My wife works in IVF and some of their most common customers are farmers with fertility problems. Seems the chemical sprays are interfering with farmer (re)productivity!

Earth Open Source recently produced this report on the weedkiller Roundup:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/57277946/RoundupandBirthDefectsv5

It shows that the companies and regulators knew since the late 1990s that Roundup was toxic at low levels. The studies showed links to birth defects in test animals and cancers.

Andres Carasco is an Argentinian scientist whose research repeats these findings. There is a huge amount of ill health and birth defects in areas GM soy growing areas of Argentina where Roundup is sprayed on the growing crops to kill weeds.

Here is a news report from Argentinian TV showing the scandal. It is called "The poison of the Pampas".
http://www.gmwatch.eu/gm-videosb/26-gm-in-latin-america/12580-the-poison-of-the-pampas

Australia could go a long way to protecting farmers and the public by reviewing the chemicals it allows.

Lillian, if Roundup was banned, quite frankly people would simply
starve to death, as it is that vital in agricultural production.

There are few crops grown today where Roundup does not play a role.
Have we seen massive birth defect increases globally in the last
10 years? In Australia?

The alternative option is to kill those pesky weeds with cultivation
as they do in organic farming, which then results in soil washing
and blowing away.

Be careful what you want to ban.

Any chemical is dangerous if misused, even coffee and salt

I thought David was doing quite well until he reused the misinformed example of DDT.

Try and have a good objective look at the history of DDT use, David. Especially as it pertains to what countries banned it and when, and that there has pretty much always been an agreement that it could be used for structural treatments in public-health programs. The idea that there was a some sort of world-wide blanket ban on the chemical which has only recently been overturned, and that millions of people died because of it is a flat out myth.

However it is myth that is regularly used to bash environmental activists and so gets repeated often in op-ed pieces without any sort of research into it's validity. I would take your own advice David.

David Leyonhjelm Sir,

If the three introductory paragraphs in your script are designed to prevent the readers of OLO from rejecting right out the content of your barrow, you have failed.

I am sure that you are well aware of the contemptible enormity of what you preach and I believe that you should be investigated by the media watchdog over the assertions contained in this article of yours.

Conversely, if you believe in the beneficial qualities of the substances you foster, you should substantiate your arguments by ingesting a good dose of them with your meals.

We have a few fact dodgers in the comments backing up the greenies who, as always, have made unsubstantiated allegations about chemicals, touted by the subversive elements of our media, but who require proof beyond doubt of the obvious non effect of farm chemicals and DDT.

The head of the EPA in the US openly stated that the decision to ban DDT after a lengthy enquiry, which cleared it, of allegations that it was harmful, was a political decision, not a scientific decision. In other words it was made simply to buckle to the pressure applied by the greens and in the face of detailed scientific evidence showing the ban to be unjustified.

Rachel Carson made the nonsensical and unsupported statement that the shells of the eggs of peregrine falcons had been made thinner, by the use of DDT on crops, and that the species was endangered. This ludicrous statement was adopted as fact by the activists campaigning for the banning of this beneficial resource.

Now that we are aware of the absolute nonsense of the “endangered species” assertion, it is time we worked backwards through the damage perpetrated by green lies, and systematically rectified it.

Their lies have been repeated so incessantly that a large segment of the population believe them to be true.

Extinction is part of the process of evolution. If one believes in evolution, as the majority of the greeny ratbags apparently do, then ongoing extinction of species is indivisible from that belief.

Of the species which have existed to date, 99.999% or more are now extinct. We are the only species of human still in existence.

This is the function of Nature, and has nothing to do with DDT or Roundup, or fertilizer, except in the deranged minds of the fact allergic activists.

David’s article is timely and reassuring.