Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

As a separate comment, since it's a bit of a digression- the Green Revolution has not been all good. High yield agriculture has an -I believe- uncontroversial effect on the environment, including habitat loss and reduced crop biodiversity, but apparently also carbon emissions (because it relies on fossil fuels). There's a discussion of the environmental impacts on wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Environmental...

This includes an ominous note about reliance on non-renewable resources:

Dependence on non-renewable resources

Most high intensity agricultural production is highly reliant on non-renewable resources. Agricultural machinery and transport, as well as the production of pesticides and nitrates all depend on fossil fuels.[73] Moreover, the essential mineral nutrient phosphorus is often a limiting factor in crop cultivation, while phosphorus mines are rapidly being depleted worldwide.[74] The failure to depart from these non-sustainable agricultural production methods could potentially lead to a large scale collapse of the current system of intensive food production within this century.

In other words, the Green Revolution may not be much more sustainable than the Industrial Revolution and may prove to be just as harmful further down the line, exactly because it allowed us to feed an additional 5 billion mouths or so. I guess the argument is that it doesn't really scale that well.

Also, "probable carcinogen" doesn't mean what most people think it means[1]:

> Group 2A: "Probably carcinogenic to humans" There is strong evidence that it can cause cancer in humans, but at present it is not conclusive.

> Group 2A: "The agent (mixture) is probably carcinogenic to humans . The exposure circumstance entails exposures that are probably carcinogenic to humans."

> "This category is used when there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. In some cases, an agent (mixture) may be classified in this category when there is inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals and strong evidence that the carcinogenesis is mediated by a mechanism that also operates in humans. Exceptionally, an agent, mixture or exposure circumstance may be classified in this category solely on the basis of limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans."

Here's other stuff classified as 2A[2]:

* acrylamide

* indoor emissions from household combustion of wood

* occupational exposure as a hairdresser or barber

* consumption of red meat

* drinking very hot beverages at above 65°C

Note that even category 1 contains agents ranging from asbestos and plutonium to "alcoholic beverages" and "the consumption of processed meat".

The categories merely indicate the confidence level that an agent is carcinogenic at all, not "how" carcinogenic it is. The phrase "probable carcinogen" doesn't indicate anything about how likely you are to get cancer from it, just that there is a certain level of confidence that the agent can cause cancer under certain conditions and in certain quantities.

[1]: http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_la...

[2]: http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/Classifications...

If you think the term "organic" is silly: in German the word that's used means "biological".

>The Wikipedia section that the parent post links to straight up says that the only research that found no links was sponsored by Monsanto.

By my count the section lists 7 studies, 3 show no links and 4 show links.

> Wait a min. I don't remember smokers dropping dead left and right in all those times when almost everyone smoked..

Because the effect isn't very much pronounced. It's somewhat in the middle between eating rotten meat and using artificial sweeteners, in the sense that it really does damage health over long periods of time, which will result in worse life quality and quicker death of some fraction of smokers. Accordingly, scientists figured that out relatively quickly.

My whole point is that the difficulty for science to tie a cause to an effect is proportional to how strong impact that cause has. Saying that artificial sweeteners, or glyphosate, are clear carcinogens literally means the effect is strong and pronounced, which directly implies it's easy to find.

> Another one is the effects on lead in automobile fuels. Again people were not dropping dead. Despite the issues about it that we have since discovered

That was more subtle, but again, found relatively quickly.

> If you think pesticide residue cannot do much damage, take a look at Endosulfan tragedy in India.

I'm not saying that. We know Endosulfan is toxic. And it is being banned worldwide; the story you linked is about politics, not science.

Again, my point is only this heuristic: the health danger of a substance in mass use is roughly proportional to how easy it is to verify it. When you get to the point that the only indication of danger is that some mice might have had bad reaction to a substance, except the other studies show they didn't - when you have no sensible mechanism explaining the danger and only weak statistical correlation - at that point, costs of alternatives should outweigh any worry you should have. For example, the alternative to artificial sweetener is sugar, which is known to be much more dangerous to health. The alternative to roundup is pesticides known to be much more toxic. Etc.