debu (comment #4) mentioned Don Huber. Here is a recent (text-only) interview with him for those that want even more science or an Australian spin on the glyphosate issue.
Here’s a short snippet for the American readers:
Graeme: Is there any evidence that the North American population has higher levels of glyphosate in their tissues considering the scale of the Roundup Ready cropping in their region?
Don: Most definitely. The level of glyphosate in breast milk is hundreds of times higher in Americans and Canadians, compared to European women. The levels found in water are also vastly higher. It is also found at concentrations of up to 400 ppm in food.
As long as we, as a urbanized society, continue to expect 2% of the population to produce food for the rest of mankind, corporate interests will continue to provide the primary producers with the tools to accomplish those ends. For every weed we hope to eradicate, we will rely increasingly on chemical solutions rather than mechanical means. For every weed we manage to eradicate, we create a niche for a new form of life that may be more malevolent than its predecessor (its malevolence is relative to us, of course). Is the cure worst than the disease? How comfortable are you with a hoe in your hand? What level of contamination are you willing to tolerate? From our friends at DuPont:
Summary
The proliferation of glyphosate-resistant weeds is increasingly forcing growers to use additional or alternative management tools to achieve adequate weed control.
For a small number of weed species, resistance to multiple herbicides now leaves growers with few viable options for control.
No new herbicide modes of action have been commercialized in the last 20 years, and it is unlikely any will be coming in the near future.
New herbicide-resistant crop technologies coming to market this decade will expand grower options for dealing with resistant weeds, but all rely on existing herbicide active ingredients with known weed resistance cases.
Recent experience with glyphosate resistance indicates that all herbicides are susceptible to resistant weed evolution given enough time and repetition of use. Overreliance of any new weed management tool will eventually lead to its failure.
Adopting best management practices for managing herbicide resistance will help prolong the useful life of current herbicides.
While taking all this research into consideration, I postulate that the etiology of autism is gastrointestinal destruction of floral bacteria via chronic low dose Roundup exposure to humans in utero and after they are born. This leads to gastrointestinal inflammation and malabsorption of key nutrients. This is explained and proven by the shikimate pathway disruption in bacterial flora (example of research evidence here). The shikimate pathway is a chemical reaction within our floral bacteria in our gut. The bacterial bioflora is doing an amazing job providing three very important compounds to be absorbed into our bloodstream from our gut: tryptophan, phenylalanine and tyrosine. The lack of these essential compounds will lead to a lot of other problems (including dealing with excess toxins like aluminum, copper and mercury). This will add to the negative effects on the whole system, because as we have learned, glyphosate activates the glutamate receptor along with excess glutamate from our diet (your prenatal vitamins included) and vaccines. Excess glutamate is impairing structured coordination of synaptic plasticity. The brain cell is literally burning out.
Or perhaps it's the manganese chelating action of glyphosate that contributes to autism:
http://www.hoajonline.com/autism/2054-992X/3/1
I agree with other PP contributors than Mn chelation is probably NOT the dominant mechanism for glyphosate toxicity to unborn/new born humans. So perhaps it's the adjuvants in Roundup(r) that cause the toxicity:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1257636/
If we sit around and wait until these issues are resolved with certainty, we will continue to spew and ingest toxins until we no longer have a healthy functioning populace. Ok, not a bad thing if you believe that humans are the problem. If we valued life, we would not inflict chemical damage on humans, animals, insects, or plants.
I don't use Roundup or other toxic chemicals on my 4-acre farm. I won't use it at home. I cannot tolerate MSG because I "overdosed" on diet Coke (containing monosodium glutamate [MSG]) during my college years and early career and now get severe migraines from the sh**. I don't think I'm overly sensitive to environmental chemicals, I finally learned to listen to what my body was telling me. Many of us walk through life in pain, or masking our pain, without understanding its sources. And imagine the pain and suffering we are inflicting on insects, small mammals, and birds with our toxic chemical soup.
There are alternative ways to kill weeds at home, including using vinegar on a sunny day:
https://extension.umd.edu/sites/default/files/_docs/programs/ipmnet/Vinegar-AnAlternativeToGlyphosate-UMD-Smith-Fiola-and-Gill.pdf
Any chance the transcript will be ready soon for those of us who do not hear well?
Not that I am in huge hurry to read how bad it has become in the quest to slowly poison us all… talk about hopeless…
Conspiracy theory is that Monsanto merged with Bayer to avoid the multitude of lawsuits coming… Don’t know if it’s possible but one would think being HQ’d in a different county helps…
I am proud to be a supporter of this site! So excited to think that we may be able to get the word out about industrial agriculture.
The solution, of course, is to get people back on the land in massive numbers.
Get rid of the industrial waste based system of production and go back to a household/peasant economy.
Easier said than done but a lot of people have access to some land and there are places to grow food in cities that might surprise you.
If you live in Massachusetts be aware that the NOFA winter conference is on January 14th in Worcester. They have a lot of interesting workshops. nofamass.org
The place to look is what products are banned in Europe. You would be surprised. We are being dosed with stuff you would never agree to. Ask some fish in the rivers what they think.
Thanks for getting us this guest, Chris! This topic is something to be truly outraged about.
And the topic appears to have attracted new eyes to the PP site - as evidenced by a few comments from 1st-timers.
Submitted by Food Democracy Now on January 10, 2017 - 1:03pm
The weedkiller Roundup causes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease at very low doses permitted by regulators worldwide, a new peer-reviewed study shows. The study is the first ever to show a causative link between consumption of Roundup at a real-world environmentally relevant dose and a serious disease.
The new peer-reviewed study, led by Dr Michael Antoniou at King's College London, used cutting-edge profiling methods to describe the molecular composition of the livers of female rats fed an extremely low dose of Roundup weedkiller, which is based on the chemical glyphosate, over a 2-year period.
The dose of glyphosate from the Roundup administered was thousands of times below what is permitted by regulators worldwide.
The study revealed that these animals suffered from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
Dr Antoniou said: “The findings of our study are very worrying as they demonstrate for the first time a causative link between an environmentally relevant level of Roundup consumption over the long-term and a serious disease – namely non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
“Our results also suggest that regulators should reconsider the safety evaluation of glyphosate-based herbicides.”
And:
Potentially serious implications for human health
The new results demonstrate that long-term consumption of an ultra-low dose of Roundup at a glyphosate daily intake level of only 4 nanograms per kilogram of bodyweight per day, which is 75,000 times below EU and 437,500 below US permitted levels, results in NAFLD.
Regulators worldwide accept toxicity studies in rats as indicators of human health risks. So the results of this latest study have serious implications for human health.
NAFLD currently affects 25% of the US population and similar numbers of Europeans. Risk factors include being overweight or obese, having diabetes, or having high cholesterol or high triglycerides (a constituent of body fat) in the blood. However, some people develop NAFLD even if they do not have any of these known risk factors. The new study raises the question of whether exposure to Roundup is a hitherto unrecognized risk factor.
sigh! :( Does someone know a safe alternative to triscuits?
A bit off-topic post, but worth mentioning.
We raised chickens this summer for the first time (as a trial to see if we like this activity, what are the difficulties, etc…). Overall, good experience and we will continue.
Our chickens were (almost) naturally fed: local grain, fruits, vegetables, insects, worms. These were the same ingredients we eat. These chickens were not fed on industrial chicken food with tons of antibiotics and additive, but they did ingest the same pesticides we ingest too.
We noticed two things, and one of them is a big surprise. First, as expected the appearance of meat and taste are different from store-bought chicken. The brown meat is browner, and the taste is lighter, less pronounced. We eat these chickens without adding nothing. Just broiled. No salt. No French mustard. Nothing! A real pleasure!
Now the surprise: We all have the garbage bin underneath the sink which is emptied every few days. My wife has a much better nose than me (To me, skunks’ “juice” smells like freshly ground coffee). Each time we eat store bough chicken, she demand that the bag be put outside because if we don’t, the next day it smells dead rats. With our home raised chickens, we don’t have this issue.
So far, we noticed this change for the first two chickens we ate. We need to continue observe for the next chickens.
We know that industrial chickens are fed with whatever crap. I never paid attention to the quick decay process of chicken bones. It was kind like normal that chickens decay much faster than say beef. I was very surprised to see that the bones of our home raised chickens do not decay as readily as industrial ones.
This is to me another proof that we are fed with “expired” food. I can imagine that chickens at the end of the processing chain in the slaughter factory are dipped into bleach solution, to be disinfected and deodorized. But this barely addresses the “rot cause” (pun intended) of food un-freshness.
Did anyone made the same observation?
My advice: for anyone who can raise his own meat, do it!
Glyphosate: Human is totally corrupted by money. Poisoning ourselves and our supporting planet just for money. Insane!
This is the source of all of our problems (slight exaggeration, maybe). Not Glyphosate in particular, but the whole world view that spawns these kind of “solutions” to the human project of growing food. It is in our most intimate relationship with nature, creating the food that sustains us, that the profound dysfunction of modern “relationships” is on display. Mechanistic materialism, cooked in a stew that defines all relationships in terms of competition, dominance and aggression.
The violence it creates is everywhere, financial systems, personal relations, medical system, relations between nations, it is the water in which we swim. If you want to transform your life and the world, buy organic rather than gold, grown food rather than “financial security”. This is the foundation of action if you are concerned about the three E’s. Tracking these issues in my mind is profoundly more important than where the “Markets” are or what the price of gold is.
Its very empowering to see all the different actions we can all take to impact where things are going. That such small things can end up being revolutionary acts when taken in aggregate is really cool.
I suspect the choices you make of where to spend your money is vastly more influential than any sort of voting exercise at the polls every few years.
If this weren’t true, we wouldn’t be subjected to the incredible barrage of mind-control-advertising from cradle to grave that tries to influence our daily “vote.”
I also agree that where you spend your money is much more impactful than where you place your savings.
For instance, if you make $80,000 per year, and save $10,000, that $70k you are spending on “regular stuff” each year vastly outweighs the $10k you have available to buy little gold bars, or whatever.
It doesn’t mean savings are unimportant - just that how you choose to spend your daily outflow has at least 5x more impact, in aggregate.
If you want to transform your life and the world, buy organic rather than gold, grown food rather than "financial security". This is the foundation of action if you are concerned about the three E's. Tracking these issues in my mind is profoundly more important than where the "Markets" are or what the price of gold is.
It's not clear to me why the desire to intelligently store some of one's own labor (or the fruits thereof) should be demonized in this way? Why is it an either/or? Otherwise I very much appreciate and agree with your narrative.
Uncletommy,
Thanks for posting that link. The problem is more pervasive than I thought. I understand the economic based decisions that farmers make. As long as the market doesn’t care if they use glyphosate for their pre-harvest desiccation … why should they? Until the market places monetary disincentives on these practices, we can fully expect these practices to accelerate. Don’t just wring your hands. Complain! How else are producers going to be able to learn how to produce a satisfactory product?
I found this quote to be the most interesting:
I've noticed an increase in gluten intolerance as well. It isn't just wheat that people have developed allergies to. I can't believe how many friends/acquaintances have developed allergies to nuts and other foods. It makes cooking for a large group quite challenging. ;-)
The last time I got a flu vaccine (20+ years ago,) I got the flu. I've gotten the flu perhaps a dozen times since then. I stopped getting those vaccines because I found out that viruses have to be grown in living tissue and eggs are a cheap source of living tissue. If a protein from the egg passes the screen and gets injected into your blood stream, you could develop an allergy to eggs. I'm not against all vaccinations, but I don't consider the flu vaccine worth getting.
Speaking of eggs, I've noticed that my chickens/ducks lay darker yolked eggs when I feed them foods with corn included. It looks prettier, but I prefer the milder flavor of paler yolked eggs. The best eggs are in early Spring when the girls are eating worms, bugs, and growing greenery instead of bagged food. Are you selling your eggs? Is that why you want yellower yolks? Try a side-by-side experiment with one of your pale eggs and a darker yolked egg to see the differences. You may find that it really is sleight of hand.
Grover
I think TB was saying we should focus more on revering the stuff of life in all of its forms more than gold. Or markets.
I mean, I love little gold bars - a weakness to be sure - but I also get what he’s saying too.
I mean, how often do I buy a little gold bar, vs make choices at the market? I eat food and drink water every day. These things should probably be near the top of my list to make good choices about.
I’m supposed to be the markets guy, but I don’t find “the markets” demonized by TB here. Its just a different way of looking at things. Perhaps if we had more passion about the stuff of life and less about markets and gold, we’d actually end up having more influence on people’s lives through the daily votes we make.
Its just a thought anyway. Not like I’m going to stop watching markets. But I appreciate the viewpoint. And the sort order it implies. It just makes me think, I guess.
I took you off ignore long enough to reply Dave.
Why not say, “buy organic food instead of an Audi A4 lease”? No… it’s Gold. WTF? Is everyone who is reading this website so uniformly financially impaired (even now, while the music is still playing) that they can’t both buy organic food and save a bit on the side? Read the words Dave… read the words;
Mechanistic materialism, cooked in a stew that defines all relationships in terms of competition, dominance and aggression. The violence it creates is everywhere, financial systems, personal relations, medical system, relations between nations, it is the water in which we swim. If you want to transform your life and the world, buy organic rather than gold
My guess is that Treebeard is probably choosing Gold based on the environmental damage (violence to the earth) that mining causes.. and there is truth to this. But... it is one of the few means that us regular people still have to protect ourselves against the greater violence that the fiat money system imposes (and will impose) on all of us. Good luck to all.
I picked on gold because of the perceived sense of security that brings (and of course you can do both). The bigger point is of course that the economy is a subset of the planetary ecology not the reverse. The point is obvious enough, although 90% of humanity seems to behave as if the reverse were true. If you are going to live a life that destroys the very things that sustain you, there is little point in buying gold. True security comes from developing right relationships with living world around you (that includes people of course too). I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but it is a matter of focus and priority. I’m not sure that a gold backed money supply, what ever good that may do (and it may do a lot), would address the deeper relationship issues that most modern cultures have with the planet (you can of course work on achieving both). If we don’t address the relationship issues, we are done for. I would prioritize them differently, even on brilliant site like this, think about how much ink financial issues get verses ecological issues (thought ultimately, they all relate to the same fundamental issue).
It seems you have two dysfunction extremes, environmentalists - who want to put the world it in a glass box to protect it, and the economically minded - who simply want to exploit it. Neither seem to understand the true nature of relationships. How about a clock that counts species die off next to all those market tickers?
Thanks for the responses as always, you guys/gals are all brilliant, commentary is as enjoyable and as enlightening as the posted articles and pod casts.
