Glyphogoats

September 2021

As glyphosate's reputation disappears down the drain [1,2], and European countries progressively tighten regulations on the use of this herbicide, various new and old alternative approaches have been proposed to deal with weeds. These have included hot foam, blow-torching, hot water, old-fashioned hoeing and hand-weeding, or even simply tolerating weeds if their presence isn't causing a problem except to the tidy-minded.

Another way to get rid of weeds is to eat them, or rather get something that likes the taste of weeds to eat them for you. 

The Glyphosate Cancer Lag Phase is over

September 2021

Cancer is, without doubt, one of the most devastating of modern diseases. Treatment is limited and unpleasant, and prevention is difficult because of the biology of cancers.

Cells become cancerous when physical and/or chemical stressors disturb gene function to the point where the normal protective cell repair and rebalancing mechanisms are overwhelmed. The prevention problem arises because there isn't one single cause, but rather a whole raft of contributing factors which combine in complex ways to trigger the disease of the cell. For example, exposure to stressors at a low intensity for a long time may cause cancer just as surely as a high dose of the same stressor for a brief period. A variable lag phase, ranging from months to decades makes identifying the cause of any cancer particularly tough.

All these complications are bad news for people whose food, water, air and environment are laced with potentially carcinogenic agrichemicals. They're even worse news for the people whose job it is to spray the world with these chemicals. However, they're excellent news for agrichemical and biotech companies who don't want any evidence that their top moneyspinners may be guilty of causing cancer.

Glyphosate is damaging our children

September 2021

 

Glyphosate-based herbicides have become ubiquitous in our food chain and in our environment. Their presence has been boosted, especially, by GM glyphosate-tolerant commodity crops such as soya, maize, sugar-beet, cotton, and oil-seed rape.

How much damage are these herbicides doing to our children? Even before they've been born? And even threatening their very existence?

Epigenetic mayhem courtesy of glyphosate

September 2021

 

Epigenetics are defined as 'molecular factors and processes around DNA that regulate genome activity, independent of DNA sequence, and are. stable (during cell division)'. They regulate gene activity by turning specific genes on and off.

So far, at least five epigenetic processes have been identified, including chemical groups which attach to DNA or to the RNA expressed by the DNA, besides structural effects on the chromosome. Such processes are reversible, but can also be passed down through many generations.

The epigenome (totality of epigenetics) plays a key role in health and disease. Individuals (animals or plants) are the outcome of the integrated actions of all the epigenetic processes they have inherited or acquired during their life-time.

Known causes of epigenetic changes which are passed on to the next generation in humans include environmental toxins, nutrition, stress and smoking.

Scientists in the Center for Reproductive Biology in Washington State University have carried out an experiment which suggests that glyphosate herbicide could be a significant contributor to the current escalating incidence of chronic disease. If they're right, it means that we're still near the beginning of that wave of disease which will continue to surge for the next two generations and beyond, unless we do something about it.

Caution! GM ahead

September 2021

Sedated by the GM food labelling and risk assessment requirements of the EU, many British people have been lulled into thinking GM has become a bit of a non-issue. However, just before Covid 19 obliterated all other news, many media outlets were picking up on the real possibility that, post-Brexit, "Supermarkets could be stocked with genetically modified food under future UK-US trade deal" (The Sun). Indeed, some were warning of the risk of a race to the bottom [1] and asking what happened to Westminster's pledge to take back control of our markets [2].

What started it was that, while "Boris Johnson has repeatedly claimed that negative impacts of Brexit will pale in comparison to the benefits" (Lib Dems quoted in PoliticsHome), the government's own figures suggest the 'benefits' could be as low as 0.02% of GDP. The UK Trade Policy Observatory at Sussex University commented "The numbers are very small. It just goes to show how tiny the gains are from a free trade agreement with the US compared to losing our present arrangements with the EU".

To avoid upsetting the public, the Government categorically ruled out involving the NHS in any trade negotiations, while allowing the health and safety issues surrounding US produce (which our Prime Minister has dismissed as "mumbo jumbo"), to be side-lined into the easily explained issues of chlorine-treated chicken and hormone-treated beef. On the subject of GM and food safety, however, the UK's negotiating stance has been over-generalised and elastic: "Any agreement will ensure high standards and protections for consumers and workers, and will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards." (quoted in The Sun)

This is not good news for British farmers who face the double-whammy of their home market being flooded with cheap (GM, and heavily subsidised) American produce just at the same time as their export markets to Europe have vanished.

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) for England and Wales, whose mission is to give farmers a voice, to protect their way of life, to campaign for a stable and sustainable future for British farmers, and to secure them the best deal, has been narrowly focusing on a ban on chlorine-treated chicken. At the same time, despite knowing its members' customers clearly rejected GM foods in the past and have no reason whatsoever to have changed their minds, the NFU is lobbying hard for gene editing. The organisation claims that this unproven GM technology will put the UK "in a world-leading position to showcase sustainable climate-friendly farming " (Blythman). Given the unpredictable disturbances in gene edited genomes increasingly being revealed by science [3,4,5,6], the NFU's wild optimism really doesn't sound like the best deal for farmers. This US-style, high-tech idealism puts the NFU at odds with its sister organisations in Scotland and Northern Ireland which have banned GM crops of all kinds.

As journalist Joanna Blythman warned pre-Brexit: