Introduction to the Symposium on the Science and Politics of Glyphosate
Alessandra Arcuri, Yogi Hale Hendlin
Abstract
Glyphosate is the most widely used pesticide in history, 1 and it is one of the most contested in current regulatory science and politics. As a commercial product, glyphosate has the dubious distinction of joining an infamous clubalong with cigarettesof products that have had multibillion dollar Master Settlement Agreements concluded against them to allegedly amend for the health harms and deaths of hundreds of thousands of product users, while still being legally available on the market. 2 Originally developed to kill weeds, the first genetically modified (GM) crops were created not to boost vitamin A or provide some other essential nutrient, but instead to withstand the application of glyphosate without dying. 3 While only since around 2015 has glyphosate become a household name, the agricultural significance of the chemical and the controversies surrounding it date back decades. The first seven grams of glyphosate were originally synthesised in 1950