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Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

modernfarmer.com

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

#91

Post by gowld »

hetman wrote: post #43
bickfordb wrote: post #13

I would prefer to eat most weeds than glyphosate. Also, what do this imply politically? Testing for Round-Up in our food supply is now a states rights issue?

That's not how it works. Weeds don't somehow get into grains when they're collected. What they do is reduce yields of the crops we're actually interested in collecting. Lower yields for the same farming effort means higher prices. So what ultimately happens when the consumer sees two identical loaves of bread on the supermarket shelf and one is $2.50 while the other is $3.50?

The cost of grain input is essentially 0 (as a fraction of finished product sticker price). The cost is in baking and transportation. Corn is the cheapest product in USA.

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

#92

Post by gowld »

briandear wrote: post #44
bickfordb wrote: post #13

I would prefer to eat most weeds than glyphosate. Also, what do this imply politically? Testing for Round-Up in our food supply is now a states rights issue?

So when weeds reduce the food supply and drive prices up, what then? Then there’ll be articles about how only rich people can afford food.

Corn is insanely cheap to produce. Delivery and preparation is expensive.

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

#93

Post by ggm »

I'd like somebody in the space to explain why the FDA samples are more representative of the overall food supply than the random samples from food stores. There may be a good reason. There may be reasons why in some locations, food has higher traces than the FDA sees. How about (for instance) if its imported? Not that its good, but it would help explain

I rather think that even though the FDA samples test ok, There is a moment where somebody should be regularly testing product the other side of the supply chain, for residues of pesticides and other things, and if we find them, it should be actionable if they exceed some threshold.

So.. given these people found traces in the over-the-counter food chain, is nobody now legally obligated to do .. anything?

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

#94

Post by jcranmer »

pmoriarty wrote: post #20
acidburnNSA wrote: post #7

Measurement techniques are getting better and better and we'll find more and more articles finding x in y. I have not analyzed this case but did just finish reading a highly relevant piece on measures of toxicity that included glyphosate. Highly recommended for your mental models. https://thoughtscapism.com/2018/05/07/measures-of-toxicity/

That's a very interesting and informative article. However, after reading it I came away more confused than I was before -- especially when looking at their "Acute toxicity" and "Chronic toxicity" tables. According to the acute toxicity tables, caffeine is only slightly more toxic than lead, and Vitamin D3 is 5 more times toxic. According to the chronic toxicity tables, both caffeine and Vitamin D3 are about 3 times…

LD50 is a crude measure of toxicity. Salt has a very high LD50--about 3.3 g/kg. Vitamin D is less than 1% that LD50, about 33 mg/kg. However, the loads you're going to see in food are very different: you accumulate vitamin D on the order of 10 µg or so a day, but salt around 5g or so a day. As a consequence, it takes only around 40× normal salt consumption to kill you, but around 200,000× normal vitamin D consumption. Killing yourself by eating too much salt is ridiculously easy (drink a jug of soy sauce), killing yourself with vitamin D is much harder.

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

#95

Post by headsoup »

jjoonathan wrote: post #71
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…

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 b…

You're just throwing out the tu quoque fallacy for I'm not sure what reason. Hey the 'other side' does it too so let's not make a big deal here!

Black and white opposition to everything with cherry-picked arguments is becoming more and more prevalent, and it doesn't help us solve (or even rationally discuss) any problems or even understand them better.

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

#96

Post by kaycebasques »

ggm wrote: post #93

I'd like somebody in the space to explain why the FDA samples are more representative of the overall food supply than the random samples from food stores. There may be a good reason. There may be reasons why in some locations, food has higher traces than the FDA sees. How about (for instance) if its imported? Not that its good, but it would help explain I rather think that even though the FDA samples test ok, There i…

I think the article is implying that the “official” samples were probably supplied by people who are colluding with Monsanto.

Well, it’s not fair of me to say that the article is implying that... it’s not. But that’s the conclusion I drew.

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

#97

Post by jccooper »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #72
PantaloonFlames wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, but it rather matters in terms of how to keep it out.

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

#98

Post by tptacek »

headsoup wrote: post #95
jjoonathan wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

You're just throwing out the tu quoque fallacy for I'm not sure what reason. Hey the 'other side' does it too so let's not make a big deal here! Black and white opposition to everything with cherry-picked arguments is becoming more and more prevalent, and it doesn't help us solve (or even rationally discuss) any problems or even understand them better.

That's in fact not an instance of the tu quoque fallacy.

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

#99

Post by perl4ever »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #72
PantaloonFlames wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It matters when you want to discuss blame and solutions.

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

#100

Post by headsoup »

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.

Another fallacy: relative privation. Let's not worry about the bees and pesticides because of bigger problems.

I think the problem here is that over-emphasis, bluster and hyperbole are so normalised and frequent now that the use of emphasis to try and draw attention to an issue is now practically useless (maybe it was never useful...).

Perhaps we shouldn't worry about any of these 'small problems' because we're working hard to destroy the Earth anyway...

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