32 GERMINATION.CA NOVEMBER 2018 AN IMPORTANT NEW resource is avail- able to help stakeholders in the seed industry spread the good news about glyphosate. “Some Good News About Glyphosate” is a seven-page docu- ment showing how Ontario has ben- efitted tremendously from the use of the herbicide commonly sold under the trade name Roundup. Authors Rob Saik and Christopher P. Dufault used data from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs that tracks trends in pesticide use over time. “Activists always equate GMO to more chemical. That’s not true for Bt and not true for glyphosate- and glufosinate-tolerant crops,” says Saik, an agrologist and founder of Agri- Trend (now Trimble), which helps farmers allocate scarce resources to produce profitable and environmen- tally sustainable crops. “I want the ag community to be able to say, ‘Here’s solid data to give you a counterpoint to all the negativ- ity you’re reading about.’” For Saik, that “negativity” includes the 2015 report from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which labelled glyphosate as a Group 2A substance (probably carcinogenic to humans). The IARC report was widely criticized as flawed — Saik and Dufault’s document notes numerous regulatory bodies through- out the world, including Europe, Canada and the United States, all take ANEWREPORTMAKESCLEAR THEBENEFITSANDSAFETYOF GLYPHOSATETECHNOLOGY Download the document as a tool to help educate others about how the herbicide and related technologies have changed things for the better. Marc Zienkiewicz the position that glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk to humans. But that didn’t stop the IARC report from dominating headlines throughout the world, and the result- ing storm of negative publicity sur- rounding glyphosate tolerant crops and the herbicide itself spurred Saik and Dufault — a retired pesticide regulator who spent two decades with the Pest Management Regulatory Agency and now works as a consult- ant — to write “Some Good News About Glyphosate” in the hopes of showing how beneficial a technology it has been. “As I dug into the numbers more and more, I was intrigued to see Christopher P. Dufault is a former pesticide regulator for the PMRA. “IWANTTHEAGCOMMUNITY TOBEABLETOSAY,‘HERE’S SOLIDDATATOGIVEYOUA COUNTERPOINTTOALLTHE NEGATIVITYYOU’REREADING ABOUT.’” –RobSaik