California Declares Roundup a Carcinogen
Organic Lifestyle Comments Off on California Declares Roundup a Carcinogen
California’s Environmental Protection Agency will now list glyphosate — the toxic main ingredient in the U.S.’ best-selling weedkiller, Roundup — as known to cause cancer, writes Claire Bernish in Antimedia..
Under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 — usually referred to as Proposition 65, its original name — chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm are required to be listed and published by the state. Chemicals also end up on the list if found to be carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) — a branch of the World Health Organization.
In March, the IARC released a report that found glyphosate to be a “probable carcinogen.”
Besides the “convincing evidence” the herbicide can cause cancer in lab animals, the report also found:
“Case-control studies of occupational exposure in the U.S.A., Canada, and Sweden reported increased risk for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustments to other pesticides.”
California’s decision to place glyphosate on the toxic chemicals list is the first of its kind. As Dr. Nathan Donley of the Center for Biological Diversity said in an email to Ecowatch, “As far as I’m aware, this is the first regulatory agency within the U.S. to determine that glyphosate is a carcinogen. So this is a very big deal.”
Now that California EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has filed its “notice of intent to list” glyphosate as a known cancer agent, the public will have until October 5th to comment. There are no restrictions on sale or use associated with the listing.
Monsanto was seemingly baffled by the decision to place cancer-causing glyphosate on the state’s list of nearly 800 toxic chemicals. Spokesperson for the massive company, Charla Lord, told Agri-Pulse that “glyphosate is an effective and valuable tool for farmers and other users, including many in the state of California. During the upcoming comment period, we will provide detailed scientific information to OEHHA about the safety of glyphosate and work to ensure that any potential listing will not affect glyphosate use or sales in California.”
Over 650,000 tons of Roundup are sprayed on crops around the world annually, particularly on Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready varieties — genetically engineered to tolerate large doses of the herbicide to facilitate blanket application without harming crops. Studies from Canada to Mexico have found Roundup in drinking water, on crops, in the rain, and in the air. It is not only carcinogenic, it’s ubiquitous.
***
THE WORLD IN 2065
2065—that’s 50 years from now. I won’t be around, but I will make some predictions about the time that’s coming a half century in the future.
THE TRIUMPH OF ORGANIC FARMING. Call it organic farming, eco-agriculture, sustainable farming, or what you will, this world can only feed itself properly by returning to its roots and creating a food production system that can run in perpetuity without poisoning the plants, animals, and people who live on it. That means basing this benign agriculture on nature’s own methods of creating harmony in the wilderness: recycling all organic matter, enhancing the life in the soil, and making life tolerable for all creatures in a strong, biodiverse, agricultural ecosystem. If it ain’t sustainable, it won’t last.
DEALING WITH DISRUPTIVE, MAN-MADE GENES. Much time and treasure will be spent in the future seeking out and destroying unnatural genetic modifications that have escaped into the world and cause disruptions in natural life processes. Mankind has just begun to produce these modified genes, but as time goes by unforeseen consequences will emerge and become evident as we find these genes creating problems in the biosphere.
MANY MORE NATURE PRESERVES. We are entering the sixth great extinction of species on earth, and it looks to be one of the most comprehensive. In order to protect those species still remaining, “islands” of land and water large enough for species to fit into a local ecosystem will be established. No building or economic development will be allowed in them. Without these islands of safe habitat on the land and in the oceans, the world’s biodiversity will be greatly diminished, and thus the health of the world will be damaged.
THE SEAS WILL RISE. It’s debatable how much the seas will rise, but if we keep on our present course, scientists estimate that within a couple of hundred years, even the great Antarctic Ice Shelf will have melted and the seas will have risen 150 feet above the current sea level. The continued dumping of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuel, the release of frozen methane from the melting permafrost in the Polar Regions, and the replacement of reflective ice with dark and heat-absorbing open water will form an unstoppable feedback loop of global temperature rise and subsequent climate change.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CARBON SEQUESTRATION STRATEGIES. No “silver bullet” exists to avoid the heat-trapping effects of using the atmosphere as a carbon dump. Many strategies will have to be developed—and sooner rather than later. Using biochar in agriculture, inventing scrubbers that pull carbon from the air and sequester it in the earth, developing systems that use renewable energy instead of fossil fuels, changes in eating patterns and lifestyle, and many other strategies not yet invented will be necessary to bring carbon emissions into the atmosphere to a standstill, let alone reverse it.
THE JUDICIOUS USE OF OCEAN RESOURCES. Just as farming must become sustainable, so must the use of ocean resources like fishing. This includes ways to get the islands of floating plastic out of the water before it all disintegrates into tiny pieces (it never goes away) that kills off sea life.
NEW LIVING ARRANGEMENTS WILL PROLIFERATE. A family of four living in a 3,800 square foot house will not be a tenable option for almost anyone in the future. More shared living arrangements and communal style housing will develop because of affordability and better use of resources. The movement of people from the countryside to cities will continue, but will level off by 2065. Better mass transit systems will allow city dwellers to more easily commute to the countryside for hands-on work, while the development of high tech and robotic infrastructure will continue to expand the ability of people to work from their homes without commuting.
THE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES WILL JOIN HANDS. Christians, Jews, and Muslims are siblings of Father Abraham and have fought each other with bloody consequences for ages. Islam will pass through its current barbaric phase to form, along with Christianity and Judaism, a spiritual safety net that encourages kindness, care for the distressed and afflicted, and a realization that all three religious traditions worship the same deity.
RAPACIOUS CAPITALISM WILL DIE. It will be replaced by some form of western socialism. The countries that will be doing the best economically will be similar to the wealthy countries of socialist Western Europe today: the Scandinavian countries and Germany.
CHINA WILL GO THROUGH A MAJOR CONVULSION. And it will come out on the other side if not a democracy, at least a country where the people rather than an elite are the power base. It will grow in power and influence. It will be the world’s superpower. The United States will still play an important role on the world’s stage, but China’s destiny is plainly in view. The challenge for the U.S. is how to prevent Chinese militarism when it itself continues to be the most militaristic country on earth. The longer and stronger the military-industrial complex calls the tune in Washington, the worse off the future looks for the U.S. Preventing Chinese militarism may only be accomplished by the U.S. presenting a model for de-fanging its own militarism.
NATO WILL BECOME THE WORLD’S COP. There were always high hopes that the U.N. peacekeeping forces would function as the world’s cop, but it is fundamentally feckless. NATO has the muscle, but it can’t devolve into a militaristic authority. It somehow has to win the cooperation of Russia and China, and perhaps the African Union and other political institutions, in its efforts to put out wars and political brushfires. This may require the re-casting of NATO as something else entirely—something less threatening to countries to its east.
SPORTS WILL BECOME EVEN MORE GLOBAL AND IMPORTANT. Nationalism exists, and when its energy finds political channels, a la “American exceptionalism,” it can cause great mischief. Sports has an important function in channeling the nationalistic impulse into sporting contests and teams that people feel allegiance to. This is a great safety valve for world peace. In 50 years, the baseball World Series may indeed be a world series. The Olympics will continue to augment this development.
GREAT ADVANCES IN MEDICINE. The next 50 years are going to see huge advances in the treatment of illness, and especially in the understanding of the etiology of major illnesses. The role of diet and food choices will step out of the murk of contradictory advice into the surety of how to eat for maximum health. Molecular biology will begin to link up with quantum understandings. DNA analysis will be cheap and routine. Exercise will remain important, but there will continue to be no hope for couch potatoes.
***
PRAISE THE LORD AND PASS THE AMMUNITION
A company in Florida is selling a “Christian” AR-15 assault rifle with a Crusader’s cross etched on one side and Psalm 144:1 on the other — “Blessed be the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.” Named “The Crusader,” the gun also features a three-setting trigger control labeled Peace, War, and God Wills It.
***
MONSANTO FOUND GUILTY OF POISONING FARMER
A French court has upheld a 2012 ruling in which Monsanto was found guilty of chemical poisoning of a French farmer, who says he suffered neurological problems after inhaling the U.S. company’s Lasso weedkiller.
The decision by an appeal court in Lyon, southeast France, confirmed the initial judgment, the first such case heard in court in France, that ruled Monsanto was “responsible” for the intoxication and ordered the company to “fully compensate” grain grower Paul Francois.
Monsanto’s lawyer said the U.S. biotech company would now take the case to France’s highest appeal court.
Francois, who says he suffered memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto’s Lasso in 2004, blames the agri-business giant for not providing adequate warnings on the product label.
***
ARE OUR FOODS BECOMING LESS NUTRITIOUS?
According to a study by Donald R. Davis of the Biochemical Institute at The University of Texas in Austin, they are. Here’s the abstract of his paper:
“Three kinds of evidence point toward declines of some nutrients in fruits and vegetables available in the United States and the United Kingdom: 1) early studies of fertilization found inverse relationships between crop yield and mineral concentrations—the widely cited “dilution effect”; 2) three recent studies of historical food composition data found apparent median declines of 5% to 40% or more in some minerals in groups of vegetables and perhaps fruits; one study also evaluated vitamins and protein with similar results; and 3) recent side-by-side plantings of low- and high-yield cultivars of broccoli and grains found consistently negative correlations between yield and concentrations of minerals and protein, a newly recognized genetic dilution effect.”
In less technical terms, as crop yields increase, nutrients decrease. The yields may be stimulated by the use of large amounts of chemical fertilizers, or by the use of high-yielding varieties of the crop.
Other studies have shown that organic foods often have superior nutritional content, even when yields are lower than on conventional farms. The reason is that conventional farms push yields higher chemically, while organic farming techniques rely on increasing the fertility and life in the soil, allowing the plants to build tissues that have higher levels of nutrients.
***
THE RETURN OF MYSTERY MEAT
Some say Americans have a fundamental right to know what’s in our food and where it comes from, but that’s just wishful thinking.
The World Trade Organization, some foreign countries, and even some members of Congress are working hard to take away that right to know.
At issue is “country of origin labeling” of meat (COOL), which requires that meat sold in the United States specifies where it originated. Some foreign countries, including Canada and Mexico, plus the meat packing industry, believe these overwhelmingly popular labels are too burdensome or unfair. And the Republican-controlled U.S. House recently took drastic measures to repeal these labels.
The laws governing country of origin labels require companies to list where food was raised, processed, and packaged. That’s why if COOL requirements were fully repealed, the outcome would be a huge victory for the meat processing industry. Repeal of these labels would allow the industry to save millions by importing cheaper meats from other countries or send meat to countries like China for processing without American consumers ever knowing the difference.
Lawmakers in the Senate have introduced extremely weak legislation – to pacify America’s trading partners and the meat industry – which would fully repeal mandatory labels and establish a voluntary labeling system. But if history is any indication, we know the meat industry won’t use these voluntary labels.
According to a poll conducted by the Consumer Federation of America, an overwhelming 90 percent of Americans support mandatory country of origin labeling and favor even more specific information about where meat is raised, slaughtered, and packaged.
***
MONSANTO ENLISTS SCIENTISTS TO WHITEWASH ITS PRODUCTS
What happens when a private company with a long history of producing some of the most toxic chemicals on the planet and now produces our food starts facing public pressure from a growing national grassroots movement to label their products to conform with basic principles of democracy and transparency? So asks Dave Murphy of Food Democracy Now. Here’s his answer:
Well, if the company in question is Monsanto, then you take a page out of Big Tobacco’s playbook and hatch a secret plan to enlist public university scientists to bury the potential harm of your genetically engineered crops by whitewashing negative studies and systematically demonizing your opponents in the media to mislead elected officials and the American public about the safety of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and their accompanying toxic pesticides.
Here’s a little history lesson, in the 1940s, tobacco companies ran ads with doctors proclaiming smoking cigarettes were perfectly safe. In 1946, the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company ran a now infamous campaign called “More Doctors” recommend Camels after “surveying” more than 113,597 doctors “from every branch of medicine.” Camels’ slogan at the time was, “Not a cough in a carload.” In reality, the tobacco company’s advertising agency employees questioned doctors at medical conferences and their offices and used these fake results to deceive a generation of smokers.
Today, Monsanto and the biotech industry are copying the same tactics, this time hiding behind the façade of public university scientists and hiring major PR firms to promote GMOs and the toxic weedkiller Roundup.
The New York Times recently released a stunning expose of how Monsanto and the biotech industry enlisted allegedly independent public university scientists in a deceptive campaign to lobby state legislators in Pennsylvania, interfere with ballot initiatives in Oregon and Colorado, and paper over risks of high pesticide usage on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
According to New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton, as the GMO labeling debate was coming to a boil in America in the past three years, Monsanto and their “industry partners retooled their lobbying and public relations strategy to spotlight a rarefied group of advocates: academics, brought in for the gloss of impartiality and weight of authority that come with a professor’s pedigree.”
And why would Monsanto want to do this? Because independent scientist from public university come with a major halo effect, something that Monsanto’s top lobbyists mention repeatedly in the recently released emails to public university scientists.
***
ENDING GMO CONFUSION
There’s a lot of misinformation and disinformation about genetically modified organisms out there. How can a non-scientist evaluate what’s being said?
One way is to read a fascinating new book titled, “Sex, Love, and DNA—What Molecular Biology Teaches Us about Being Human,” by molecular biologist Peter Schattner. Although he’s a scientist, the book is written for non-scientists.
It provides deep insights into how and why proteins and DNA control our development, both mental and physical, from birth to death. And in so doing, it gives us great insight into why genetic engineering is such a biological disaster in the making.
The book is $19.95 from Olingo Press.
###
