Jim Irving says glyphosate ban would be 'disastrous'

New Brunswick's largest forestry company and its wealthy owners have urged members of the provincial legislature to not give in to what they call "misinformation" about the herbicide glyphosate.

J.D. Irving Ltd. co-CEO Jim Irving told a committee of MLAs on Tuesday morning that a ban on the product would curtail the company's ability to maximize the output of its logging leases on Crown land.

"We shouldn't throw away the tools without knowing where we're going to land," Irving said.

"It would be disastrous. Short term, it would be difficult. It would impact our business dramatically if we can't use herbicide. Very carefully, but we have to use it, at the present time, anyway." 

Company officials told the MLAs that only 0.5 per cent of the forest sees tree planting and the spraying of herbicides in a given year. 

That makes those areas four times as productive for logging, which in turns makes it easier to set aside conservation areas that have expanded from five to 30 per cent of Crown land in the last four decades.

Irving's director of research and development Andrew Willett said "scary information" about glyphosate is easy to find online, but it's misleading.