[Your name and address]                

  [Date]

FAO: [Name of national elected representative]]

[Address]

Dear [Insert name]

Glyphosate use and monitoring

You may be aware that in March this year, the cancer-research arm of the World Health Organization (the International Agency for Research on Cancer or IARC), declared glyphosate a ‘probable carcinogen’¹.  In response, there have been moves in EU Member States, and in other parts of the world, that are resulting in Roundup, and other glyphosate-containing herbicides, for non-commercial use being removed from the shelves in garden centres or banned altogether.  It is my personal opinion, one that is shared by a growing number of people, that glyphosate residues in foods are no longer acceptable at any level.  I’m also deeply concerned about the levels found in GM and non-organically grown crops such as wheat, barley, corn, oilseed rape. 

In June 2013, Friends of the Earth Europe recommended, “Governments must immediately start a monitoring programme for glyphosate in food and feed, including imported animal feed crops such as GM soy.  Levels of glyphosate (and its breakdown product AMPA) in the environment should also be monitored, covering aquatic systems and soil.  These monitoring programmes should be comprehensive and the results should be made available to the public without delay. 

“National governments must introduce a glyphosate reduction programme and desiccation (spraying crops shortly before the harvest) should be banned without delay.  All other uses for glyphosate should be evaluated by 2015, existing maximum residue limits (MRLs) should be re-evaluated, and there must be no further increases in the MRLs”.

In light of all of the above, can you please tell me if glyphosate use, policy, and MRLs are due to be re-evaluated?  Can you also reassure me that plans are being put in place to adequately monitor food, feed and environmental glyphosate/herbicide levels at a national level?  And finally, could you please let me know your party’s position in relation to a future moratorium on the use of glyphosate-based herbicides and glyphosate-resistant GM crops? 

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely

[Your signature]

[Your name]

¹ http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045%2815%2970134-8/abstract