Tag Archives: Roundup

Both Roundup-Ready corn and Roundup are toxic to humans: scientific evidence

Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini put out a press release yesterday,

NEW STUDY: Genetically Modified Corn Toxic to Humans,

“We were very much surprised by our findings. Until now, it


has been thought almost impossible for Bt proteins to be toxic to
human cells. Now further investigations have to be conducted to find
out how these toxins impact the cells and if combinatorial effects
with other compounds in the food and feed chain have to be taken
into account,” says Gilles-Eric Séralini from the University
of Caen, who supervised the experiments. “In conclusion, these
experiments show that the risks of Bt toxins and of Roundup have
been underestimated.”

The toxicity of the corn itself may have been a surprise,
but not that of Roundup:

These findings are in accordance with several other investigations
highlighting unexpected health risks associated with glyphosate
preparations.

Previous studies,

including ones by Dr. Séralini,
already showed exposure to glysophate (the active ingredient in Roundup)
to be “a risk factor for developing Non-Hodgkin lymphoma”,
and to be toxic to human umbilical, placental, and placental cells with a
that
“is far below agricultural recommendations and corresponds to low levels
of residues in food or feed.”
In Argentina,

Prof. Andrés Carrasco has demonstrated birth defects in amphibians
and there is increasing evidence of human birth defects.

Regarding Monsanto’s GM corn itself, we already knew it

causes liver and kidney damage in rats (later

reverified using Monsanto’s own data),
and

chickens fed feed including Monsanto corn show abnormal gene expression.

Now we have even more hard evidence of the toxicity of Monsanto’s GM corn
and of Monsanto’s Roundup.

The journal article
is available through Wiley online.

-jsq

Monsanto convicted of poisoning

Marion Douet wrote for Reuters today,

Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning in France.
The farmer who wonthe case remarked,



“I am alive today, but part of the farming population is going to be
sacrificed and is going to die because of this,” Francois, 47, told
Reuters.

He and other farmers suffering from illness set up an association
last year to make a case that their health problems should be linked
to their use of crop protection products.

France and the EU have already take other actions:

The Francois case goes back to a period of intensive use of
crop-protection chemicals in the European Union. The EU and its
member countries have since banned a large number of substances
considered dangerous.

Monsanto’s Lasso was banned in France in 2007 following an EU
directive after the product had already been withdrawn in some other
countries.

France, the EU’s largest agricultural producer, is now targetting a
50 percent reduction in pesticide use between 2008 and 2018, with
initial results showing a 4 percent cut in farm and non-farm use in
2008-2010.

Maybe we should try that in the U.S.
Ban RoundUp, that is.
Like

Paul François said back in December aboout Lasso,



Monsanto knew they had a problem with this product.

As Yves Calvi wrote

for RTL.fr 12 December 2011,

Because of the dangerousness of these products, in the country,
nobody says anything, it’s omerta!
Why such a vow of silence?
The pressure of lobbyists is strong according to Paul François.
He says the dangers of pesticides may be as important as those of
asbestos.

I would say worse, because asbestos doesn’t usually drift
across the road onto you, and isn’t deliberately applied
to most crops, unlike RoundUp.

It’s time to break the silence, so we won’t have so many
farmers and children and other people being made sick by pesticides.

-jsq

Glyphosate found in all samples of urine, many times drinking water limit

Mike Barrett wrote for NaturalSociety 26 January 2012,

Monsanto’s Infertility-Linked Roundup Found in All Urine Samples
Tested,



A recent study conducted by a German university found very high
concentrations of Glyphosate, a carcinogenic chemical found in
herbicides like Monsanto’s Roundup, in all urine samples tested. The
amount of glyphosate found in the urine was staggering, with each
sample containing concentrations at 5 to 20-fold the limit
established for drinking water.

So, we now know what

pesticides are doing to bees.
What are they doing to humans?
Well, we know that, too:
lower IQ in children, organ disruption, miscarriages, birth defects, and
infertility.

-jsq

Weeds winning against Glysophate

Chuck Darwin was right!
Glysophate is losing to mutant weeds.

Gus Lubin wrote in Business Insider 9 June 2011,

Dramatic Proliferation Of Herbicide-Resistant Weeds Threatens U.S. Crops



Researchers at Iowa State University warn that herbicide-resistant weeds
are proliferating and may jeopardize U.S. food supply.

In an article published in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry,
weed scientist Michael Owen said the proliferation of superweed “has
been fairly dramatic in the last two to three years.”

Weeds are developing resistance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in
Roundup, which has been used extensively since 1996.

U.S. soybean, cotton and corn production could suffer from further
proliferation, according to

Science News:

“Today, 98 percent of U.S. soybeans, 88 percent or so of U.S. cotton
and more than 70 percent of U.S. corn come from cultivars resistant
to glyphosate,” Owen reports. Reliance on these crops — and an
accompanying weed-control strategy that employs glyphosate to the
exclusion of other herbicides — “created the ‘perfect storm’ for
weeds to evolve resistance,” Owen and Jerry Green of Pioneer Hi-Bred
International in Newark, Del., argue in their new analysis.

Oh, you mean like this

pigweed-infested cotton from last year?
The Palmer amaranth is already just as bad this year.

It’s not like this is news.
We’ve been going on about it

Continue reading →

11 year old is onto Monsanto and how to fix the food system

The “dark side of the industrialized food system.”
as related (accurately) by

Birke Baehr
at

TEDxNextGeneration Asheville.



Conventional farmers use chemical fertilizers made from fossil fuels.
Then they mess with the dirt to make the plants grow.
They do this because they’ve stripped the soil from all nutrients
from growing the same crop over and over again.
Next more harmful chemicals are sprayed on fruits and vegetables.
Like pesticides and herbicides to kill weeds and bugs.
When it rains, these chemicals seep into the ground,
or rise into our waterways, poisoning our water, too.

His personal goal:

A while back, I wanted to be an NFL footall player.

I decided I’d rather be an organic farmer instead.

[applause]

That way I can have a greater impact on the world.

He’s got a turn of phrase:

We can either pay the farmer, or we can pay the hospital.

-jsq

Press mum on new glysophate evidence

I quoted Jill Richardson
back in March about

about Professor Col. Don Huber’s letter to USDA Secretary Vilsack
about new evidence found of diseases caused by Roundup.
She writes 27 April 2011,

Why Is Damning New Evidence About Monsanto’s Most Widely Used Herbicide Being Silenced?
It turns out that Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide might not be nearly as safe as people have thought, but the media is staying mum on the revelation.



Huber was unavailable to respond to media inquiries in the weeks following
the leak, and thus unable to defend himself when several colleagues
from Purdue publicly claiming to refute his accusations about Monsanto’s
widely used herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) and Roundup Ready crops. When
his letter was finally acknowledged by the mainstream media, it was
with titles like “Scientists Question Claims in Biotech Letter,” noting
that the letter’s popularity on the internet “has raised concern among
scientists that the public will believe his unsupported claim is true.”

Now, Huber has finally spoken out, both in a second letter, sent to “a
wide number of individuals worldwide” to explain and back up his claims
from his first letter, and in interviews. While his first letter described
research that was not yet complete or published, his second letter cited
much more evidence about glyphosate and genetically engineered crops based
on studies that have already been published in peer-reviewed journals.

And that’s plus all sorts of evidence about other ill effects of glysophate,
including lower IQ in children,
and Roundup-Ready crops themselves causing

organ disruptions.
All that plus the very real risk of

the genetically modified crops having unpredicted effects.
There’s much more.



Could this silence of the press be because

only five companies own more than half of all the media in the U.S.?
Let’s not forget the legal system is also complicit,
given the
Fox-can-lie case.

So what can you do?
vote at the checkout counter.
Buy local and organic.
And of course bug your elected officials about doing something about it.

-jsq

Two Mexican states ban GM corn

Many if not most pesticides are sprayed on crops genetically modified
to resist them. Ban GM crops and reduce spraying. Two states in Mexico
prove it can be done. Mexico, the country where corn was originally
domesticated could lead the way back to healthy agriculture.

Aleira Lara reported in
Health Impact News Daily reported 5 March 2011 that

Two Mexican states ban GM corn:



The Mexican States of Tlaxcala and Michoacán each passed legislation
banning the planting of genetically modified corn to protect natural
plants from further contamination of transgenes. Together, both states
produce about a third of all of Mexico’s corn. Below this story is a
detailed timeline of genetic contamination and legislation in Mexico.

The timeline is a long saga including intimidation of scientists
attempting to research the problem.
The Mexican federal government caved in to big agro,
but two Mexican states are fighting back anyway.

-jsq

Pesticides lower IQ in children



ScienceDaily wrote 22 April 2011,

Prenatal Pesticide Exposure Tied to Lower IQ in Children, Study Finds

In a new study suggesting pesticides may be associated with the health
and development of children, researchers at the University of California,
Berkeley’s School of Public Health have found that prenatal exposure to
organophosphate pesticides — widely used on food crops — is related
to lower intelligence scores at age 7.

Continue reading →

GM crops cause organ disruptions —multiple studies

It’s not just the pesticides, it’s the crops themselves.



Gilles-Eric Séralini and colleagues surveyed the state
of research and found

GMOs Linked to Organ Disruption in 19 Studies,
as Jeffrey Smith reports for the Institute for Responsible Technology.

…consuming genetically modified (GM) corn or soybeans leads to significant
organ disruptions in rats and mice, particularly in livers and kidneys.
…9% of the measured parameters, including
blood and urine biochemistry, organ weights, and microscopic analyses
(histopathology), were significantly disrupted in the GM-fed animals. The
kidneys of males fared the worst, with 43.5% of all the changes. The liver
of females followed, with 30.8%. The report, published in Environmental
Sciences Europe on March 1, 2011, confirms that “several convergent
data appear to indicate liver and kidney problems as end points of GMO
diet effects.” The authors point out that livers and kidneys “are
the major reactive organs” in cases of chronic food toxicity.

And these were the corn and soybeans that people eat.

Here’s
the study.

Why didn’t we know about this long ago?

Continue reading →

The case against agrochemicals


Some people didn’t like the source of a recent post about
the toxic effects of agrochemicals and GM plants on the environment,
plants, animals, and people.
There are plenty of other sources, including:

How big agro causes the problem

Evidence of the ill effects

There are ways forward

What you can do