Ahead of an important vote on controversial herbicide glyphosate in the European Parliament last month, 48 MEPs submitted urine samples to test for the presence of glyphosate residues, in a repeat of a study carried out last year by Germany’s Heinrich Böll Foundation which found that 99.6% of people tested had glyphosate residue in their urine.

The MEPs, from 13 different member states, including English MEPs Keith Taylor (South East), Molly Scott Cato (South West), and Jean Lambert (London), submitted samples ahead of a vote on the Commission’s plans to relicense glyphosate until 2031, after the herbicide’s current approval expires in June. Green MEPs have been fiercely critical of the process, claiming the Commission is not taking into account the ongoing controversy over glyphosate, or the huge amount of public engagement this has generated.   

Last year, the World Health Organisation’s cancer research arm IARC classified glyphosate as ‘probably carcinogenic to humans.’ Later in the year, the EU’s health watchdog EFSA published an opinion that came to the opposite conclusion, sparking intense debate about transparency and the scope of pesticide assessments in the EU; whilst IARC’s research was fully transparent and looked at glyphosate as it is found in products, some of the pivotal studies in EFSA’s work, supplied by herbicide manufacturers on the Glyphosate Task Force, were not published and the assessment looked at glyphosate in isolation.

Results of the parliamentarians’ tests were published on Friday. All MEPs were found to have glyphosate residue in their urine. On average, the MEPs had 1.7 micrograms/litre of glyphosate in their urine, 17 times higher than the European drinking water threshold (0.1 microgram/litre).

MEP Keith Taylor, who took the test, commented, “I’m peed off. The urine test might seem like an attention-grabbing stunt, but it has proven our worst fears about glyphosate. It really is everywhere. I, and every one of my colleagues, have been found to be contaminated by the controversial substance, at levels far higher than those deemed safe for drinking water. We won't be the only ones.

"This is rather worrying considering the World Health Organisation has concluded, following a comprehensive review of the published scientific data, this toxic substance is ‘probably carcinogenic’. That's why I am calling on the European Commission to consider not only the widespread opposition to reapproving the weedkiller but also just how prevalent it is in our environment.”

South West MEP Molly Scott Cato, a member of the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee, added, "With ongoing controversy over the health risks of glyphosate, we can be quite sure it has no place in the human body. Further, we hold concerns for its impact on biodiversity, with evidence of glyphosate having detrimental impacts on the honey bee, monarch butterfly, skylark and earthworm populations, and posing a threat to the quality of our soil.”

Turning to the vote on EU membership next month, Scott Cato said, “We also risk handing control of our food supply over to agribusiness. With the UK government being cheerleaders for GM technology, the blocking of blanket reapproval of glyphosate is another example of why we are greener in the EU.”

This week, EU Council members are set to debate the Commission’s reformed proposals for glyphosate reapproval. Ahead of meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, the EU Greens said the Commission now plans to allow a nine-year “full-fledged approval” of glyphosate's license, and claimed the new proposals pay only lip service to the Parliament’s resolution calling for a restriction in the scope of approval (the whole Parliament agreed that glyphosate use should be restricted to professionals only and called on the Commission to invoke the precautionary principle in last month’s plenary vote).

The UK’s Green MEPs have written to Defra Secretary Liz Truss urging the UK government to respect the decision of the European Parliament in Thursday’s vote.