Quick Take — Mercosur: pesticides and hormones in food?

amicarbazone herbicide, chlorothalonil fungicide, novaluron insecticide and growth hormones in meat? It would seem so, although 1) the precautionary principle, i.e. any food may only be placed on the market if it does not present a health risk, and 2) the obligation to indicate the country of origin on the label should be respected

Milena Gabbanelli, Corriere della Sera 19 January 2026

P.S.: Brazil’s JBS is the third largest producer of food and the first of meat in the world.

Our relationship with FOOD over the last 100 YEARS has changed a great deal: how?

How has our relationship with food changed over the last hundred years? In the first episode of the docuseries “What We Eat”, produced in collaboration with @foodunfolded with the support of EIT Food and co-funded by the European Union, we trace the evolution of our relationship with food, which has been turned on its head in just one century

Quick Take — Glyphosate: one of the most influential studies ensuring the safety of the herbicide has been withdrawn, twenty-five years after its publication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, is set 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 held up as a scapegoat against which to vent one’s frustration at problems in the sector that actually have an entirely different cause: first and foremost, the low profitability of the agricultural sector compared with 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.