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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

#101

Post by torgoguys »

Here is the money quote that these articles seem to be based off of. From an email detailing progress on developing testing methods:

>"I spiked a batch of broccoli at 0.002 ug/g and could detect the glyphosate pretty well but I did need to manually integrate some of the peaks. I used broccoli because it’s the only thing I have on hand that does not have glyphosate in it. I have brought wheat crackers, granola cereal, and corn meal from home and there’s a fair amount in all of them.”

There is another email talking about the one corn sample being 6.5ppm, above the 5.0 threshold, also in the context of testing methods.

So the corn sample could be an issue, but the headlines about it being everywhere, in implied high concentrations, seems premature unless I missed something in these emails. The tester used the broccoli because it had none and he could test detection down to 0.002 ppm, FAR below the 5.0 threshold. When he says there was a fair amount in everything else he had, we still don't know what that means. Was it .02ppm, .2ppm, 2.0ppm or what? The tone of the email and it's reply (not quoted above) doesn't suggest worry about a high rate to me.

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

#102

Post by headsoup »

tptacek wrote: post #85
emodendroket wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Are commercial pollination services perhaps using robotic bees? Because pollination services went up by something like 1% since that article was published.

Are the bee sources still the same? Bees are often imported from other regions to meet supply.

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

#103

Post by jccooper »

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…

The usual solution to self reporting systems is audits. The entire tax system works this way. It won't catch everything, but does manage to put some teeth in the process and can catch systematic cheating.

In this case, occasional random (and where warranted, targeted) sampling and testing by the agency would detect whether provided samples are routinely doctored.

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

#104

Post by random4369 »

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.

[Citation needed]

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

#105

Post by perl4ever »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #51
exp1orer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently read the great line: "Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance." http://blog.danieldavies.com/2004/05/d-squared-digest-one-mi...

I think this is the guy that gave me the gem. If a source is known to lie then the proper weight to place on information from that source is zero. AKA: You don't try and second guess anything that say, you ignore everything they say.

But it's tempting to assume the information is false, and if you do that, you could be making a big mistake. I assume by "zero weight" you mean you don't assume it's true or false, which is quite distinct.

One way to look at it is that every statement is true, given sufficient context. The question is, how should it be interpreted, and what is it a true statement about? Generally, when a liar says something, it is intended to either make you believe it is true, or make you believe it is false, or confuse you. So there is true information being provided, it's just not the face value of the statement.

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

#106

Post by GW150914 »

tropo wrote: post #76
dbasedweeb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there some reason that EV’s can’t till? If you’re farming there’s lots of sunlight for solar, and nuclear is a good option too.

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

#107

Post by agentgumshoe »

random4369 wrote: post #77
zasz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually there are public registries of known incidences of harm from vaccines (i.e. VAERS etc). This again goes to people arguing in Black and White and refusing to rationally engage the middle grounds:

I don't believe there is research (at least verified/mainstream) that has determined widespread harmful effects of vaccines. I.e. the risk of issue from vaccines is lower than the risk of disease being caught (sorry don't have exact odds here to verify this). There are also no (that I'm aware of) long term generational studies of the effects of vaccines other than obvious observation that disease incidence has reduced.

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

#108

Post by GW150914 »

a_bonobo wrote: post #26
himom wrote: post #15

Another reason to go organic.

Most forms of organic farming still use pesticies, just different ones, with similar or worse health risks. >In head-to-head comparisons, natural pesticides don't fare any better than synthetic ones. When I compared the organic chemicals copper sulfate and pyrethrum to the top synthetics, chlorpyrifos and chlorothalonil, I found that not only were the organic ones more acutely toxic, studies have found that they are…

Glyphosate is an herbicide, not a pesticide.

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

#109

Post by hamparawa »

Although not scientifically proven(?), it is believed that the chronic kidney disease (CKD) is caused by Glyphosate. CKD is largely present in North Central, North Western, Uva and Eastern Provinces in Sri Lanka.

https://www.news.lk/news/political-current-affairs/item/8198...

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

#110

Post by GW150914 »

adrr wrote: post #56
himom wrote: post #15

Another reason to go organic.

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'…

I hate to repeat myself, but it bears repeating: glyphosate is an herbicide and not a pesticide. It’s significant, because pesticides organic or otherwise are something designed to kill animals, not plants. We’re animals, not plants, so herbicides are generally far less toxic than pesticides to us. While we’re quite different in many ways to insects, we share a lot of metabolic machinery; the same is not true of us and plants.
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