The herbicide glyphosate, also known as Roundup, has come to be a cheap and ubiquitous method of weed control since its invention by a scientist at Monsanto, John Franz, in 1970. It has huge advantages over other weed-killers. Because it inhibits an enzyme found only in plants it is virtually harmless at normal doses to animals, including people, and because it decomposes rapidly it does not persist in the environment. It is far safer than the stuff it replaced, paraquat, which was sometimes used by suicides. Glyphosate has transformed agriculture by allowing farmers to control weeds
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