Posted on 06/24/2017 6:13:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
For over two years now, environmental activists and anti-industry groups have been raging against the U.S. government, the European Union, and practically anybody else that would listen about the herbicide glyphosate.
Glyphosate is a weed killer and the main ingredient in RoundUp. Weed killers are obviously a critical tool for American farmers and farmers around the world. The left-wingers are attacking weed killers despite the chemical receiving a clean bill of health from both the EPA and Europe’s main food safety and chemical authorities.
PRI.org reported late last year that “in November 2015, the European Food Safety Authority, or EFSA, found that glyphosate was ‘unlikely’ to cause cancer in humans. In the US, the EPA released a report that also said glyphosate was unlikely to cause cancer. That report was posted online in late April, but disappeared three days later. The EPA says that, although the report was labeled ‘final’ on every page, it was prematurely released.” Yet the left wingers are protesting from California to France and have been marching in the streets and testing their own urine to get it banned or restricted.
The impact to consumers of the anti-weed killer mafia would be to ban glyphosate, the most widely-used agricultural chemical of all time. U.S. farmers use 300 million pounds of the stuff each year. While anti-glyphosate activists argue that all that use is a threat to public health, they now have a major problem in trying to make their story stick.
Reuters reported on June 14, 2017 in a bombshell article titled “The WHO's cancer agency left in the dark over glyphosate evidence,” that “When Aaron Blair sat down to chair a week-long meeting of 17 specialists at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France in March 2015, there was something he wasn’t telling them. The epidemiologist from the U.S. National Cancer Institute had seen important unpublished scientific data relating directly to a key question the IARC specialists were about to consider: Whether research shows that the weedkiller glyphosate, a key ingredient in Monsanto’s best-selling RoundUp brand, causes cancer.” It appears that the one study that drives their entire campaign has been exposed as bogus.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) found that the weed killer was “probably carcinogenic,” yet the review’s chairman ignored some evidence that contradicted that conclusion. In fact, and according to EcoWatch, Blair himself worked on the decades-long Agricultural Health Study (AHS), which debunked allegations of a link between glyophosphate exposure and cases of cancer. The scientist was part of a team that looked at health data from 89,000 U.S. farm workers and family members that dated back to the 1990s on. Earlier data from that study had already found no link between the two, and the latest findings only strengthened that case. And Blair testified that the data would have changed the IARC’s whole analysis.
For some reason, this report was never published. Results oriented scientific research has no place in this type of important analysis. This cuts the legs out of the protesters who are relying on this IARC “study” to work over governments to ban the popular weed killer. According to the Reuters story, one of Blair’s researchers emailed him before a 2015 meeting that “it would be irresponsible if we didn't seek publication of our NHL manuscript in time to influence IARCs decision." Three years later, that data has yet to be published because as Blair states, “you couldn’t put all that in one paper.”
One reason why Americans should be angry with results oriented scientific research is that they pay for it. American taxpayers’ money pays for IARC’s work through the World Health Organization and the United Nations, in addition to direct grants from the U.S. government.
In Europe, the head of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) came under attack by green campaigners because his researchers dared contradict IARC’s conclusion. For mild-mannered scientists, EFSA raised eyebrows for coming out swinging against what it called “Facebook science.”
The federal government and the states rely on IARC to make determinations of what substances can be linked to cancer. Sept. 11 first responders relied on the IARC to determine that 15 of the compounds present at the World Trade Center were known carcinogens. Yet, in this case the new revelations have spurred talk of withdrawing the IARC glyphosate monograph that is the underpinning of a pending case against RoundUp in California right now. The IARC needs to fix the deliberative process and stop suppressing scientific evidence that contradicts the finding they want to conclude. The public deserves an organization to produce an accurate judge of potential cancer hazards – the IARC has called into question whether they deserve to be that source for reliable scientific analysis.
From what I’ve seen...I think so.
I don’t have il zoysia, but neighbor does...and it is beautiful right now. Crabgrass doesn’t appear to be a problem for him. He never sprays and seldom fertilizes. He started with zoysia sod rather than plugs or overseeding. I had to build a small block wall with a 2 foot wide kill zone on my side to keep it from invading my yard. I just zap it with round-up when it makes it thru (or over) the wall.
I wanted to sod with zoysia in the spring this year but wife doesn’t like the brown dormancy in winter...so I’m stuck with fescue.
It is a common practice
“Getting older is tough enough as it is. Life is good and I’d like to enjoy it in good health for as long as I have left.
+1
Woah! Dude I was kidding. I’ve seen a recipe for weed killer.
Gallon of vinegar, 1 cup salt, 1/4 cup dish soap.
Gasoline isn’t good for groundwater supplies.
My next door neighbor has a 700-cow commercial dairy operation. He's had to put gates up to keep the activists from just driving right into the middle of his property. Installed big signs at the two entrances that say authorized personnel only, no trespassing.
The activists will show up around the perimeter of his place taking pictures and trying to find evidence of animal abuse. They give these stories to the newspaper to run. A cow dies in a field, the activist take a photo which runs in the newspaper saying the dairy leaves dead animals laying around on the ground.
Well, that's not true but it does hurt his reputation and business. He said I sell milk. That's my product. These people think I'm in the animal abuse business. Just a hint that there is something wrong and I can be shut down or at the very least, lose money. But as he says, "It's hard to fight someone who buys ink by the truckload."
We haven't had much trouble from the activists so far because we're small (24 head of beef cattle) and are retired, so we keep low-key. But we've had a couple of run-ins in 6 years with the tree huggers about our on-again-off-again creek that runs across our south pasture. They wanted us to pay for water testing to see if the cattle manure was contaminating the water. The actual ditch where the creek is is fenced off from the rest of the pasture so the cows can't actually get down in the creek but that didn't stop the libs. We told them twice to take a hike. They seem to have lost interest lately.
Thanks for the advice on the "young" farmers program. But I'm 70 and my wife is right behind me, so I think we'll pass. :-)
I actually tried that for use on poison ivy. The ivy would start to wilt, but revive at the first rain. I ended going with something specifically for killing poison ivy.
As a kid we would tie a string on a cardboard milk cartoon, through the string over the clothesline, lay the carton on the ground with the pouring end open. Then put peanuts on the ground in a trail into the cartoon, with some peanuts inside. Then hid and hold onto the string waiting for a chipmunk.
When the chipmunk went inside you’d pull on the string - lifting the cartoon vertically and the chipmunk was trapped. We had a big homemade cage so we could keep them as pets. Somehow they always managed to escape that cage, and we would add more wire mesh, etc. Nothing helped - they STILL figured out how to escape.
Years later I figured that my parents must have let them go every night!
There are less time-consuming (and less entertaining” ways to kill them. Look up a “bucket mouse trap” on youtube - easy to make and very effective so I’ve heard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSk79YcuIRQ
Roundup doesn’t work as well on broad leaf weeds. Try Crossbow for those. Takes a bit longer for them to die back but it kills them good.
My rattie eats chipmunks whole.
Thanks so much for the info. I’m going to look into that.
It’s white vinegar not apple cider vinegar.
Boiling water?
Just understand...zoysia grows aggressively and is very invasive. Probably difficult to eliminate if you change your mind.
“Many substances, including life-saving drugs, inhibit cytochrome p450 family enzymes.
Sure. And if I were in danger of dying I’d consider it, since it has consequences.
It doesn’t however, promote normal health.
White vinegar won’t attract them, either? Years ago, someone told me that it would. ANY vinegar.
I’ve just never tried the whole vinegar thing before.
Another thing — A stiff brush and white vinegar will rid your sidewalk of any moss or moss stains.
You DO have a source for this, don’t you?
...besides Greenpeace, NYSlimes, Sierra Klub, etc....
What works on ANYTHING is RoundUp poison ivy formula. It’s not just glyphosate; it has 2% triclopyr as well. It’s expensive—$10 for a quart of concentrate that makes five or so gallons—but you can also mix your own much more cheaply by buying generic glyphosate and triclopyr.
I also like Sow’s product Graze-On Next for large areas. It’s a serious ag product and you do need to wear protective gear. It takes longer to work. But it’s a selective broad-leaf weed killer so there’s no worry about getting it on grasses you want to keep. You can use it in a pressure pump applicator or put it in a big boom sprayer if you have many acres to cover.
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