Argentina: GMO Agricultural Model “Damages Health, Generates Illness and Death”

An investigation by scientists at the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the University of Rosario (UNR), Argentina has found that younger people in villages sprayed with pesticides are 2.5 times more likely to suffer and die from cancer than people who live far away from agrochemicals, writes journalist Darío Aranda, reporting on a study published in Clinical Epidemiology and Global Health.

The data, Aranda writes, were obtained in an unprecedented investigation of its kind, which took seven years and is based on epidemiological studies of eight localities in Santa Fe (a province situated in north-eastern Argentina), involving 27,000 people. “After three decades of this agro-industrial model, no one can deny that scientific evidence confirms that agribusiness damages health, generates illness and death,” said Damián Verzeñassi, from the Institute of Socio-Environmental Health of the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the National University of Rosario, first author of the research.

The vast majority of Argentina’s arable area is occupied by GMO soybeans, corn and cotton. These GM crops are engineered to tolerate being sprayed with herbicides, the use of which has boomed since the introduction of GMO agriculture.