I'm a drug addict to it.
I'm chemically dependent on it
and so is every farmer in the world basically.
It's such an effective herbicide
that chemical companies really made us use it.
Every regulator around the world
has looked at this substance over the last 40 years
and found that particularly if used in the way that we use it,
it is safe.
There's still people out there who think smoking doesn't cause cancer.
There's enough evidence that we should be very cautious
about this product in industrial use.
The evidence for not only potential carcinogenicity
but also metabolic illness is very compelling
and therefore we should be exercising great caution
in how we use this pesticide.
We get up every morning and go and do some work on the farm.
Every single day.
You can be down the back and next minute there's half a day gone
and a bit later there's a full day gone
but you've done a bit of work in that day.
It's just farming, it's just a way of life.
Ron and Tralee have an idyllic life on the New South Wales south coast.
Iconic is really overdone but Tilba is really the iconic spot.
50 years this year we've been on the farm.
The farm's 350 acres.
We've had beef cattle, we've had sheep in the past,
we've got Christmas trees now.
Before we realised that I had the cancer
it was just ordinary living.
In 2010, Tralee was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma,
and told she had six months to live.
When you're told that you've got potentially a death sentence,
your life changes, you find out what's really important in life
and it's all your kids, your family, your husband, everything.
It's just like life with a hand grenade with the pin pulled out.
That's just really what it's like, you're just on the edge.
But it was what the oncologist said to them that really hit home.
He said you've got farmer's lymphoma.
And then he asked us after that, what do you do
and we said farmers.
And these are the words that you don't forget and he said
too many farmers are being are represented
in this particular sort of cancer for it to be a coincidence,
it's something that you blokes are doing on the farm
that's actually causing lymphoma.
I just wracked my mind
and I just come straight back to the chemicals we're using.
The chemical Ron's talking about is glyphosate,
the active ingredient in the weed killer Roundup.
It's one of the most widely used herbicides
and countless scientific studies have proven its safety.
A 2016 study showed over 8.5 billion kilograms of the stuff
has been sprayed on fields around the world.
But in 2015, the World Health Organisation
classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic".
The manufacturer Monsanto strongly rejects that listing.
When you have the World Health Organisation putting out warnings
that this is more than likely a carcinogen, it's...
I'm disgusted that a company can put money above morality.
The debate over Roundup's safety came to a head
in a US court case last month
when Monsanto was ordered to pay almost 400 million dollars
to a groundskeeper after a jury found his long-term use of the product
caused his terminal cancer.
This morning, fallout from a monumental verdict...
This case was historic.
He claims that weed killer Roundup made him sick.
The size of the punitive damages awarded reflected the jury's belief
that the company Monsanto had acted with malice.
This court case in the US
is the first of 5000 currently pending in the US.
Environmental groups like Greenpeace
are also taking up the fight to halt sales of Roundup.
It's literally designed to kill things
and until we know a lot more
about the effects of Roundup on the human body,
we think it should be pulled out of shops
and that there should be restrictions placed on its use.
It's a call some of the world's leading researchers agree with.
Dr Michael Antoniou is a molecular toxicologist
at King's College in London.
He's studied the safety of the product for years
and found regular use of glyphosate
in even smaller amounts than what's recommended by regulators
caused significant health issues,
including cancer.
For the last four years we have been conducting research
on the toxicity of glyphosate-based herbicides
in rats that were consuming Roundup,
that was many, many thousands of times lower than what regulators say
is safe to consume on a daily basis.
The rats in our study still came down with serious metabolic problems.
It's very, very clear even from industry studies
that glyphosate does cause cancer at the doses at which it was tested
and this came out very clearly
in the evidence presented in the court case in San Francisco.
That court case has left Monsanto in damage control.
It rejects the ruling and is appealing the pay-out.
But despite the denials, some in Australia are urging caution.
Sanchia Aranda runs the Cancer Council.
The International Agency of Research on Caner
don't make these rulings lightly.
They have classed it as a probable carcinogen,
which is the sort of second level of importance
and will be taking a watching brief
and keeping an eye on that evidence.
The Cancer Council has stopped short from calling for a ban,
but it's concerned about the developments.
There was a suggestion that Monsanto has information
that it has kept from the public
and Cancer Council's position on that would be
that there is zero tolerance for any industry
that withholds health and safety information from the public
about any of their products.
We saw that happen with the tobacco industry.
But not all farmers are worried.
We've been using it on our farm, for about the last 30 years.
We actually use way less of it on our farm now than we did 30 years ago
because we have the newer techniques
where we actually just put a spot of glyphosate on each individual weed
rather than spraying it out across the whole fallow paddock.
Fiona Simson knows the harsh reality of being out on the land.
She's a farmer and the president of the National Farmers' Federation.
This substance has been extensively studied,
the reputable science, the regulator science,
every regulator around the world
has looked at this substance over the last 40 years
and found that particularly if used in the way that we use it,
it is safe.
But Ron reckons the recommended safety precautions
aren't in tune with the reality of farming.
Its safe practice should be geared to me.
Not what someone says in a lab you should do.
Let them see what safe practice is
then adapt their chemicals to what we do.
Tralee is now in remission
but after decades of using the product
the couple's worried their ordeal isn't over.
Every day you lay in bed and you feel every heartbeat she's got
and every time she rolls that you don't sleep,
that's just one of those feelings of absolute guilt
but the thing that negates it with me is that I should have been informed.
I should have... if some bastard knew that this was going to happen,
or that their chemical could have done this
and the evidence is coming out now,
they're the ones that have to be held to account.
I worry he's going to get cancer. Yep. It's there all the time.
It doesn't matter to me now because my wife's got it.
That's just how it is.
I should have cancer because she got it because of something I did.
I think that I should suffer as well.
No.
Why should you think that?
It's just how it is.
The government body which decides whether or not
products like Roundup are safe for sale
is the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority,
or the APVMA.
Despite the US court decision, it hasn't reconsidered its approval.
It says...
The APVMA has rigorous processes
and it certainly does not only its own work
but it looks at the work that's been done right across the world.
The Australian regulatory agency
really need to rethink their entire principles,
the principles on which they're evaluating
the pesticides and other chemical pollutants.
'Cause at the moment, they're completely out of step
with the science.
So not only should they be taking the latest evidence
for glyphosate-based herbicides more seriously
but they should be looking across the board
at all classes of pesticides as well as other herbicides.
Is it going to be that in the future
a few farmers are going to die every year and get lymphoma
and we're just going to be called collateral damage?
I don't want to be collateral damage.
I don't want my wife to be collateral damage.