The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA)said it would allow now the use of the herbicide glyphosate also on barley but only for feed and not for malting purposes. Barley was in Australia one of the last crops left without full registration. The permit lasts until July 31, 2019.
As stated on their website “the APVMA has completed its assessment of the IARC report and other recent assessments of glyphosate and has concluded that glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk to humans. … The current assessment by the APVMA is that products containing glyphosate are safe to use as per the label instructions”.
However, Barley Australia, a syndicate of Australian brewers, maltsters and grain traders, and its executive chairman Andrew Gee released earlier a statement that their members“ will not knowingly purchase malt made from barley that has been crop-topped with glyphosate”.
GrainCorp, a leading Australian agribusiness and malting company, published this week a bulletin saying that “applying glyphosate or paraquat to malting barley varieties prior to harvest will reduce the germinative energy and capacity of malting barley. This means that any malting barley treated with glyphosate or paraquat prior to harvest must be declared and will be downgraded to feed grade.”
“Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide which works by inhibiting an enzyme found in plants. There are around 500 products containing glyphosate registered for use in Australia. Glyphosate has been registered for use for over 40 years.” (APVMA)
