MEP's 'glyphosate' urine debacle: '80,000 gallons to kill a single thistle'

A UK farm leader has reportedly criticised an MEP’s anti-glyphosate stance, following an incident last year when she brought a sample of her own urine into parliament to prove it contained the chemical.

Guy Smith – the Vice-President of the National Farmers’ Union – allegedly criticised Green MEP, Molly Cato, during a debate on glyphosate at this week’s Cereals 2017 event in the UK.

Glyphosate is the main chemical ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer.

However, the chemical has attracted a lot of attention of late due to fears that it might be carcinogenic.

Cato was among a group of 48 other MEPs who decided to get their urine tested for the presence of glyphosate last year.

Her own personal test results reportedly showed a glyphosate contamination level of 0.45ng/ml.

Speaking at the time of the results, Cato – who is a member of the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee – said the chemical has no place in the human body.

At concentration levels that low, the effects would be tiny, Smith retorted. He urged people to keep everything in perspective when debating glyphosate.

With such a small level of glyphosate present in your urine, you would have to pee “80,000 gallons on a single thistle to kill it“, he added.

The European Parliament was recently debating the pros and cons of re-authorising glyphosate within the EU; a decision is expected by the end of the year.

Carcinogenic risk

In 2016 the decision was taken to extend the market authorisation of the well-known herbicide by 18 months.

Last year, three reports on the chemical came to different conclusions; two reports said that it is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard while the other said that it probably has the potential to cause cancer in humans.

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) maintains that glyphosate should not be classified as carcinogenic.

Earlier this year, the ECHA’s Committee for Risk Assessment (RAC) agreed to maintain the current harmonised classification of the chemical as a substance causing serious eye damage and being toxic to aquatic life with long-lasting effects.

The RAC concluded that the available scientific evidence did not meet the criteria to classify the main chemical ingredient in Roundup as a carcinogen, as a mutagen or as being toxic for reproduction.