Thursday, Jul. 22, 2021
Has Monsanto, the agribusiness controversial for its widely used herbicides, been banned in 15 locations?
A social media post listing 14 countries and a region in Portugal claims "Monsanto" has been banned there and poses the question, "Why not here?"
In fact, the company no longer exists under the name "Monsanto" since it was acquired in 2018 by German-based Bayer, best known for its health care products.
A company spokesperson told Lead Stories, "Bayer is not banned in any country."
The company now produces Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide. Glyphosate has been deemed "probably carcinogenic to humans" by the World Health Organization, although according to the FDA, the chemical compound "has a low toxicity for people."
The Bayer spokesperson told Lead Stories: "There are a few countries that have implemented country-wide restrictions on glyphosate, but these restrictions are politically driven and are not based on any new science or regulatory risk assessment showing glyphosate is unsafe."
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- Bayer Bayer announces agreements to resolve major legacy Monsanto litigation
- National Pesticide Information Center Glyphosate General Fact Sheet
- World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer—Monograph on Glyphosate
- Food and Drug Administration Questions and Answers on Glyphosate
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.
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