Our current, conventional food system is based on the use of
glyphosate, an herbicide which is designed to kill all green plants. (Remember for a minute that all of our oxygen
and food comes from green plants. Then consider a business plan that depends on
selling more of this green-plant-killing chemical every year.)
In 1970, a Monsanto scientist discovered that glyphosate killed
plants. The company started marketing it as Roundup® in 1973 and held exclusive rights in
this country until its patents expired in 2000.
Now glyphosate and its formulations are made by many other toxic
chemical companies all over the world. Over 100 million pounds of this
herbicide are applied in this country alone; about half a billion pounds are
applied worldwide, every year!
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup. You can buy it almost anywhere in a
convenient spray bottle or by the gallon. You may presently have some in your
home. Town and state governments spray
it freely along our roadsides. (For a long time Monsanto advertised Roundup as
"biodegradable" and "environmentally friendly." In 1997,
the New York Attorney General sued the company to stop that deceptive
advertising. Monsanto paid a fine and
stopped using that marketing strategy, at least in New York.)
Glyphosate's most extensive use, however, is in the industrial
food system where it is sprayed on the vast majority of our food crops. That's because the plants have been
engineered by the makers of Roundup and other herbicides to resist death when
sprayed with this chemical. What is
actually sprayed on our food crops is mixture of glyphosate with various,
undisclosed "other ingredients" that make up over half of this toxic
cocktail.
Roundup Ready®
is the dominant brand in herbicide-tolerant crops. Roundup Ready corn, Roundup Ready soybeans,
Roundup Ready canola, alfalfa, sugar beets, cotton, lawn grass, etc. You get the picture. Roundup Ready wheat, potatoes, tomatoes and
lettuce aren't on the market yet, but they have been in development for
years. (Just so wheat doesn't feel left
out, helpful agricultural scientists discovered that they could spray Roundup
on wheat just before harvest, to help it dry and kill weeds for the next
crop. More sales. Farmers are encouraged to spray Roundup before harvest, called dry down, to barley,
oats, canola, flax, peas, lentils, soybeans and dry beans.)
The Classic American Glyphosate Meal
Go to a local fast food joint, get the classic American meal of a
double bacon cheeseburger, fries and a soda and you are participating in a
glyphosate-based food system. The cows (producers of the beef and milk for the
processed cheese product) and the pigs (source of the bacon, all ate
genetically modified Roundup Ready corn, soybeans and/or alfalfa.
The bun is made wheat that was sprayed with glyphosate just
before harvest. The sweeteners in the
bun, the ketchup, and the soda are made from genetically-modified corn or sugar
beets. The fries are usually cooked in one or more of the following oils,
cottonseed, canola and/or soy - all
genetically engineered to resist death by Roundup. Even the bubbles in the soda come from
genetically modified corn sprayed with glyphosate!
Currently, almost all non-organic animal products, processed
foods, vegetable oils and lots of food additives depend on crops sprayed with
glyphosate.
Old News: Glyphosate is a Probable Carcinogen
It is not surprising that there was a big news splash last month
about the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on
Cancer finding that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.
That "discovery" is really old news and barely
scratches the surface of the problems connected with this chemical poison. In 1985, an EPA panel classified glyphosate
as a Class C Carcinogen (meaning that there is suggestive evidence of
carcinogenic potential). Six years later, just as genetically-modified crops
were being readied for market, the EPA, under what some report as
"industry pressure," reversed that ruling. A bit of government slight of hand switched glyphosate
to the Class E category, meaning "evidence of non-carcinogenicity for
humans."
This chemical poison is the brainchild of Monsanto, the company
that also produced the toxic PCBs that contaminate fish in this region's rivers
and polar bears in the Arctic whose icy environment we are melting. Monsanto also produced DDT, Agent Orange,
saccharin and bovine growth hormone. This company has a documented history of
creating toxic substances and spreading them around as far as possible. It
often takes decades before scientists, citizens and regulators are able to stop
them.
Although causing cancer may be a big problem, there are many
other health problems associated with glyphosate. As an endocrine disrupter it
messes with our hormones, often a route to cancer and other problems.
Glyphosate was patented as an antibiotic (with all the problems that suggests,
e.g. antibiotic resistance) and was originally patented as a metal chelator. Chelators grab onto metals, including those
critical to plant, microorganism and human health, and doesn't let them go. (A new study by Seneff and Samsel (2015) links its chelation of manganese to a
host of neurological diseases including autism, Alzheimer’s,
Parkinson’s and Prion’s, anxiety and depression, as well as
reproductive and developmental problems. Another study finds problems
from phosphorus chelation.)
Endocrine disruptors, antibiotics and chelators all have negative
effects on living systems. There is good evidence that glyphosate plays havoc
with the microbial communities upon which soil health and human gut-health
depend. This is yet another mechanism
for disease.
Dr. Don M. Huber, emeritus professor of plant pathology at Purdue
University, discovered in his research that “Glyphosate
draws out the vital nutrients of living things”
in turn removing most nutritional value from foods made with Genetically
Engineered Organisms, (GMOs).
For those of you who want to know more about the health effects
of glyphosate and Roundup, look at this thoroughly referenced document
from The Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides.
A recent study published in the Journal of Organic Systems
finds close correlations between the use of glyphosate, with the concurrent
percentage of genetically engineered corn and soy grown in this country and the
rise in 22 chronic diseases, including diabetes, obesity, hypertension,
Alzheimer's and other illnesses. Although
correlation doesn't prove causation, this work suggests that further study of
glyphosate's effects on human health is needed.
It is easy to see why most Americans want to know which foods
contain GMOs (and therefore glyphosate or other herbicides as well) and why
Monsanto and its allies spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on
lobbyists, politicians, information suppression and propaganda to keep us from
knowing.
There's more. Earth's current rapid loss of biodiversity is one
of the greatest challenges we face. As an herbicide designed to kill all green
plants except GMOs, glyphosate is a very effective biodiversity eliminator. The
use of glyphosate and a few other broad spectrum herbicides on GMO crops is
blamed for the steep decline in the monarch butterfly population. The milkweed
on which they depend has been killed by herbicides, as have the many
wildflowers native to farm country which nourish pollinators
In a 2013 study on glyphosate the authors found that
glyphosate's “negative
impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation
damages cellular systems throughout the body.
Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a
Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes,
heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.”
Just like PCBs and DDT, glyphosate and its breakdown products are
now found in air, water, breast milk and many other places where we'd rather
not find manmade poisons.
Where's the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in all this. Surely, they must carefully regulate the
residues of this chemical on our food.
Not so! In 2013, under industry pressure and/or petition, the EPA raised the allowable limits on glyphosate residues in our food. Glyphosate residues allowed on oil-seed crops
such as flax, soybean and canola were doubled from 20 ppm to 40 ppm, and
residues on food crops were increased from 200 ppm to 6,000 ppm.
The tightly connected revolving door between Monsanto, the FDA
and other important branches of government surely had an effect on this
decision.
Do GMOs Work?
Is this genetically-modified system of growing our food a
success? Not really. It worked well for a while. The Roundup killed most weeds. But then, as any student of evolution and
science could tell you, a few weeds became resistant and spread. Now there are at least 16 types of resistant weeds in at least 24 states.
So, having created "monster weeds" with glyphosate,
these chemical companies have a new solution:
more complicated and toxic chemical cocktails. Mix some 2,4-D with that glyphosate and spray
it on a new breed of GMO seeds engineered to resist two deadly killers. 2,4-D
is one half of Agent Orange,
widely used as a chemical defoliant during the Vietnam War. This use decades ago is still creating human
misery for our soldiers, their families and for the Vietnamese people and their
environment.
Even as the biotech/chemical industry's multimillion dollar
campaign to cast those who want GMO labeling as anti-science, the whole idea of
herbicide tolerance goes against all we know about the way plants behave
over time in response to being poisoned.
Where will this chemical warfare end?
What to do?
Grow more of your own food using organic methods.
Buy organic food. More and more people are doing that. Between 2007 and 2012, farms sales of organic went up 83 percent.
Eat
more fruits and vegetables. They are good for you and, except for GMO
sweet corn, you know they are not sprayed with glyphosate.
To
learn more about the long strange road that got us to a food system
dependent on one toxic chemical, read the new, highly recommended book
Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer
Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically
Deceived the Public, by Steven Drucker. In her forward, Jane Goodall
calls it "one of the most important books of the last 50 years."
