Protest at Auckland Transport Board Meeting today, Tuesday 25th August 2015.

The Auckland Transport board will today be considering a report in response to the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) presented to them in December 2014 by the Weed Management Advisory (WMA).

The Report does not address human rights, but instead is a blatant and detailed justification of the use of the chemical glyphosate in its road corridor operations.

The Board is being asked to endorse the continued spraying of this chemical. The WMA will be there to tell the Board to reject this recommendation, because:
• The opinion that there is no evidence that glyphosate poses "any risk to human health" is unprincipled, unprofessional and unscientific.
• There is no mention of the fact that the WHO agency IARC has classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen, or that it is being banned, prohibited in urban areas, or pulled from the shelves in an increasing number of countries.
• There is no acknowledgement that a leading NZ toxicologist has publicly stated that glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor as well as a carcinogen and the risks of using it now outweigh any benefits.
• Nor has it been noted that this toxicologist now advises that local authorities should find alternative means of managing vegetation.
•
The WMA says of even greater concern is that recently released OIA material shows that this endorsement of glyphosate is just the leading edge of a fundamental and alarming chemical mindset in Auckland governance that proposes to eliminate non-chemical options from its public operations.

• The defence that AT are complying with Council's Weed Management Policy is fundamentally wrong and a gross distortion of the facts.
• A decision has already been made at a high level that hot water/steam and organic herbicides will be 'banned' across the Auckland region.
• This recommendation is being justified by jacking up the costs, dangers and ineffectiveness of non-chemical methods and suppressing and covering up the true costs.
•
The WMA believes the Board should have facts govern their decision-making, not fiction. They have outlined all this information in a letter sent to Board members asking them to reject the recommendation.

ENDS

© Scoop Media