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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

#261

Post by hannob »

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…

>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.

I'm not sure you notice the grave strangeness of your comment. There's no jury out there on climate change. The basics are pretty clear. I also think the relation of some pesticides and bees dying is hardly controversial (though it gets muddy when you get into the details and ask which pesticides). For plastic packaging and cancer I'm not sure what the evidence says, but I guess it's complicated. I don't think any scientist seriously doubts that pain medication can be addictive (again, details may be more complicated and uncertain).

So you have 3 examples where the science is contrary to the interest of a billion dollar vested interest. What do you make of that?

(Of course having settled science doesn't mean political action follows, which is most evident when it comes to climate change. But that's a different question.)

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

#262

Post by emodendroket »

tptacek wrote: post #183
emodendroket wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article you yourself linked to support the claim that there's no problem, that's exactly what they do -- purchase extra bees. That and split colonies (which creates weaker colonies which are more susceptible to death). And this same article admits a substantial price increase in products requiring bees for production.

How would you reconcile "substantial price increase due to bee requirements" to "sub-inflationary increases in pollination prices"? Again, you don't have to guess about this: pollination prices are tracked and published. We don't need the axiomatic method to figure this out; Google does just fine.

If you are participating in a debate and you want to argue for something, usually you post the sources for your claim instead of asking your interlocutor to find them for you. Especially when you've just shared a source that actually contradicts your claims.

Specifically, this is the passage I am referring to in, again, the article you yourself provided as evidence for your claims:

> The price of some of that extra work will get passed on to the consumer. The average retail price of honey has roughly doubled since 2006, for instance. And Kim Kaplan, a researcher with the USDA, points out that pollination fees -- the amount beekeepers charge to cart their bees around to farms and pollinate fruit and nut trees -- has approximately doubled over the same period.

> "It's not the honey bees that are in danger of going extinct," Kaplan wrote in an email, "it is the beekeepers providing pollination services because of the growing economic and management pressures. The alternative is that pollination contracts per colony have to continue to climb to make it economically sustainable for beekeepers to stay in business and provide pollination to the country’s fruit, vegetable, nut and berry crops." We have also been importing more honey from overseas lately.

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

#263

Post by ipioxu15 »

hannob wrote: post #261
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…

>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. I'm not sure you notice the grave strangeness of your comment. There's no jury out there on climate change. The ba…

There's nothing strange: GP is giving those as historical examples of this sort of behavior by the industry, not claiming the jury is out today on these topics.

Especially with climate change, there is no doubt the industry has done all it can to cloud the issue in the past, and still continues it. You could add other things (e.g. smoking) to the list.

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

#264

Post by azernik »

mmjaa wrote: post #231
azernik wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gives a shit about motivation? Do you care if your take-out food was made in the expectation of a financial return, or does it need to be made out of the restaurant owner's sincere love of feeding strangers?

That's some cult-level doublethink going on here. Of course you need to understand motivation. "Who cares what the motives of ISIS are, they're rebuilding towns and cities destroyed by imperialist aggression.." <= try that experiment in thought.

And also enslaving and killing by the thousand. So no, a utilitarian view doesn't support that idea.

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

#265

Post by azernik »

toofy wrote: post #219
azernik wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gives a shit about motivation? Do you care if your take-out food was made in the expectation of a financial return, or does it need to be made out of the restaurant owner's sincere love of feeding strangers?

Considering what motivates someone can often be useful. People can behave and make drastically different choices based solely on motivation. People will often pick and choose what information they choose to share or choose to hide based largely on the motivations that are driving their project. Motivation can drastically alter the way an idea is presented to the audience in which it is being presented. Obviously we w…

Our information about the benefits of GMO is pretty thorough and persuasive, so in this case, we don't need to care about motivations.

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

#266

Post by needToSay »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #116
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’d really like to know what’s in our food. Why? Don't you trust the free market? /s

Dang, ban this cryptonigger

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

#267

Post by pbhjpbhj »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #221
toofy wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering what motivates someone can often be useful. People can behave and make drastically different choices based solely on motivation. People will often pick and choose what information they choose to share or choose to hide based largely on the motivations that are driving their project. Motivation can drastically alter the way an idea is presented to the audience in which it is being presented. Obviously we w…

Motivations here as are complex as the players involved. It's entirely reasonable to expect that researchers who invented e.g. golden rice were thinking about the lives it'll save. It's also entirely reasonable to expect companies to support development and deployment of it because it's profitable for them. On a less extreme end, companies sure want crops with improved resistance to pathogens and insects for profit r…

Complex motivations, with humans that's almost a truism, agreed.

>companies sure want crops with improved resistance to pathogens and insects for profit reasons, but this is the case where their incentives somewhat align with public good //

If we ignore all other aspects of the public good. Yes we want cheaper food, but not at the cost of poisoning of farmworkers or consumers, eutrophication, destruction of bio-diversity, destruction of soil structure that aids long-term fertility and reduces erosion, etc.. These are all externalised [potential] costs.

>It's also entirely reasonable to expect companies to support development and deployment of it because it's profitable for them. //

Every day this becomes less reasonable to me. Why should we allow the financial profit motive of a small number of capitalists be the primary driver as opposed to the general good of the demos; it seems so perverse to reduce the decisions on managing of economic aspects such as food production to "what makes the owners of Monsanto et al. the most money without producing a provable and immediately catastrophic harm". Bof.

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

#268

Post by Applejinx »

colah3 wrote: post #151
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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. What damage will be caused by people using their phones less for fear of getting cancer? What about GMOs? What is the harm in not using them? The EU has mostly banned them and it doesn't look to be sufferi…

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…

Hunger is not an efficiency problem. Hunger is a political problem. Handwaving that away to propagandize for an industrial food corporation is… not good.

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

#269

Post by joncrocks »

jccooper wrote: post #103
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.

Audits and fines. i.e. If you cheat and you get caught cheating, you get a punishment much larger than the cost of following the rules in the first place.

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

#270

Post by Applejinx »

alexbeloi wrote: post #188
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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. What damage will be caused by people using their phones less for fear of getting cancer? What about GMOs? What is the harm in not using them? The EU has mostly banned them and it doesn't look to be sufferi…

>What about GMOs? What is the harm in not using them? lower crop yields, more starvation, more malnutrition

Starvation and malnutrition are political problems.

I find the argument 'if you don't support the food megacorporation that means you are killing billions of people' to be impossible, disingenuous, evil hyperbole.

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