Glyphosate is a powerful herbicide. It's also the subject of several multibillion dollar lawsuits by people who claim it gave them cancer.

Adapted from World War II nerve gases, the chemical sticks around on our food and makes its way into our drinking water and air, exposing farmworkers and those living in agricultural areas.While Corteva continues to claim the pesticide is safe, the science has long disagreed: In 2016, the U.S. Envir...

Urgent action needed - contact your Local Board.
This is the media release from Weed Management Advisory:
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Auckland Council to ‘harmonise’ the City – with carcinogenic chemicals on every street and every doorstep.

Joint media release from the Weed Management Advisory (WMA) and For the Love of Bees (FTLOB) – 14 September 2020

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Cloaking their recommendation in fine environmental words of climate change action does not hide the ugly truth, says two major community groups today. “Carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting glyphosate (aka Roundup) will be returning to every street and berm in New Zealand’s largest city”.

Hana Blackmore of the WMA said that in a report that went to every Local Board last week, Council was recommending a ‘harmonisation’ of street vegetation management at the lowest common denominator, with chemicals.

“Auckland, the first city in the world to go nonchemical on its streets and berms over 20 years ago, will now sink to the bottom of the pile. Whilst countries, cities, towns and villages across the globe are following in our (previous) ground-breaking footsteps and banning all chemicals in public places, we have stepped off the kerb into the spray truck’s path” said Blackmore today. “It is gut-wrenching”.

The two groups have written an urgent letter to the Chairman of the Environment & Climate Change Committee asking that he intervene and have the Report withdrawn from all the Local Board agendas.

“Until everyone has a chance to truly evaluate this Report, and correct and counter the highly misleading and distorted information in it, no-one - not even the community - can be expected to make informed decisions” said Blackmore.

The Report had come as a complete shock, said Smuts-Kennedy of the Auckland-based FTLOB. “We have been working with Council’s Political Advisory Group for several years on implementing the Weed Management Policy, and were invited to their meeting only last week. The fact that this Report was not even tabled at that meeting, but by-passed them completely, is stunning” she said.

Brendan Hoare of the WMA and Managing Director of Buy Pure New Zealand believes the decision is at odds with the strategic direction not only of the country, but the rest of the world. “We are in the 3rd decade of the 21st century and our ‘decision makers’ are taking us back in time where it was believed plastics and pesticides were the solution. The 21st century is all about managing the total environment in a holistic way that is open, transparent and where health is central to decision making for current and future generations.”

The community groups agree that Council’s action is a complete and utter betrayal of everything thousands and thousands of Aucklanders have worked for over the last two and a half decades.

“That we fought so hard to take back our streets from Auckland Transport, only to have Council take the axe to safe nonchemical methodologies - just one year into the contract - is outrageous and totally unacceptable. ” said Blackmore. “The fact that it will also result in the closing down of any innovation in this vitally important sector is doubly distressing and shortsighted”.

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