A success story, but not the right kind of success story.
This one’s a story of successful lobbying by Syngenta, which apparently learned the lessons of bad publicity.
Faced with a potential ban on an herbicide it produces (what herbicide is used on 2/3 of corn in the U.S. and 90% of sugarcane), Syngenta spent $260,000 lobbying various governmental entities.
On October 31—the date suggested by the lobbying firm of Alston & Bird—the EPA agreed to re-register the herbicide.
Low levels of the herbicide
“chemically castrate and feminize” male frogs, fish and other wildlife. Students first noticed deformed frogs in 1995 in a farm pond near Henderson, Minn.
And then there’s the fact that men working near the chemical have a higher risk of prostate cancer, and the tentative link between the herbicide and cancer (in, what else, laboratory animals).
Yay.
(via Gristmill, with excerpts/info from AP: “Company spent $260,000 lobbying for herbicide,” by Frederic Frommer [October 27, 2004])