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Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

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Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#71

Post by jjoonathan »

random4369 wrote: post #14
dfxm12 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember watching a lecture from Vandana Shiva who claimed that glyphosate was harmful and making it in to our food. She cited some European studies that found glyphosate in a wide variety of products. She claimed that there were shady things going on in the US government that seemed to obscure these facts. While this might prove her true that the US government is trying to hide the glyphosate levels in food, does…

Every time the jury is out on a topic where one side has a vested interest and a billion dollar budget to protect it, you can be reasonably sure what the outcome will be. See: pesticides and bees, fossil fuels and climate change, food packaging plastics and cancer, pain treatment meds and addiction. The answer in all those cases is the harmful effects eventually became known, but the jury was out long enough for the…

In college, I did a deep dive into GMO safety research for journal club back when the Seralini "GMOs cause cancer in mice" paper hit (2010 or thereabouts) and found quite a counterexample to your rule: bogus (obviously p-hacked) science from Seralini and an aggressive misinformation campaign from Greenpeace to convince people that Monsanto was using terminator genes (bio-DRM) against poor farmers when the truth had been quite the opposite for some time (Monsanto patented the idea, promised not to use it, and kept the promise).

Blind opposition to industrial progress -- which is what you are suggesting -- carried by the rising tide of public opinion will cause a ton of damage in the century to come, and the damage will never be repaid.

EDIT: oh, and there's a National Toxicology Program study -- "cell phones cause cancer" would be the sensationalized headline -- working its way through the bureaucratic pipes at the moment with another round of "review" landing in a few months. Somehow it got through the first draft and review process while completely ignoring the first law of toxicology, so I suspect it will pass the second round as well, and while I trust the official document will contain sufficiently reserved wording the media circus that spins up around it will become a second excellent example of bullshit from the "little guys."

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#72

Post by alexandercrohde »

PantaloonFlames wrote: post #65
exp1orer wrote: post #9

So this suggests that the samples submitted to the FDA for testing were not representative of ordinary food. This reminds me of the ongoing Tetra Tech/Hunter's Point scandal [1], where the US Navy paid $300M to a contractor to clean up a development site. The contractor was required to submit samples from the site to prove they had cleaned it up. Instead, they just pulled soil from known clean places and submitted fo…

> this suggests ... Not quite. It suggests that it’s possible that regular food has glyphosate residue. But samples “brought from home” may have been contaminated elsewhere. This is why we depend on rigorous controlled tests. It’s also possible that the “official tests” were rigged, and suspiscions about that led the testers to go rogue, and that glyphosate really IS in our food in larger concentrations than we are l…

> Not quite. It suggests that it’s possible that regular food has glyphosate residue. But samples “brought from home” may have been contaminated elsewhere

It doesn't matter to the consumer where in the supply chain the food got glyphosate on it. If it has residue by the time I get home, I don't want to eat it.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#73

Post by EpicEng »

cabaalis wrote: post #36
zasz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no fan of toxic chemicals in our food and I don't trust the government or corporations to do enough to protect it, but it seems fair to me to say that a PhD in philosophy and a master's in physics are not particularly relevant to claiming expertise in evaluating toxicological claims.

A person's credentialing does not make facts any less true.

I believe the debate is around whether or not they are facts to begin with.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#74

Post by kaitai »

tptacek wrote: post #60
gerbilly wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>American honey bees are livestock, not wildlife. Then if it's harming European honeybees, which are livestock as you say, do you not think it might be plausible that native pollinators and others insects might also be affected? The "livestock" line is just a talking point, and the pesticide industry is pleased as punch every time we repeat it for them.

I think if we were serious about native wildlife we'd address habitat loss instead of fixating on comic book opponents like "the pesticide industry". Either way: reports of the impending bee-pocalypse are extraordinarily overrated.

Can't agree; know too many hobbyist beekeepers who've had 20-40 years beekeeping who can't keep a hive alive through a winter now. When I was a kid peoples' hives survived a harsh Minnesota winter. Now they all die even though we don't have enough snow to ski.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#75

Post by gowld »

briandear wrote: post #29
random4369 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time the jury is out on a topic where one side has a vested interest and a billion dollar budget to protect it, you can be reasonably sure what the outcome will be. See: pesticides and bees, fossil fuels and climate change, food packaging plastics and cancer, pain treatment meds and addiction. The answer in all those cases is the harmful effects eventually became known, but the jury was out long enough for the…

So every single time a “vested interest” cares about something, they are wrong? Environmental groups have a vested interest in promoting catastrophe as it increases fundraising and their influence and power. I am not saying that all environmental groups are “bad” or “wrong” but they have equal incentive to trumpet their view of the world. You don’t think billion dollar alternative energy companies don’t have incentiv…

Soros didn't destabilize the pound. The Bank of England destabilized the pound. Soros said it was a bad idea, and put his money where is mouth was, and made a fortune because he was right.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#76

Post by tropo »

dbasedweeb wrote: post #34
tptacek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't so much an argument as it is innuendo. If you get glyphosate carcinogenicity wrong, you increase carcinogenic agriculture, because that's what the market alternatives to it are: clearly known human carcinogens.

That isn’t so much an argument as a false dichotomy, predicated on a system of agriculture which allows a near 50% rate of wasteage in the West. The alternatives include less productive, yet still sufficiently productive methods which do not include carcinogenic compounds. Edit: Your state of being persuaded is immaterial, because what I said isn’t really controversial. One known alternative to herbacides is tilling,…

I like tilling, but it requires lots of diesel fuel and it increases evaporation.

The future is probably robotic weed picking. That still requires fuel, but perhaps not as much.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#77

Post by random4369 »

zasz wrote: post #64
random4369 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what planet is the jury out about vaccines and autism? There's not a single research paper suggesting a link between those. You are falsely conflating scientific consensus with public opinion.

I think hueving just meant to say that not every institution is corrupt, and the medical industry is good when it comes to vaccines. The vested interests, in this case doctors, are doing great, and the anti-vaxxers are bad.

Again, the jury was never out about vaccines, there's no scientific research claiming they are harmful. This scenario is not analogous to the grandparent post where scientific consensus is being actively manipulated by vested interests to delay regulatory action

Doctors don't make vaccines. Pharmaceutical researchers do. And pharmaceutical manufacturers wouldn't blink twice before selling you drugs that they know are harmful, there's plenty of well covered precedent for that. It's not that the medical field is more or less moral, it's just that in the case of vaccines, they actually perform well with no significant side effects so there's no reason to engage in morally questionable business practices to sell them

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#78

Post by sincerely »

rohit2412 wrote: post #50
random4369 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what planet is the jury out about vaccines and autism? There's not a single research paper suggesting a link between those. You are falsely conflating scientific consensus with public opinion.

SO what about cell phone radiation and cancer, or maybe GMO food and cancer?

a pretty informative read re: cell phones and cancer: https://www.thenation.com/article/how-big-wireless-made-us-t...

(as usual, article headline is clickbait, not chosen by writer, please do not judge the content based on the title)

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#79

Post by adrr »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #70
adrr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organic pesticides are nasty stuff as well. "In 2010, a study was published detailing the progression of Parkinson's-like symptoms in mice following chronic intragastric ingestion of low doses of rotenone. The concentrations in the central nervous system were below detectable limits, yet still induced PD pathology.[31] In 2011, a US National Institutes of Health study showed a link between rotenone use and Parkinson'…

Rotenone is no longer an organic pesticide. [Even in America. It can only be used as a "fishkill"] source: http://npic.orst.edu/NPRO/#

Only in Europe. Its still approved by the USDA.

Source(failed petition to remove it): https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Rotenone%...

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#80

Post by emodendroket »

tptacek wrote: post #62
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that fact change the narrative? If anything, it makes it worse. It does take away a bit of the emotional appeal of pristine, natural, innocent public resources that need protection from greedy farmers when the bees are owned by and grown for a different group of greedy farmers instead of being championed by people with purely altruistic motivation. But that they're declining when there are people with expert…

They are in fact not declining. There is no indication at all that a reliable supply of bee-driven pollination service in the US is in any way threatened. You'd be forgiven for not knowing that, though, since the story is presented in the media as if farmers relied on wild honeybees (an invasive species eradicated several decades ago by the Varroa destructor mite) rather than commercially managed bee husbandry.

The information I've turned up suggests that commercial bee colonies are also rapidly dying off. https://beeinformed.org/2016/05/10/nations-beekeepers-lost-4...
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