Garden Organic this week stepped up its  campaign to persuade the EU not to renew the licence for glyphosate – the  most widely-used active ingredient in farm and garden weedkillers – because of the risk that it might be carcinogenic to humans, wildlife and the environment.

Earlier in the week, the European Parliament’s Environment Committee passed a resolution by 38 votes to six urging the European Commission not to give glyphosate a proposed 15-year approvals extension without any restrictions.  The commission is due to consider the matter in April.

Garden Organic is urging its supporters to write to Vytenis Andriukaitis, the EU’s Health and Food Safety Commissioner, asking him to consider the independent scientific evidence that glyphosate alone, as well as in chemical formulations, causes genotoxicity in humans and animals.

Gary Philpotts at Monsanto, the makers of glyphosate, is reported to have said that a that a ban would be unlikely because of the enormous impact it would have on food production in Europe.

A decision on the future of glyphosate in Europe was postponed after re-approval was opposed by France, Sweden, Holland and Italy, because of doubts raised by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which classified glyphosate as being “probably carcinogenic to humans”.