A potential European ban on the popular herbicide ingredient glyphosate would leave Irish company Barclay Crop Protection without a market overnight. Its managing director Simon Sheridan told the Irish Farmers Journal that 90% of its €100m annual turnover comes from glyphosate-based products sold in 28 European countries. While much of the recent attention has focused on global giant Monsanto, which launched the chemical in the 1970s, “we are number two in Europe for glyphosate”, Sheridan said.

Barclay employs 90 people at its plant in Damastown, Co Dublin, but its managing director said 70 of those jobs would be at risk if the leading weedkiller active was banned across the EU as there is currently no alternative to replace it.

“Some people say we should keep glyphosate because it’s important for farmers, but we’re losing the battle if we’re going that way,” Sheridan said. “We should say we should keep glyphosate because it is safe,” he added, citing the recent all-clear given by several European regulatory bodies and questioning the significance of the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s classification of glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic”.

Sheridan said: “We should be defending the science of it.”