Swiss chemical company Syngenta, one of the world’s biggest agribusiness companies, markets highly harmful pesticides in India. After Bayer, Syngenta is the second biggest pesticides firm in the Indian market. Gramoxone, one of the products Syngenta sells in India, contains the active ingredient Paraquat which is highly toxic and can lead to death if inhaled.
Paraquat was banned in the European Union in 2007, and in the USA Gramoxone must include the warning “fatal in inhaled.” But this warning is not included on the product sold in India, which states only “fatal if swallowed.” This was uncovered in research for the ECCHR monitoring report submitted in October 2015 to the Panel of Experts on Pesticides Management at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).