A beekeeping cooperative in northern France has filed a legal complaint against German chemical conglomerate Bayer AG after traces of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate were detected in batches of honey, officials said on Friday.
Famille Michaud, one of the country’s largest honey marketers, found the chemical in three batches supplied by one of its members, said l’Abeille de l’Aisne Beekeeping Union president Jean-Marie Camus, whose cooperative represents about 200 beekeepers in the Aisne region.
“They systematically analyze the honey shipments they receive and they found glyphosate,” Camus said.
Glyphosate, introduced by the US agricultural conglomerate Monsanto under the Roundup brand, is the most widely used weedkiller in France, where French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to outlaw it by 2021.
Scientists have suspected the chemical of causing cancer, but the EU in November last year renewed the license for glyphosate weedkillers, despite deep divisions between member states.
Emmanuel Ludot, a lawyer for the cooperative, said that the tainted honey came from a producer whose hives are near extensive fields of sunflowers, beets and rapeseed.
“But you also can’t forget the weekend gardeners who often tend to use Roundup,” he said.
The complaint was filed on Thursday to coincide with the closing of Monsanto Co’s merger with Bayer, creating an agrichemical behemoth which many environmental activists have denounced for its promotion of chemical herbicides, as well as genetically modified seeds.
Ludot said he hopes that the complaint will prompt an inquiry to determine the percentage of glyphosate in the batches and any health consequences it might have for humans.
“It’s also a matter of knowing how widespread this might be. Famille Michaud tells me this isn’t an isolated case,” he said.
“We regularly detect foreign substances, including glyphosate,” Familles Michaud president Vincent Michaud told reporters.
If the weedkiller is found, a supplier’s entire shipment is rejected, he said.
“Usually, beekeepers will say ‘In that case I’ll sell the honey at a roadside stand or a market,’ where there’s no quality control,” Michaud said. “But this beekeeper had the courage to say ‘I’m not going to be like everyone else, I’m going to file suit against Monsanto.’”
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six