Glyphosate: The Poison in Our Daily Bread
The results of the most comprehensive glyphosate testing of food products ever conducted in the U.S. were released by The Detox Project on Tuesday, in a detailed report that shows the true levels of weedkiller contamination in essential foods sold by some of the top grocery stores in the country.
The world’s most used weedkiller, glyphosate, was discovered in a wide range of essential food products including bread, pulses and grains from top grocery stores such as Hy-Vee, Whole Foods Market, Amazon, Walmart and Target.
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen according to WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and has led to the manufacturers of Roundup, Bayer/Monsanto, being forced to pay over $10 Billion in damages to gardeners, groundskeepers and farmers who are suffering with blood cancer (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma).
Of the products that were tested, a range of whole wheat breads contained the highest levels, alongside chickpeas and Quaker Oats. The worst offending products were found in Hy-Vee, Whole Foods Market and Walmart, with the products with the lowest levels being found in Natural Grocers.
In what may be a surprise to many consumers, 18 of the 26 Non-GMO labeled products tested contained glyphosate, including two of the highest five levels discovered (535 ppb and 1040 ppb respectively).
Where is the glyphosate coming from and why is it in Non-GMO labeled foods?
This report shows the damning reality that preharvest spraying (desiccation), an off-label use of glyphosate-based weedkillers, is leading to the mass contamination of essential foods that form the base of our diet.
These alarming results also show that Bayer/Monsanto, scientists, and government regulators have long failed to understand or even explore the basic risks and level of exposure from the U.S. food supply.
Besides wheat, oats and barley, Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides are regularly sprayed on more than 70 crops, including almonds, apples, dry edible beans, lentils, chickpeas (garbanzo beans), peas, grapes, rice, and sunflowers.
Are the levels of glyphosate discovered in essential foods safe?
It is first important to understand how the ‘safe’ level of any toxic chemical is set. Currently the U.S. EPA sets a Reference Dose (RfD), which is known as the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) in Europe, by taking the lowest no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) from animal studies and dividing it by 100.
The big problem is that both the RfD in the U.S. (1.75 mg / kg bw / day) and the ADI in the EU (0.3 mg/kg bw /day) for glyphosate have already been proven to be far too high by independent peer-reviewed studies.
In the pilot phase of the most comprehensive study ever performed on glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides – the Global Glyphosate Study – it was shown that glyphosate-based herbicides cause genotoxicity, alteration of the intestinal microbiome as well as reproductive and developmental effects in both male and female rats, at the U.S RfD level. Other peer-reviewed studies have also shown change in gene function and DNA Damage at the U.S. RfD level.
This would normally mean that the EPA’s current RfD safe level should be reduced by at least 100x. However, even that may not be enough of a reduction, as in smaller non-comprehensive peer-reviewed studies, levels that are lower than 0.1 mg/kg have been shown to cause serious kidney and liver damage in rats.
“Currently, we do not know the full effects on our health of glyphosate exposure at very low levels and we thus must follow the precautionary principle and ban the herbicide from being sold immediately. It is simply not yet possible to set a safe level for glyphosate exposure and anyone who attempts to do so is bending the science,” Henry Rowlands, Director of The Detox Project, concluded.
How was the testing performed?
This testing project was performed In exactly the same way as government regulators occasionally perform checks for pesticides in off-the-shelf food products; a selection of different essential foods, including bread, grains, pulses (lentils, beans, peas and chickpeas) and protein bars and shakes were purchased from top grocery stores and sent directly to an expert ISO 17025 certified third-party laboratory in California. They were then tested using gold standard mass spectrometry methods (LC-MS/MS).
The number of samples and the wide selection of essential food types tested make this the most comprehensive single glyphosate testing project ever performed in the U.S.. Similar smaller projects on specific areas of the food supply have previously shown glyphosate contamination in cereals, hummus and protein supplements, with some of the results having been reported in the New York Times.
The latest testing project was funded by the Rose Foundation, based in California, which supports projects that protect and support nature, human rights and environmental justice.
You can find the full testing report here.
See more here: detoxproject.org
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Herb Rose
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The problem is not with the product but the misuse of the product by spraying it on food instead of weeds. Easy to fix. Use it as it’s supposed to be used. You don’t outlaw hammers because some people use hammers to kill other people.
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Michael l Javick
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Wrong answer, What about all of the poor workers who applied it? Notice the $ettlement commercial$ on tv? I submit that this is poison period AND it should be banned PERMANENTLY . Period! Do you think if you sprayed it on weeds it stays in that spot? Don’t be silly.
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Alcheminister
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Herb is an asshat. And yes, Bayer should kinda be destroyed.
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Alcheminister
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Is dandelion, purslane and such not food?
Are you retarded?
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Alcheminister
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“The problem is not with the product but the misuse of the product by spraying it on food instead of weeds.”
So uhm, tell me, what’s it marketed based on, what’s it used for in agriculture, etc? Of course it’s misused, that’s what it’s made for. Chemical warfare, anti-life shit.
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Hrb Rose
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Hi Alcheminister,
The use was toil off the weeds and grasses of farms so seeds could be sown in the soil without plowing and the erosion it entailed and reducing the work needed for planting. The chemical degrades on contact with the soil so there is no residual poisoning of the soil or crops. It is absorbed through the leaves and destroys the plants roots. The farming application is done from a tractor pulling a sprayer followed by a seeder that puts seeds into holes it punches in the soil.
The misuse on grains is to make the seed clusters adhere to the stalks so they don’t fall off, just as the leaves of a broken off tree branch will stay attached to the tree. It allows for a bigger harvest and a longer time when harvesting can be done. It is (mis)used and gets into food to increase profits.
Herb
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Alcheminister
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Oh right, and how toxic is the other ingredient in roundup? Obviously also that’d be non-linear toxicity. And how much more cytotoxic is it with agriculturally relevant “background” radiation? Other factors also increase the “practical” toxicity.
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George Tomaich
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I’m getting a little disappointed with this website. It has lost its objectivity and is now pushing garbage science concerning glyphosate, which is a safe herbicide. Then there are the antivaxxer articles that again are garbage science. Vaccines are necessary and beneficial. The mRNA therapies are not vaccines as you have shown time and again.
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Mark Tapley
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Hello George:
You evidently do not know that all so called communicable diseases had already been practically wiped out by improved diet and sanitation before the widespread use of the tissue sample garbage called “vaccines.” Suzanne Humphries MD, using only official public data in her book “Dissolving the Illusion” shows that vaccination is a total fraud. I also recommend Forrest Maready’s “The Moth In the Iron Lung” that explodes the polio myth while explaining the real cause of this manmade (never before) symptom. While you’re at it grab his “The Autism Vaccine” that explains why we now have an epidemic of the once almost unheard of condition. There is no mRNA “vaccine therapy.” That is just another subterfuge to cover the graphene oxide injection for simps fo a non existent virus.
I agree that Glyphosate is not that bad., I have been using the stuff a lot since it came out probably about 40 years ago. Often having to stick my arm down in the tank (suction problems with my junk) and many times having to spray with the wind blowing it back in my face. I am still kicking. I xo think that the practice of desiccation (grain ripening) for which the real concern would be should be looked at carefully. However this stuff has been so widely used I don’t think it is a problem. I have also noted that we never heard anything about it until Monsanto’s patent ran out. I wonder why?
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Kiren
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How is glyphosate not bad if its an endocrine disruptor and it has the potential to cause cancer as this article describes. Even if people working in agriculture are exposed to higher concentrations, the long term effects aren’t studied in the general population that consumes this over their population and should not be overlooked.
If anything there should be a warning label on the foods similar to that on cigarette boxes.
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Alcheminister
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“However this stuff has been so widely used I don’t think it is a problem. ”
Delusional reasoning. Bullets have also been widely used. Vaccines too. Fluoridation. Radiation, etc.
Glyphosate, along with the other crap in roundup (which massively increases the compound toxicity) interferes with gut microbiota, glycine metabolism (quite important), its cytotoxicity is also around an order of magnitude more with “background” ionizing radiation (and I would say likely otherm EM too).
Bayer is a chemical warfare company. They only sell toxins.
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Alcheminister
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Every vaccine ever is composed of toxins, based on fraud and has no potential benefit.
https://ghostofjfk.substack.com/p/behold-health-benefits-of-vaccines
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DAVID BOLENEUS
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WARNING. This report is nonsense and is a lie. As a career farmer, grower of field crops and landowner, I can say authoritatively that Glyphosate or roundup are not used on field crops mentioned for the simple reason that the herbicide glyphosate would kill the field crops. If there is contamination by glyphosate, it must come from another source as it would not be applied by the grower of these foods.
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Mark Tapley
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Hello David:
You are using glyphosate as a weed killer which is the way most people think of it. I often use it on my place and mixed up 25 gallons for spraying today. However glyphosate is also widely used for the completely different purpose to uniformly ripen food grains close to harvest, called desiccation. This is where the concern is. I don’t expect there is a problem or we would have known by now. Besides they figure if you can drink chlorine and fluoride in your water and line up for graphene oxide injections, a little glyphosate should be ok.
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Alcheminister
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So what are “Roundup Ready” crops and how prevalent are they?
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