News
Expert body seeks meeting with President on proposed glyphosate ban
A high-level technical body mandated to look into pesticide-related issues is seeking an urgent meeting with President Mahinda Rajapaksa to discuss the controversy surrounding glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide ‘Roundup’ used by paddy farmers and the tea sector.
The decision to meet both the President and the Agriculture Minister was taken by the Pesticide Technical Advisory Committee (PeTAC) which met on Friday.
This follows exhaustive presentations by the different members of PeTAC on scientific issues and discussions with regard to the proposed ban of glyphosate, the Sunday Times understands.
The ban, Special Projects Minister S.M. Chandrasena told reporters last week, was ordered by the President.
It comes in the wake of a report by a team headed by Dr. Channa Jayasumana from the Department of Pharmacology at Rajarata University that stated that the mysterious kidney disease affecting farmers in the North Central Province may have been caused by the use of glyphosate in areas which have hard water.
PeTAC comprises top-level officials from a range of institutions including the Health and Agriculture Ministries, the Tea Research Institute, the Paddy Research Institute, the Sugarcane Research Institute and the Central Environmental Authority.
PeTAC sources argue that the report was a hypothesis (an unproven explanation) and there was no established scientific data to prove that this agro-chemical was the cause of kidney disease.
On the other hand, they said, the country would face many difficulties if glyphosate is banned. Any such decision should be based on scientific facts and not assumptions, they said. The tea sector too uses glyphosate to control weeds.
“We hope to present the technical and scientific side of this issue to the President,” one PeTAC source said adding that an immediate ban on glyphosate may not be advisable as it would have a major impact on the economy with both tea and paddy cultivations being affected.
Meanwhile, at the Annual Academic Sessions of the Toxicology Society of Sri Lanka held yesterday at the Sri Lanka Medical Association, the general view was that although glyphosate is linked to organ toxicity, there is no direct or hard evidence to prove that it caused Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown aetiology.