April 2014
Few studies, if any, have looked at the possibility of preventing or detoxifying harmful environmental pollutants before they can cause harm.
Several plants are well-known for their preventive or curative action, but their efficacy against one of our most recently identified, ubiquitous, environmental and bodily pollutants [1] has only recently been considered.
A French team of scientists tested what happened when cells in culture were exposed to Roundup formula* at the same time as a variety of plant extracts.
Evidence that Glyphosate causes cancer
April 2014
In March 2013, GM-free Scotland described Gilles-Eric Séralini's controversial GM feeding study on rats as “the first ever life-long study” [1]. This was the first such test of Roundup herbicide and of the Roundup-tolerant maize which accumulates the herbicide. It was not, however, the first life-long feeding-study on glyphosate, the active herbicidal ingredient in Roundup.
A 1995 review of glyphosate toxicology carried out by the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides refers to three life-long studies which were received by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its safety assessment. These are unpublished and so little information on the test conditions is available (for example, number of animals used or dosage of glyphosate administered).
However we can ascertain that results from the first one were received by the EPA during 1982 and 1983. It tested Sprague-Dawley rats (the same strain as used by Roundup's manufacturer, Monsanto, and by Séralini), and reported testicular tumours in males and increased thyroid cancers in females.
In March 2013, GM-free Scotland described Gilles-Eric Séralini's controversial GM feeding study on rats as “the first ever life-long study” [1]. This was the first such test of Roundup herbicide and of the Roundup-tolerant maize which accumulates the herbicide. It was not, however, the first life-long feeding-study on glyphosate, the active herbicidal ingredient in Roundup.
A 1995 review of glyphosate toxicology carried out by the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides refers to three life-long studies which were received by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its safety assessment. These are unpublished and so little information on the test conditions is available (for example, number of animals used or dosage of glyphosate administered).
However we can ascertain that results from the first one were received by the EPA during 1982 and 1983. It tested Sprague-Dawley rats (the same strain as used by Roundup's manufacturer, Monsanto, and by Séralini), and reported testicular tumours in males and increased thyroid cancers in females.
A world awash with Glyphosate
April 2014
The world's most popular herbicide, glyphosate, seems to have become insidiously ubiquitous in our environment [1].
In urban areas, the herbicide is used to control weeds on garden paths, playgrounds and roadways.
In agriculture, glyphosate is used for stubble management, pre-sowing ground clearance, and pre-harvest desiccation. In the Americas and elsewhere, huge and increasing quantities of it are sprayed on GM glyphosate-tolerant crops where it accumulates inside the plants.
There is glyphosate in the air, in rain, in waterways, ground-water and drinking water, in the soil, in animal feed and in our food.
Scientists in Germany have now asked and investigated an obvious question which should have been clarified long ago: is all that glyphosate in the environment ending up in wildlife, in livestock and inside us? If so, there is a chronic, life-long exposure to a substance which has been pronounced 'safe' without the appropriate long-term or clinical trials.
 |
| Glyphosate is marketed as Roundup herbicide. Photo Creative Commons |
In urban areas, the herbicide is used to control weeds on garden paths, playgrounds and roadways.
In agriculture, glyphosate is used for stubble management, pre-sowing ground clearance, and pre-harvest desiccation. In the Americas and elsewhere, huge and increasing quantities of it are sprayed on GM glyphosate-tolerant crops where it accumulates inside the plants.
There is glyphosate in the air, in rain, in waterways, ground-water and drinking water, in the soil, in animal feed and in our food.
“Glyphosate residues cannot be removed by washing and they are not broken down by cooking. Glyphosate residues can remain stable in foods for a year or more, even if the foods are frozen, dried or processed.” (Krüger)Regulators seem to be dealing with our exponential exposure to this herbicide by legalising ever-increasing levels of contamination.
Scientists in Germany have now asked and investigated an obvious question which should have been clarified long ago: is all that glyphosate in the environment ending up in wildlife, in livestock and inside us? If so, there is a chronic, life-long exposure to a substance which has been pronounced 'safe' without the appropriate long-term or clinical trials.
The butterfly wake-up call that keeps on calling
April 2014
America's first ominous wake-up call to the presence of GM in its food chain came in 1999 in the form of a butterfly.
 |
| Monarch butterfly. CC photo by Robert Huffstuttuer on Flickr |
The bad news was that 'Bt' insecticide-laden pollen from GM maize dusted onto milkweed killed Monarch caterpillars.
Monarchs are gloriously-hued butterflies which migrate huge distances all over America where they have become iconic. To achieve this, they must pause to breed so the next generation can continue the epic journey. The stationary caterpillar stage depends solely on milkweed for sustenance, and their milkweed grows in the same areas as GM crops, such as Bt maize.
At the time of this first warning shot, the biotech industry's damage-limitation machinery quickly persuaded regulators that the experimental finding was too divorced from any real-life situation to worry about.
Over a decade later, the real-life situation in Mexico where Monarchs over-winter, was that the numbers of the butterflies making it back down South were in decline [1].
Glyphosate and kidney disease
April 2014
Glyphosate has, for four decades, been hyped as the safest herbicide ever. Its use has increased exponentially world-wide since the 1990s due to the advent of crops genetically transformed to accumulate the chemical while the weeds around them die.
 |
| Glyphosate is marketed as Roundup. Photo Creative Commons |
This reputation for safety is based on facts. In the environment, measurements have shown that glyphosate quickly disappears: it can be degraded by soil microbes and sunlight, washed away, or immobilised in the soil. In animals, it has low toxicity because animals don't have the metabolic pathway that glyphosate interferes with in plants, and the herbicide rapidly passes unchanged through the body to be excreted harmlessly in urine. All true, and all based on science.
However, there's another side to these facts.
Backing up the hype
April 2014
When the South African Advertising
Standards Agency (ASA) challenged Monsanto to substantiate its broadcast claims
of the benefits of GM crops, the best the Company could do was to provide links
to its own website (see below).
DNA fibs
April 2014
The original, and biggest, fib about GM
plants is perpetrated to this day. It is
the wildly inaccurate image of genetic engineers simply 'snipping' a natural
gene out of one organism and popping it into another, to create a crop with a
precise genetic 'improvement'.
.jpg) |
| Photo from Creative Commons |
Such genetic improvements popped into the
GM plants which have been commercialised to date have been 'snipped' almost
exclusively from bacterial genomes.
In the ideal biotech world, DNA is just DNA
and is common to all classes of organism.
All classes of organism use the self-same gene-to-protein synthetic
mechanism. Therefore, a bacterial gene
snipped out and popped into a plant will generate a bacterial protein just as
it did in its native bug. The details go
something like this ...
Roundup harms human cells
April 2014
Several experiments have now indicated
direct harm to humans from Roundup herbicide, widely sprayed on GM crops.
 |
| Photo from Creative Commons |
For example, risks to blood-, testicular-,
umbilical-, embryonic- and placental-cells have been demonstrated. Effects of Roundup on cells of the liver and
kidney (our major organs of detoxification), and endocrine disruption have been
indicated. And the list continues to
grow.