Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, is the most used agricultural chemical in history. It finally got some serious media attention after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization (WHO) determined it is a probable human carcinogen.
Like Monsanto, Syngenta produces patented genetically engineered (GE) seeds, designed to tolerate the pesticides they sell. This is a clear conflict of interest, as their seed business is little more than a means to sell more pesticides.
Another particularly curious conflict of interest raised by Hayes relates to the fact that, up until the year 2000, Syngenta not only produced atrazine, which induces aromatase that causes overproduction of estrogen — an effect that could raise your risk of breast cancer — but the company also produced another chemical, letrozol, which has the converse effect.
“[T]he company was simultaneously, in 2000, making a chemical that induced estrogen and promoted breast cancer, and making a chemical that blocked estrogen production and was used to treat breast cancer. So there’s a clear conflict of interest there.”
Eating organic is one of the best ways to lower your overall pesticide burden. The largest study11 of its kind found that people who "often or always" ate organic food had 65 percent lower levels of pesticide residues compared to those who ate the least amount of organic produce. Organic produce also had, on average, 180 times lower pesticide content than conventional produce.12
