Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by neolefty » Fri, May 11, 2018, 1:59 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #241

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…

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_Revolu…

including habitat loss

It's not quite that simple—in many places increasing yields means using less land. In particular, leaving marginal land fallow.

But the factors are pretty complicated, in the US especially dominated by policy: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030691921...

On the other hand, how much land was exhausted and then left fallow? How much was taken over for other uses (such as urbanization)?

And if we hadn't had yield increases, would we be using more land now? Or just eat less meat?

Edit:

While worldwide agricultural land has increased, in the US it decreased from 63% to 51% of the total 1949-2007 according to this survey, which draws from USDA data:

https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2012/march/data-feature...

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

#292

Post by hennsen » Fri, May 11, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

lioeters wrote: post #281

mmjaa wrote: post #230

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." The OP is clearly NOT suggesting "blind opposition" to industrial progress - in fact, what is wanted, is absolutely transparent, non-blinded research. But, this is not what is on the table. You've skilfully…

We could flip the original sentence as: "Blind faith in industrial progress..carried by the tide of public policy..is causing and will continue to cause a ton of damage in the century to come, and the damage will never be repaid."

Yes it will be paid back. By generations to come. While the corporations who invented/introduced/pushed the stuff and got governments to support them by adjusting laws to allow doing it keep flourishing...

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

#293

Post by cryoshon » Fri, May 11, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

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…

yep, you hit the nail on the head here.

often, the real evidence is extremely clear, but there is enough obfuscation created by those with an agenda to make things look inconclusive.

yet another example is polygraph tests and similar more modern devices.

all of the independent evidence says they're trash. but "the jury is still out" because there are a slew of very low quality studies performed by people hired by the companies who make the devices.

anyhow, we've known that monsanto was lying about this for quite some time, and we have also known that they have corrupted the parts of the US government responsible for regulating their behavior for quite some time.

it isn't okay for pesticides to be in our food.

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

#294

Post by kickout » Fri, May 11, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

colah3 wrote: post #164

aetherson wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for the feedback - I've updated my comment to express uncertainty. As I understand it, a big part of the green revolution, especially initially, was Borlaug developing a strand of wheat that was resistant to many common diseases and had higher yields. This seems born out by a quick skim of his [wikipedia article]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug ), although I'm sure nitrogen fertilizer, etc, also…

Its mostly well accepted in plant breeding circles that the improvement in crop yields in North America in the last ~30-40 years can be 66% attributed to genetic progress (i.e higher yield, more disease/pest tolerance, better adaptation, etc.) and the remaining 33% can be attributed to agronomic factors (i.e earlier planting, better/more precise equipment, better soil/nutrient management, etc.)

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

#295

Post by bluGill » Fri, May 11, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

kurthr wrote: post #212

cyphar wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Breeding (even hybridizing) plants is not considered GMO or all carrots, corn, and avocados would be considered the same. I'm a supporter of GMO, but directly modifying (or inserting) genes is different from selective breeding and even cloning. I don't particularly like breeding plants that are (more) tolerant of high doses of proprietary pesticides (insect=animal killers) or even herbicides, because like overusing a…

Yes GMO is different: unlike random chance we know exactly what genes we changed and what each does. Random chance seems to solve some problem and we never both to ask why or what the side effects might be.

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

#296

Post by cryoshon » Fri, May 11, 2018, 2:11 PM UTC

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.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6345/1393

check out this study. Science is a reputable journal. sure, it's just one study. but there are thousands more.

looks like there is ample evidence of bees being harmed by pesticides.

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

#297

Post by bradfa » Fri, May 11, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

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…

Depending on what rules apply to your particular transmitter and if you're not just doing FCC but also testing for other countries' standards, sometimes you cannot run the production software in order to actually test the radio as required.

Granted, you're right, it's the honor system that what ships to customers works like the test subject did, but it's not always entirely due to malice.

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

#298

Post by _Codemonkeyism » Fri, May 11, 2018, 2:17 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #241

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…

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_Revolu…

"Rural Kansas is dying. I drove 1,800 miles to find out why"

https://newfoodeconomy.org/rural-kansas-depopulation-commodi...

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

#299

Post by cryoshon » Fri, May 11, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #123

philipkglass wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree that evidence to date does not show glyphosate is a carcinogen. But this: 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. is not a very strong argument. Harmful "off-target effects" are a very common cause of drug development program failures. Most chemicals that are p…

The evidence seems to suggest that glyphosate is basically inert in humans, doesn't it?

no? that isn't the way biology works whatsoever.

here is an example.

think of glyphosate as a key.

the key is designed to unlock a certain type of lock with a certain arrangement of pins. when the key unlocks the lock, the target dies. this is intended behavior.

but given the way that locks work -- patterns of pins -- it could very easily coincidentally work on other locks that it was not designed to unlock.

it won't be most other locks. it will be a small minority. it won't necessarily have the same result when that lock is opened as it does under its intended use. in fact, it might not even open the lock -- it might just get stuck in there real good and be impossible to remove. it might even have a beneficial effect (but probably not).

the details of this play out on the biochemical / enzyme-substrate level. another commenter pointed out how glyphosate is an estrogen-equivalent. this would not surprise me whatsoever. it wouldn't have to be a carcinogen to be wildly destructive in that context.

any time -- any time -- you have a chemical which is known to be bioactive, it's going to have an effect.

i just want to make it very clear that there is no excuse to have these chemicals in our food. they are not harmless. at best, they are an added inconvenience for the host's body to deal with.

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

#300

Post by bluGill » Fri, May 11, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #236

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…

Like others have commented below GMOs (well, GMO crops specifically) were not the main driver of the Green Revolution. So the question remains- what are the harms that can come about by not using GMOs? My understanding is that, at this point in time, the harms are primarily financial. For instance, when the EU imposed a moratorium on GMO crops, the reaction was primarily for countries that, until then, sold GMO crops…

No, the harms are environmental. Spraying weed killers (ie glyphosate) uses much less carbon than the mechanical methods. Tractors pulling something through the soil need a lot of fuel. A sprayer running over the same field spraying a gallon of glyphosate uses much less fuel. If you have any concern about global warming you should demand that only GMO crops be grown.

Note that I work for John Deere. We sell to farmers who are both for and against GMO so I'm not supposed to have a bias, but I still need to make this connection clear.