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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

#191

Post by goombastic »

dfxm12 wrote: post #5
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #3

From the article: “All of the official samples passed the test and were within the legal limits of glyphosate residue. But those off-the-record, unofficial samples, though done with the same equipment and tested by the same chemists, showed glyphosate. That’s right. The chemists found glyphosate residue on just about everything: crackers, granola, cornmeal, honey, oatmeal, baby food, and even corn. Their surreptitiou…

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…

>does it prove her claim true that it is harmful?

Always reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovKw6YjqSfM

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

#192

Post by [deleted] »

r00fus wrote: post #175
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.

False equivalence. There are non carcinogenic methods of farming.

[deleted]

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

#193

Post by vincnetas »

buvanshak wrote: post #169
topmonk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget leaded gasoline: https://www.thenation.com/article/secret-history-lead/

I think that the common people have no way of knowing the real truth about something. And all our decisions should be based on this simple fact of modern life...

Why so pessimistic? Aren't there any independent labs where you can send your samples for testing and then see results for your self? Send to multiple labs for more control.

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

#194

Post by parineum »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #3

From the article: “All of the official samples passed the test and were within the legal limits of glyphosate residue. But those off-the-record, unofficial samples, though done with the same equipment and tested by the same chemists, showed glyphosate. That’s right. The chemists found glyphosate residue on just about everything: crackers, granola, cornmeal, honey, oatmeal, baby food, and even corn. Their surreptitiou…

It seems like it would be really simple to know what's in your food by simply testing for it right?

If you're telling me that X substance is in some good that is freely available then it should be easy to prove it. You can catch the EPA/FDA red handed by simply doing some independent testing. The only reason I trust the EPA/FDA over the PhD you refer to is that the barrier of entry to testing something that I can buy off the shelf seems so low that lack of evidence, in this case, really hurts the accusation.

Like if I said bricks float in vegetable oil. That's trivially falsifiable.

Am I mistaken about how difficult it should be to test for glyphosate?

The health effects of glyphosate are another story, that is certainly much more difficult to prove and is a legitimate topic of discussion, especially considering how many times industry has withheld health issues in the past.

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

#195

Post by cyphar »

aetherson wrote: post #160
colah3 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With regards to GMOs, the green revolution (as I understand it[1], partly using GMOs to increase food production, especially in developing countries) is often described as saving a billion lives. On a brief glance, I can't find a detailed estimate of the Humanitarian effects, but Borlaug received a Nobel peace prize for it and that scale of impact does seem plausible. [1] See discussion below about relative importanc…

That's not what the green revolution was. It was pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. While GMOs are not harmful and banning them is overall bad, they don't have nearly the same magnitude of impact on agricultural productivity as herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers.

I completely disagree. Quite a lot of the work done during the Green Revolution was breeding plants that were more hardy and resilient to the environment. For instance, Norman Borlaug worked on strains of wheat that were resistant to stem rust (something that had caused starvation in Mexico several years earlier). Pesticides, herbicides, nor fertilisers help with stem rust. GMOs also allow the breeding of plants that have higher yield, which is something we need if we want to feed the world.

You also have things like Golden Rice, which help people who have vitamin A deficiencies and don't have access to vitamin A sources to be able to get vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiencies kill almost a million children under 5 each year especially in South-East Asia. It is only practical to solve this problem through GMOs. (Greenpeace also protested Golden Rice, meaning they protested against programs that can save tens of millions of children. Whether or not you hold that against them is up to you, but if they want to play the "blood on your hands" game I don't see why I shouldn't.)

To be clear; pesticides, herbicides, and fertilisers are very important to agriculture and many more people would be starving without them. But the same is true of GMOs -- they are more than just "not harmful"; they are necessary.

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

#196

Post by kaycebasques »

ggm wrote: post #112
kaycebasques wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. It's the conclusion I'm tempted to draw too. But I'm trying to avoid walking into the grand conspiracy, too soon. I think the influence of Monsanto and others on the actions of the FDA are way out of whack, but there are many moments of innocent misunderstanding in this kind of report. I think it's most likely the classic incompetence/malice thing, or a misunderstanding of some kind. Like, FDA testing US farm p…

Fair enough, thanks for being healthily skeptical

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

#197

Post by soziawa »

swiley wrote: post #28
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…

I helped get a device through part15 testing during an internship and was shocked to find that you don’t need the same firmware (like at all. You can run totally different oses and everything, they don’t have to share a single line of code.) As long as you say “this is pretty much the same as what we’re shipping to users” you’re fine. They don’t really have anyway to double check it and to be honest I wouldn’t be tot…

Huawei does this with their phones during rf emissions testing don't they? And the same is said about cars during crash tests.

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

#198

Post by Black-Plaid »

tptacek wrote: post #11
fncypants wrote: post #6

I've noticed that Monsanto appears to be on an astroturfing campaign. Half of the ads appearing in my Reddit front page are promoted posts that are pro-glyphosate. They point to legitimate news articles, for example, that report on a study finding that glyphosate is not a carginogen. Of course, these studies contradict other studies that glyphosate is a carcinogen or otherwise a concern. In truth, I was ready to beli…

There are no credible studies indicating that glyphosate is a carcinogen, and it would be a little bit surprising it if was, since it targets a metabolic pathway not present in animals. Meanwhile, many of the herbicides that glyphosate displace, plenty of which remain in use, are known human carcinogens. The most widely reported declaration of glyphosate's carcinogenicity, by IARC, was disavowed by the WHO, IARC's pa…

There are also no credible studies showing that chlorine gas is carcinogenic, so it must be safe!

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

#199

Post by dboreham »

userbinator wrote: post #145
dvogel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in fact asbestos is still mined and marketed today: https://youtu.be/cy3piCUPIkc

Only white asbestos (also known as Chrysotile) --- and the great number of people who have been exposed to large amounts of it and lived long healthy lives certainly makes one wonder; AFAIK it's only the other types, particularly blue asbestos, which are unanimously carcinogenic and the industry stopped using them a long time ago, but the effects from that (and contamination of white asbestos with the other types) ha…

In the case of Mesothelioma I believe there's a fair amount of evidence that you need both : 1) Asbestos exposure and 2) to be a smoker. This might explain why some people exposed to asbestos remain healthy.

https://www.mesothelioma.com/blog/authors/staff/smoking-asbe...

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