Monday, August 20, 2018

Glyphosate in Cereals: You Can Trace It To The GMO Crops Spawned By Monsanto






















John Phillips: Barbadian Bio-geneticist and nutrition specialist, links the glyphosate in cereals to GMO -based foods.


Barely four years ago,  a much publicized letter was put out by dozens of worried scientists, physicians. The letter began by stating:

"We the undersigned scientists, medical professionals, and researchers are writing to urge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency not to register a double herbicide mix of 2,4- D and glyphosate - the 'Enlist DUO weed killer"

In the letter all the probable health risks were detailed, as noted in the first paragraph. In terms of the horrors of glyphosate and how it wreaks havoc on foods, I already discussed this in a previous post, including how consumption of glyphosate not only led to cancers by Alzheimer's disease (thanks to research by long time bio-geneticist John Phillips)  See e.g.   http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/alzheimers-epidemic-fro-eating-gmo.html

In that post I quoted  Mr. Phillips:

"Among other toxins and other health-disrupting contaminants, GMO foods contain glyphosate, a horrifically destructive chemical that saps nutrients from foods and quite literally makes them toxic to consume."

To the(then) FDA's credit it withdrew approval of 'Enlist DUO' in November, 2015. However the use of Roundup and glyphosate has continued unrelentingly and we know::

 - Seventy to Eighty percent of the foods we eat today contain GMOs.

- There are 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides used per year, primarily on GMO crops - because those crops are designed to survive the poisons.

 According to the January 2016 issue of the  Bulletin from 'Food & Water Watch' :

"GMO ingredients are hidden in 70 percent of processed food in this country. This is only a 'best guess'  because no one knows for sure as they are not labeled. Also, very little is known of the long term effects of what GMOs can do to your health because they've not been properly tested. But what facts we do have are alarming."

The Bulletin then references:

"Real lab rats fed GMOs have suffered kidney and liver damage, cancerous tumors and even premature death."

Wonder why so many people are now needing kidney and liver transplants? These hidden GMOs  may be one huge contributing factor.


This is now germane as the new food scare concerning excessive glyphosate found in a number of cereals has materialized.   But the corporate media failed to note the cereals were only a subset of the popular foods affected, all of them traced to GMOs or to excessive application of glyphosate on conventional crops. .   Independent testing on an array of popular American food products by the San Francisco-based Anresco lab found many samples contained residue levels of the weed killer glyphosate far in excess of safe thresholds.

 This led the nonprofit organization behind the testing to call for corporate and regulatory action to address consumer safety concerns. (Though the FDA routinely tests foods for other pesticide residues, it never tested for glyphosate until this year. The testing for glyphosate residues was recently suspended, however, under the orders of resident Trumpies committed to deregulation, i.e. removal of citizen protections.

To conduct its test Anresco Lab  used liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), a method widely considered by the scientific community and regulators as the most reliable for analyzing glyphosate residues.  The findings were shocking and as Mr. Phillips told me in an email, ought to "scare the socks off any American that consumes them".  Mainly because of possible liver and kidney issues, including cancers.

The Anresco Lab tests were done on 29 foods commonly found on grocery store shelves. Excess glyphosate residues were found in General Mills’ Cheerios at 1,125.3 parts per billion (ppb), in Kashi soft-baked oatmeal dark chocolate cookies at 275.57 ppb, and in Ritz Crackers at 270.24 ppb, according to the report. Different levels were found in Kellogg’s Special K cereal, Triscuit Crackers (a Janice favorite) and several other products.

The nonprofit behind the report noted that concerns about glyphosate comes as research shows that Roundup can cause liver and kidney damage in rats at only 0.05 ppb, and additional studies have found that levels as low as 10 ppb can have toxic effects on the livers of fish. The groups criticized U.S. regulators for setting an acceptable daily intake (ADI) at for glyphosate at much higher levels than other countries consider safe. The United States has set the ADI for glyphosate at 1.75 milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight per day (mg/kg/bw/day) while the European Union has set it at 0.3 mg per kg/ bw/day.

Question: Why is the European threshold nearly SIX times lower than that set by the U.S.? Well, because European states care more about the health, welfare of their citizens!  Thus they are more likely to adhere to the  precautionary principle  so that it is not anti-GMO activists who must prove the toxicity of the suspect culprit food, but rather the GMO producers (like Monsanto) to prove their products are safe.

Meanwhile, Monsanto has said repeatedly that there are no legitimate safety concerns regarding glyphosate when it is used as intended, and that toxicological studies in animals have demonstrated that glyphosate does not cause cancer, birth defects, DNA damage, nervous system effects etc.  But let us make it clear here that a multinational corporation can say anything for PR sake.  That does not meet the standard of proof.

Glyphosate is under particular scrutiny now because last year the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified it as a probable human carcinogen. Glyphosate is the world’s most widely used herbicide and is the key ingredient in Monsanto Co.’s branded Roundup.  The trick mastered by the GMO crop producers has been to make them "Roundup ready" so that the pesticide and now its glyphosate component are integrated into the very crops and hence the cereals from which they are obtained.  Further, these GMO crops can also be additionally treated, sprayed with the offending chemical  making them even more toxic to humans.

Beyond the usual GMO offenders (corn, soybeans, sugar beets, canola) we also know glyphosate is sprayed on many conventional crops such as wheat, oats and barley. In all glyphosate is used in some form on nearly 70 food crops, and all of them with levels far in excess of what the EU allows for its own citizens.  

 A further warning shot for Monsanto  transpired  last week with an award of $289 m to a terminally ill school groundskeeper (Dwayne Johnson) . With this award the miscreants at Monsanto ought ot be very worried given another 475 cases are pending against them. See e, g.

https://usrtk.org/pesticides/mdl-monsanto-glyphosate-cancer-case-key-documents-analysis/

Again, we know Monsanto's protestations and those of their hired gun whore "scientists" don't add up to diddly or squat.  We know this because the PR playbook to make poisons, toxic crap look good was exposed over 23 years ago, e.g.


Toxic Sludge Is Good For You | PR Watch

Other points Mr. Phillips wished to have pointed out for emphasis: 
 

·         Independent research links glyphosate to cancer (sources: 12345) and it has been deemed a probable human carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s team of international cancer experts. The childhood cancer rate is steadily rising and experts say that they don’t know why. Why are they not taking a closer look at these facts?


*  Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum antibiotic killing the good bacteria in your gut. Poor gut health is linked to inflammation and a whole host of diseases. As GMOs laced with glyphosate are commonly fed to farm animals, this could very well be contributing to antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

It binds with vital nutrients in the soil (like iron, calcium, manganese, zinc) and prevents plants for taking them up. Glyphosate is thereby making food less nutritious.
 
As Mr. Phillips put it: Tell your readers they consume these foods at their own risk. If they don't wish to get kidney or liver cancer - such as struck down your youngest brother -  they had best avoid them. NO matter what the FDA, the EPA or your government says.


See also:

15 Health Problems Linked to Monsanto's Roundup - EcoWatch
 
 


No comments: