Eco Hvar

Green MEPs 'pissed off'

The Green Group of the European Parliament organized urine tests for the herbicide glyphosate on 48 volunteer MEPs. 

Our foodstuffs are inescapably contaminated Our foodstuffs are inescapably contaminated Photo: Vivian Grisogono

The results were announced in a Press Release on May 12th 2016.

Glyphosate showed up in all the samples. Shocking, but not surprising to those who know how widespread the use of glyphosate is.

The average contamination was 1.7 micrograms/litre, which is 17 times higher than the norm for European drinking water. The Croatian MEP tested had the third highest reading of urine glyphosate at 2.46 μg/L, with a Lithuania MEP showing the greatest concetration (2.84 μg/L), followed by a Hungarian MEP with 2.63 μg/L

Perhaps taking the lead from Eco Hvar's article in Total Croatia News entitled 'EU taking the piss', the Green Group announced they were 'pissed off that our governments want to allow this poison for another nine years! No politician should have this in his or her body, and not a single citizen either!'

The Press Release described the multitude of problems associated with glyphosate use, and the alternative techniques which would be safer and better for the environment and human health.

Sadly, the Green Group recognized that the European Commission was resolutely set on driving through renewed approval for glyphosate use in Europe, despite opposition from the informed public and some governments: “in its latest proposal that will be voted next week (19th May) the Commission ploughs ahead with a full-fledged approval of glyphosate's license for nine years. It considers only symbolically if at all the European Parliament's resolution calling for a very limited scope of approval. Responsibility for the protection of operators and for multiple risks is discharged onto Member States in a non-legally binding manner.” The EC had already ridden rough-shod over the Environment Committee's call for a ban on the poison.

To add insult to injury, in advance of a further vote on re-approving glyphosate, yet another supposedly reassuring statement was produced by the United Nations Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR), designed to fool the unwary into thinking that those opposed to glyphosate are simply scaremongering. Experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization concluded that glyphosate was “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet”. Yet another diversionary tactic designed to lull people into a false sense of security. The statement was publicized just a few days in advance of the further vote in the European Parliament.

It is hard to see the point of having such votes. Parliamentarians recommended a ban and several precautionary measures. Their receommendations were ignored, and they were asked to vote on a seven-year re-approval term, which was passed. Yet the next vote was asking for a nine-year approval. It would be the stuff of farce if teh consequences were not so tragic.

It is not the first time that poisons have been approved by the EC in defiance of opposition from governments, scientists and the public. Evidently proof of unacceptable risks cuts no ice with them. The European Parliament is sorely lacking in power, and its democratic processes are in total disarray. So it's down to individual governments and individual food producers and consumers to try to redress the balance as best they can. A stiff challenge - but everything is possible.

© Vivian Grisogono 2016 

back to top
You are here: Home highlights Poisons Beware Green MEPs 'pissed off'

Eco Environment News feeds

  • MSPs not told about collapse of funding deal for Scottish nature restoration

    Exclusive: Ministers accused of trying to keep investment firm’s withdrawal from partnership with NatureScot under wraps

    A funding deal to raise £100m from private investors for urgently needed nature restoration in Scotland has fallen through without the Scottish parliament being told.

    The Guardian has learned that Aberdeen, the investment firm, decided to withdraw from a partnership with the agency NatureScot to raise at least £100m for conservation projects from commercial and private investors late last year.

    Continue reading...

  • Surrounded by windfarms but out of work: the reality of the green jobs boom on England’s east coast

    The government hails the ‘green revolution’ as a solution to economic decline, but some young jobseekers say the rhetoric does not match their experience

    On paper, Jake Snell, 19, sounds like the perfect candidate for a role in the UK’s burgeoning green energy sector. He has high grades in maths and physics A-level, a distinction in BTec engineering and another distinction in an extended engineering diploma. He has also done work experience at an engineering company.

    He is from Lowestoft, a coastal town in Suffolk, outside Great Yarmouth. Both towns contain areas that fall within the most deprived 20% in England and are part of a wider pattern of coastal places with low employment opportunities.

    Continue reading...

  • Welcome to The Hotspot, our new newsletter on sport’s relationship with the climate crisis

    We delve into the best stories on how sport is changing around the climate crisis, and what can be done to navigate a way forward

    Nelson Mandela said: “Sport can create hope where once there was only despair.” Too optimistic? In 2026, almost certainly. Sport is still a common language, uniting unlikely groups like an all-powerful Esperanto, but it is in trouble.

    The pitches we play on, rivers we swim, seas we surf, mountains we climb, parks we run in, air we breathe – all are being degraded by the burning of fossil fuels as the climate crisis turns the sporting landscape upside down.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘Without them there is no life’: the race to understand the mysterious world of Africa’s fungi

    Amid growing evidence of fungi’s key role in ecosystems and storing carbon, African scientists are championing the need to preserve ‘funga’ as much as flora and fauna

    Madagascar has long been celebrated for its remarkable wildlife, with the vast majority of its species – from ring-tailed lemurs to certain species of baobab trees – found nowhere else on the planet. But when discussing the island nation’s endemic treasures, fungi are often left out of the conversation.

    Yet “fungi are some of the most important things in the world”, says Anna Ralaiveloarisoa, a Malagasy scientist. “They feed 90% of terrestrial plants. Without them, there is no life on the Earth.”

    Continue reading...

  • ‘Nothing but tree skeletons’: record-breaking wildfires devastate US cattle country

    Rising temperatures and extreme drought are driving more destructive spring fires across the Great Plains. This year, forces aligned to create the perfect storm in Nebraska

    In a normal year, the vast grasslands that roll across the American Great Plains would be starting to green. But at the center of the US, where most of the nation’s beef producers graze their herds, this spring brought fire instead of moisture, leaving more than a million acres black and barren.

    Multiple blazes raged across Nebraska, where the records for the annual acreage burned were obliterated in a single month. The state logged the largest blaze ever recorded when the Morrill fire cascaded across more than 642,000 acres (260,000 hectares) before it was contained in March.

    Continue reading...

  • Giant echidnas weighing 15kg roamed Victoria – and the evidence was hiding in plain sight

    A skull fragment found in a tray of unsorted fossils collected more than a century ago leads to discovery

    A prehistoric fossil, hiding in plain sight in museum storage for more than a century, has revealed that giant echidnas once roamed Victoria.

    The Owen’s giant echidna, Megalibgwilia owenii, lived during the Pleistocene, a geological epoch that began 2.5m years ago. It grew to about 1 metre long and weighed up to 15kg – about twice the size of Australia’s modern echidnas.

    Continue reading...

  • Colombia to cull up to 80 hippos descended from Pablo Escobar zoo

    Dozens of feral pachyderms linked to drug kingpin to be killed because of threat to native species and villagers

    Colombian officials have authorized a plan to cull dozens of hippos descended from animals brought to the country in the 1980s by Pablo Escobar, after the feral beasts displaced native species and threatened local villagers.

    The environment minister, Irene Vélez, said the decision was reached because other methods to control their population had been expensive and unsuccessful, including neutering some of the animals or moving them to zoos. Vélez said that up to 80 hippos would be affected by the measure. She did not say when the hunting would begin.

    Continue reading...

  • Inside a jubilant DC conference where ‘the climate deniers are in charge now’

    Trump’s EPA chief Lee Zeldin’s presence shows how much influence climate deniers now have, experts say

    As scientists confirmed that March was the United States’ most abnormally hot month in recorded history, dozens of climate deniers gathered to promote misinformation and tout their newfound influence on federal policy.

    At a conference hosted by the prominent science-denying thinktank the Heartland Institute last week, a crowd of mostly middle-aged men in suits claimed the world is finally waking up to the idea that the climate crisis does not exist.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘We are totally out of our depth’: experts say whale stranded in Baltic is beyond saving

    Male humpback, which has repeatedly stranded and freed itself in Germany in past month, is to be left in peace to die

    When a 10-metre long humpback whale became stranded on a sandbar in the Baltic Sea last month, none of those who went to its rescue could have known how it might turn lives and livelihoods upside down.

    About a month after the first sighting of the male whale, near Wismar and Timmendorfer Strand on the north German coast, it has repeatedly stranded and freed itselfand is now stranded once more, with rescuers saying it is in the throes of death.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘That crazy old man should leave Cuba alone’: farmers bear the brunt of Trump’s pressure campaign

    In Artemisa, the country’s agricultural heartland, sanctions and fuel shortages have made a tough life almost impossible

    Abraham Rodríguez stares at the corn furrows he must plough before the end of the day. It is not even noon in Artemisa, Cuba, but the sun beats down hard and he’s already tired: working the land is a tough job. He has done it for almost half his life, since he was 13 and his mother got a divorce. He is turning 26 this year.

    Farming has always been hard, he says, but now it is almost impossible to sustain. “I make 1,200 pesos (£1.80) a day, so I have to work two days to buy a bottle of oil.”

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

Copyright © 2026 Eco Hvar. All Rights Reserved. Developed by Orion Informatika.