed on more than 800 terrestrial and aquatic species, with impacts on growth rate, reproductive success and even behaviour, such as the ability to catch prey, find plants to feed on, move or attract partners. Pesticides can also alter the metabolism of organisms and damage cells.

On food and pesticides read here