Please take action now over EFSA's glyphosate consultation - sign petition:
http://bit.ly/1iqWoN8

Urgent Message to the European Food Safety Authority: Protect Our Food

Food & Water Watch, May 2014
http://bit.ly/1iqWoN8

Glyphosate is the chemical in Monsanto’s best-selling pesticide Roundup that kills a wide variety of weeds. There is a growing body of scientific evidence that it’s bad for human health and the environment including the development of superweeds that are making life so hard for farmers in the Americas.

The EU granted safety authorisation for glyphosate years ago, and it’s time to renew that approval. The EU is poised not only to give the chemical another green light, but also to increase the level of the residues you’ll find in your food.

Tell the European Food Safety Authority that:

* It can’t judge the safety of anything by only looking at part of it,
* Citizens should be able to access public information without being forced to provide private information, and
* They should protect our food and not Monsanto.

We've seen the impact we have when we work together in Europe to protect our food. We're leading the way! We need to derail this process today. Please sign our petition now.

Message

We Petition the European Food Safety Authority

Dear [Decision Maker],

We object in the strongest possible terms to the ongoing consultation being conducted by EFSA as part of the safety reassessment of glyphosate because:

- A public consultation should not force citizens to provide private details in order to access the information under consideration. Public, tax-funded information should be freely available to anyone who wants to see it.

- The consultation itself is effectively meaningless as it is restricted to considering only glyphosate as an active ingredient and will not consider the adjuvants or other chemicals used in the pesticide formulations actually used in fields. Without a proper investigation of the safety of the whole formulation, safety simply cannot be properly established, particularly as it is already known that the full formulation is more toxic than glyphosate alone.

- Considering the above, it is entirely unacceptable that the consultation recommends raising the acceptable daily intake of glyphosate from 0.3 mg to 0.5 mg per kg of bodyweight per day. Since glyphosate is not used alone but as part of a formulation, such a rise would also mean an increased intake of the very chemicals that make glyphosate-based pesticides more toxic. This is not acceptable.

We reject EFSA's consultation as currently framed. We urge EFSA to withdraw this consultation and to conduct a consultation that is fully public and that fully explores the safety risks of glyphosate as it is used in fields.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Address]
[City, State ZIP]