Glyphosate is everywhere

Global Research    April 27, 2019

As new studies continue to point to a direct link between the widely-used glyphosate herbicide and various forms of cancer, the agribusiness lobby fights ferociously to ignore or discredit evidence of human and other damage. A second US court jury case just ruled that Monsanto, now a part of the German Bayer AG, must pay $ 81 million in damages to plaintiff Edwin Hardeman who contracted non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer. The ruling and a line-up of another 11,000 pending cases in US courts going after the effects of glyphosate, have hit Bayer AG hard with the company announcing several thousand layoffs as its stock price plunges.

In a trial in San Francisco the jury was unanimous in their verdict that Monsanto Roundup weed-killer, based on glyphosate, had been responsible for Hardeman’s cancer. His attorneys stated,

“It is clear from Monsanto’s actions that it does not care whether Roundup causes cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about Roundup.” 

It is the second defeat for the lawyers of Monsanto after another jury ruled in 2018 that Glyphosate-based Roundup was responsible for the cancer illness of a California school grounds-keeper who contracted the same form of cancer after daily spraying school grounds with Roundup over years, unprotected. There a jury found Monsanto guilty of “malice and oppression” in that company executives, based on internal email discovery, knew that their glyphosate products could cause cancer and suppressed this information from the public.

A new independent study shows that those with highest exposure to glyphosate have a 41% increased risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) cancer. A meta-analysis of six studies containing nearly 65,000 participants looked at links between glyphosate-based herbicides and immune-suppression, endocrine disruption and genetic alterations. The authors found “the same key finding: exposure to GBHs (glyphosate-based herbicides) are associated with an increased risk of NHL (Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma).” Further, they stated that glyphosate “alters the gut microbiome,” and that that could “impact the immune system, promote chronic inflammation, and contribute to the susceptibility of invading pathogens.” Glyphosate also ”may act as an endocrine disrupting chemical because it has been found recently to alter sex hormone production” in both male and female rats.

In a long-term animal study by French scientists under Gilles Eric Seralini, Michael Antoniou and associates, it was demonstrated that even ultra-low levels of glyphosate herbicides cause non-alcoholic liver disease. The levels the rats were exposed to, per kg of body weight, were far lower than what is allowed in our food supply. According to the Mayo Clinic, today, after four decades or more pervasive use of glyphosate pesticides, 100 million, or 1 out of 3 Americans now have liver disease. These diagnoses are in some as young as 8 years old.

A new study finds that bacteria develop antibiotic resistance when exposed to Roundup

Phys October 12, 2018

A new study finds that bacteria develop antibiotic resistance up to 100,000 times faster when exposed to the world's most widely used herbicides, Roundup (glyphosate) and Kamba (dicamba) and antibiotics compared to without the herbicide. 

This study adds to a growing body of evidence that herbicides used on a mass industrial scale, but not intended to be antibiotics, can have profound effects on bacteria, with potentially negative implications for medicine's ability to treat infectious diseases caused by bacteria, says University of Canterbury scientist Professor Jack Heinemann, one of the study's authors. 

 "The combination of chemicals to which bacteria are exposed in the modern environment should be addressed alongside antibiotic use if we are to preserve antibiotics in the long-term," he says. 

An important finding of the new study was that even in cases where the herbicides increase the toxicity of antibiotics they also significantly increased the rate of antibiotic resistance, which the study's authors say could be contributing to the greater use of antibiotics in both agriculture and medicine.

Is gluten in the wheat really the problem or is it actually the glyphosate residue sprayed on the wheat?

The Healty Economist May 24, 2018

Pre-harvest application of herbicides as a (toxic) drying agent on wheat is an established practice on many conventional farms. The method was first suggested as early as 1980, becoming routine in North America over the past 15 years or so. Use is also widespread in the UK.

Applying herbicides like Roundup 7-10 days before harvest is viewed as especially helpful for wheat that ripens unevenly, a common occurrence. It is also considered a helpful tool to initiate an earlier harvest when weather conditions threaten plant viability. Other benefits are earlier ripening for earlier replanting and reducing the green material in the field. This puts less strain on farm machinery during harvest.

Farmers euphemistically call the practice “desiccation”. When used during wheat harvest, it can result in slightly greater yield by triggering plants to release more seeds.

The result? Most non-organic wheat in North America is now contaminated with glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and similar herbicides.

WHO: Glyphosate a Probable Carcinogen

A March 2015 report by the World Health Organization identified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. Several EU countries have banned it as a result with more in the works.

However, in North America, glyphosate use shockingly continues to remain a popular farming tool.

And, as it turns out, use of Roundup as a drying agent on wheat prior to harvest is just the tip of the iceberg.

Dozens of other food crops are subjected to glyphosate dousing prior to harvest as well.

But Wait! Isn’t Roundup Just for GMO Crops?

It is well known that Roundup is sprayed directly on GMO crops like corn and soy because they are genetically engineered to withstand the toxic onslaught without withering. So much Roundup is used on GMO crops, in fact, that herbicide-resistant “superweeds” are now a huge problem little more than a decade later (1).

“If Roundup kills plants that aren’t genetically modified to resist it, then why use it on nonGMO crops?”

“Wouldn’t glyphosate kill a nonGMO crop?”

“Why would a farmer do this?”

Indeed, these common consumer questions indicate the ultimate irony of using Roundup for desiccation purposes on a food crop producing farm. Killing the crop and/or the greenery around it is actually the whole idea. For crops like wheat, it evens up the field, allows for an earlier harvest, protects machinery and/or increases profit.

The bottom line?

Pre-harvest treatment of crops with glyphosate helps farmers to harvest their crops more efficiently and at less cost (2)

Crazy as it may seem, Roundup is used everywhere in the North American conventional food supply and not just on GMO crops or to kill weeds!

Glyphosate is applied directly to dozens of nonGMO food crops, in many cases, right before they are harvested. This is the worst possible time to apply a herbicide because it causes the glyphosate to be absorbed into the food crop directly. In other words, the glyphosate can’t be washed off later as it has become part of the food. This toxin will then be ingested by those who consume it either directly as a “whole food” or via processed foods that contain it as an ingredient.

According to the Cornucopia Institute:

Ubiquitous in food production, glyphosate is used not just with row crops like corn, soybeans and wheat but also a range of fruits, nuts and veggies. Even spinach growers use glyphosate (3).

Study blames Roundup herbicide for gluten intolerance and celiac disease epidemic

Returntonow September 4, 2018  

“Celiac disease, and, more generally, gluten intolerance, is a growing problem worldwide, but especially in North America and Europe, where an estimated 5% of the population now suffers from it,” researchers wrote in a meta-analysis of nearly 300 studies.

“Here, we propose that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup^®, is the most important causal factor in this epidemic,” they add.

The study, published in the journal Interdisciplinary Toxicology in 2013, was completely ignored by the media except for Mother Earth News and The Healthy Home Economist.

Now that glyphosate is getting the attention it deserves, being named as the culprit in a $280 million cancer lawsuit and labeled as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization and the state of California, it may be time to look at the chemical’s role in a related disease:

The symptoms of so-called “gluten intolerance” and celiac disease in are shockingly similar to the symptoms in lab animals exposed to glyphosate, argue the study’s authors Anthony Samsel, an independent scientist who’s served as a consultant to the EPA on arsenic pollution and to the U.S. Coast Guard on chemical hazard response, and Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at MIT.

Monsanto Poisoning Indians with Arsenic, new scientific study

Seed Freedom January 8, 2018

New Delhi, January 8, 2018: A shocking discovery from the French scientific group CRIGEN led by world renowned toxicology and biosafety scientist Dr Gilles-Eric Seralini reveals that Monsanto’s Round up (Glyphosate based herbicide) and other types of Glyphosate based herbicides(GHB) contain universally banned heavy metals like arsenic, etc., in the formulant which are a thousand times more harmful than the active compound Glyphosate(G) itself. G is a herbicide and a “green killer” which is used to extensively all over the world including India. Worldwide, 9.4 million tons of the chemical has been sprayed onto field.

Levels of the herbicide glyphosate have soared in older Americans in 23 years

San Diego Union Tribune  October 24, 2017

Levels of the herbicide glyphosate have soared in older Americans in 23 years, according to a study led by University of California researchers.

The study wasn’t designed to detect any potential harm from the increased exposure, but it will help with future studies to determine if any such link exists, said Paul J. Mills, a UC San Diego professor of family medicine and public health.

The study used data from the long-running and influential Rancho Bernardo Study of Healthy Aging, established in 1972. It was published as a research letter Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study can be found at j.mp/roundupucsd.

Environmental activists have attacked the widespread use of glyphosate as causing cancer and other diseases. Some studies have suggested a potential link, but none have actually demonstrated a causal effect in humans. Other studies have found no correlation.

Opponents say animal research shows the potential for harm.

“There's a lot of animal work, but few if any on people,” Mills said. “And I was surprised to see that, given how much the chemical is in the environment, and that's what inspired us to just start researching it so we can fill in that gap.”

Unlike other studies on glyphosate, the data from the Rancho Bernardo study has been collected for decades, providing a time window to examine glyphosate exposure and any effects in individuals. Also importantly, glyphosate levels were directly measured; other studies relied on interviews to assess exposure.

The study examined urinary levels of glyphosate in 100 people from 1993 to 2016. Very few had detectable levels in 1993, but by 2016 70 percent had detectable levels, Mills said. Of those with detectable amounts, in 1993-1996, the average level was 0.203 nanograms per liter. By 2014-2016, the level had risen to 0.449 nanograms per liter.

Ongoing research at UCSD is conducted at the Herbicide Awareness & Research Project. Go to j.mp/ucsdharp for more information.

Glyphosate is widely available as the active ingredient in Roundup, sold by Monsanto, a St. Louis-based agricultural company. Roundup is considered safe by federal regulators within normal levels of use. It enables farmers to quickly kill weeds without using more toxic herbicides. Monsanto also sells crops seeds that are genetically modified to resist Roundup.

The Global Food and Health Crisis: Monsanto’s Science Is Bogus

Globalresearch     October 19, 2017

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is the new director general of the World Health Organization (WHO). With a $4 billion annual budget, WHO’s decisions affects us all and its decisions also affect the bottom line of some of the most powerful corporations on the planet.

Health is political. And health is big business. For instance, WHO makes dietary and nutrition recommendations that can affect the likes of Nestle, Unilever, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, General Mills and Kellogg’s. WHO devises a list of essential medicines that governments should stock for the health of their people, thereby affecting the sales of major pharmaceutical companies. It also helps other UN agencies procure billions of dollars of pharmaceutical products by vetting manufacturers to ensure they meet WHO standards and specifications.

WHO wants to place restrictions on the use of antibiotics in food and livestock production, and it also reviews scientific evidence to appraise the cancer-risk of agricultural chemicals, including Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup and Dow’s 2,4-D.

As you might imagine, WHO recommendations can have massive ramifications for big corporations, which can fight tooth and nail to attack and discredit any WHO decision that could damage their strategic market positions and financial bottom line. And this is exactly what we are witnessing right now as Monsanto battles to protect is multi-billion-dollar money spinner Roundup with yet another smear campaign, this time against US toxicologist Dr Christopher Portier. Given what happened to Seralini and his team’s study, it’s all highly predictable.

Rosemary Mason writes to the WHO

Due the pivotal role of WHO, Dr Rosemary Mason has contacted Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus through an open letter expressing major concerns about role of transnational agrochemical/agritech corporations and the impacts of their products on human health and the environment.

With the focus clearly on Monsanto, Mason brings to the attention of Ghebreyesus the many lawsuits filed against the company alleging that Roundup causes cancer. These cases have forced Monsanto to reveal emails that show it employed ghost-writing, used scientists as paid lobbyists and targeted those that produced evidence that challenged the company in order to keep Roundup, its flagship herbicide, on the market by fraudulent science.

More than 250 lawsuits are pending against Monsanto in US District Court in San Francisco, filed by people alleging that exposure to Roundup herbicide caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto covered up the risks  (Roundup is linked to cancers of the bone, colon, kidney, liver, melanoma, pancreas and thyroid). Additionally, at least 1,100 plaintiffs have made similar claims against Monsanto in state courts, and US attorneys recently came to the European Union with two plaintiffs to support the Members of the European Parliament in their Public Hearing on The Monsanto Papers and glyphosate.

WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has declared glyphosate as a 2A carcinogen. As glyphoaste comes up for re-licensing in Europe, in a public hearing in Brussels this month, Dr Christopher Portier and Dr Kate Guyton defended IARC’s position. Dr Portier drew attention to the significance of statistically significant tumor findings that have not been discussed in any of the existing reviews on glyphosate. 

Portier concluded that as the regulatory bodies, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency’s analyses were scientifically flawed. These organisations had also used industry studies that were not in the public domain for ‘reasons of commercial confidentiality’ to support their case that glyphosate was not carcinogenic.

Mason presents a strong case to argue that the US Environmental Protection Agency and European regulators are colluding with Monsanto and the European Glyphosate Task Force: despite the evidence (see Mason’s fully-referenced document ‘Monsanto’ Science is Fraudulent’), they all deny that glyphosate causes cancer.

Corporate hijack of food and farming

Dr Mason goes on to discuss the ‘Green Revolution’ – chemical warfare on plants, soil and biodiversity – which has been a financially lucrative venture for Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta and the other major agrochemical companies.

She identifies the now well-document links between the Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution and how J.D. Rockefeller’s ‘philanthropy’ was instrumental in helping to destroy traditional health care practices  by having pharmaceutical corporations and allopathic medicine take over healthcare with chemical ‘cures’.

By referring to my recent article, Mason brings the director general’s attention to how powerful, unscrupulous interests have hijacked and redefined both food and agriculture to the detriment of human health and the environment. Global corporations have destroyed thousands of years of agriculture; an ongoing destruction that today rests heavily on the renewal of the license for glyphosate!

She also documents at length scientific fraud, corruption by regulatory agencies and collusion at the highest levels of government that have all conspired to destroy human health. In doing so, she presents a good deal of scientific evidence that highlights the deleterious impacts of various agrochemicals on health.

Monsanto’s Cancer-Causing Herbicide Detected In Organic Foods

Michelle Toole

Think you can avoid glyphosate by buying organic? Think again. A new investigation by Tropical Traditions reveals that many products in the organic grain market in the U.S. contain glyphosate residue at levels almost the same as conventional grains.

You and your loved ones likely ingested Monsanto’s cancer-causing herbicide with breakfast this morning and the FDA couldn’t care less.

The FDA is demonstrating their incompetence yet again by completely ignoring a critical report that shows how ubiquitous Monsanto’s carcinogenic Roundup has truly become.

According to the report released by the Alliance for Natural Health USA, detectable levels of glyphosate, the chief ingredient in Roundup, were found in numerous breakfast food items. Glyphosate, which has been linked to cancer by the World Health Organization, was found in bread products, cereals and coffee creamers.

What is really concerning, and exemplifies the need for an immediate ban on the carcinogenic herbicide, is that some of the highest levels of the toxic chemical were found in organic foods, such as eggs and breads. The organic eggs tested were especially tainted with glyphosate, far exceeding regulatory standards.

Microbe Infotech Laboratories, founded by former Monsanto scientist Bruce Hemming, conducted the testing. For 25 years, Microbe has been well-respected and is the go-to lab for glyphosate testing by food companies and consumer groups.

The report confirms what many have feared for a long time. Glyphosate is making its way into our food in ways that we may not realize. For example, last year a separate study found 75% of rain and air samples tested positive for Monsanto’s cancer-causing poison. What kind of ramifications do you think this will have for those growing organic gardens? (via march against monsanto)

“The fact that it is showing up in foods like eggs and coffee creamer, which don’t directly contact the herbicide, shows that it’s being passed on by animals who ingest it in their feed,” said Gretchen DuBeau, executive director of ANH-USA. “This is contrary to everything that regulators and industry scientists have been telling the public.”

Why Should We be Concerned about Glyphosate?

Glyphosate is in 80% of our food supply in the U.S., and some scientists believe it may well be the most toxic chemical ever approved for commercial use. Glyphosate is now linked to kidney disease, antibiotic resistant bacteria, inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, depression, ADHD, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, multiple sclerosis, cancer, cachexia, infertility, and developmental malformations. It destroys the microbiome of humans and plants, which is the root cause of many modern diseases.(health impact news)       HHL

Lawsuits Against Monsanto’s Roundup

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By Catherine J. Frompovich November 11, 2016

When I published the article, “Glyphosate Contaminates the Global Ecosystem: The Damning New PAN Report,”  I mentioned a law firm as a resource because of the lawsuits it has filed on behalf of persons damaged by the use of Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup®. Roundup’s prime active ingredient is glyphosate, a chemical that the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer [IARC] designated a “probable human carcinogen.”

That law firm is Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman, Consumer Attorneys of Los Angeles, California.  The firm’s Director of Public Relations and Marketing emailed a thank you for mentioning that lawsuit. Robin McCall’s email prompted me to want to know more about their clients and the lawsuits, so I asked her some questions about the firm’s glyphosate case load.

Incidentally, there is a Spanish language link “Demanda Monsanto Roundup” for folks who may want to access the law firm’s information in that language.

What follows are the questions I asked that Ms. McCall so graciously answered, which I think ought to give readers some “food for thought,” especially if you have used Roundup® and have contracted non-Hodgkin lymphoma.                         Read More