In article , "Ian St. John"
wrote:

"paghat" wrote in message
news
I'm sure there aren't many who believe Billo when he advocates using
glyphosate as table salt, nor nearly as apt to believe safety statistics
generated by people hired away from Philip Morris to whitewash glyphosate
as tidily as they previously whitewashed cigarettes

I'm not sure it really matters. At the rate that resistance in weeds is
increasing the use of glypohosate may become meaningless in the near future.
http://www.discover.com/sep_03/breaknumbers.html ( see graph )
"Since genetic engineers devised herbicide-resistant crops in the mid-1990s,
weed killers such as Roundup have become the wonder drugs of the farming
industry, clearing out pest plants while leaving corn and soybeans intact.
But weeds are developing resistance as well. Weed specialist Ian Heap and
his colleagues at the International Survey for Herbicide Resistant Weeds in
Corvallis, Oregon, have found that more than 50 species of
herbicide-tolerant weeds have popped up just since 1995-a trend fueled by
the 2 billion pounds of herbicide farmers dump on their crops every year.
"We're very concerned, because so many soy and corn farmers rely solely on
Roundup for weed control," he says. He is urging farmers to use different
herbicides each year and to invest in old-fashioned methods of weed control,
such as tilling the soil. "

Yep. Eventually glyphosate will be banned. But not until Monsanto has made
BILLIONS selling increasingly toxic mixes of RoundUp to spray on
genetically engineered glyphosate-resistant crops. And the permanent
after-effect will be new generations of glyphosate-resistant weeds. But
imagine glyphosate's told-you-so arguments when they cook up more dubiouis
statistics: "Weeds were less trouble back when RoundUp was legal!" "But
that's because your glyphosate-resistant crops bled resistant into the
weed population." "You can't prove that! No you can't!" Hell, Monsanto
would like to bring back Agent Orange, & Monsanto "scientists" are still
producing "proof" that dioxins (one of the most toxic substances known) is
100% safe at much higher parts per million than allowed by the government
today. And why after all these years would Monsanto STILL be making the
same Agent Orange arguments? Because glyphosate is generally contaminated
with dioxins! And so the same lies are needed by Monsanto for its currant
products.

They never do give up -- because their profits from lying vastly outpace
their PR and legal costs every time they're caught. And the clean-up costs
are picked up by the taxpayers. Some people predict Monsanto will fall
entirely. I'm afraid more likely they'll pay off Congress to get them
completely off the hook for all costs of the vast harm they're doing right
now, then introduce a BRAND NEW chemical brew that'll give them ANOTHER
twenty to forty years of profits in the high billions before the cost in
human welfare is too extravagant to keep covering up.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/