Module: Glyphosate Residues in Our Bodies and Food

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This is the first of a series of modules, each being a short assembly of the evidence to date. I’ll add to each as new evidence rolls in, which it will continue to do. The modules will then be easily linkable for subsequent analytical pieces.

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This module will assemble the findings on glyphosate residues which independent research, in spite of its starvation ration of financial resources, has detected in our bodies, food, and crops. If anyone’s aware of evidence I don’t have here, please add it in comments. A subsequent module will assemble the experimental evidence which found harmful health effects of glyphosate and Roundup exposure, comparing the exposure levels in those studies to the residue levels documented here in our food and bodies. Another piece will compare the levels proven harmful to the levels allowed by regulators in our food and water.

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Many of the levels detected are high even compared to the invariably industry-friendly regulatory levels. But even low residue levels are significant and dangerous, since glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor. This means it can cause cancer and birth defects even at very low doses.

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*In 2013 Moms Across America and Sustainable Pulse jointly gathered ten breast milk samples, as well as 35 urine samples and 21 drinking water samples, and had these sent for testing. The lab tests found “high” levels of glyphosate residue, ranging from 76 ug/l to 166 ug/l, in 3 of the milk samples. These levels “are 760 to 1600 times higher than the European Drinking Water Directive allows for individual pesticides.” Of the 35 urine samples collected from across the US, 13 were “above the minimum detectable level”, as much as 10 times the level found in a 2013 European survey (see below). 13 of the 21 samples of drinking water “contained glyphosate levels of between 0.085 ug/l and 0.33 ug/l. This is below the levels found in both urine and breast milk but is still cause for concern, as the European (EU) maximum allowed level for glyphosate in drinking water is 0.1 ug/l.”

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Corporate science asserts without evidence that glyphosate does not bioaccumulate. This is why no regulator anywhere in the world has set a regulatory limit for the amount of glyphosate in breast milk. It’s a classical tactic: by refusing to acknowledge the phenomenon in theory or in policy, a bureaucratic system tries to disappear it from reality.

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The levels found in the breast milk testing of 76 ug/l to 166 ug/l are 760 to 1600 times higher than the European Drinking Water Directive allows for individual pesticides. They are however less than the 700 ug/l maximum contaminant level (MCL) for glyphosate in the U.S., which was decided upon by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) based on the now seemingly false premise that glyphosate was not bio-accumulative.

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These findings are especially damaging to Monsanto and the EPA because they falsify the corporate-science dogma that glyphosate does not bioaccumulate. We now know it does. This is the main fact which Monsanto is now desperate to obfuscate, as I describe below.

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*In Germany the Green Party had its own similar 2015 test done using 16 breast milk samples. The testing found residues between 0.210 and 0.432 ug/l. This is over 2-4X the EU’s allowed level in drinking water, and provides further proof of bioaccumulation.

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*In 2013 Friends of The Earth Europe commissioned a survey of people in 18 European countries, testing urine samples for glyphosate residues. “The maximum levels of glyphosate found in the tests ranged from 0.16 ug/l in Switzerland to 1.82 ug/l in Latvia.”

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*In 2013 Testbiotech found high levels of glyphosate residue in Argentine soybeans. 7 of 11 samples had levels higher than the allowed level of 20 mg/kg for EU importation. The levels were as high as almost 100 mg/kg.

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*In 2014 independent scientists performed a compositional study of an array of soybean varieties grown under commercial conditions in Iowa. The study found that soybeans engineered to be Roundup Ready and subsequently sprayed during the growing season contain extremely high levels of glyphosate and its breakdown product AMPA, an average of 9.0 mg/kg. This is a level much higher than the 5.6 mg/kg which Monsanto itself called “extreme” in a 1999 publication.

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The poison and its breakdown residues are incorporated into the tissues of the crop, which is engineered merely to assimilate them, sustaining significant weaknesses and nutritional deficiencies along the way but not dying. The poison is then an intrinsic part of the food people and livestock eat. It can’t be washed off, any more than endemic Bt insecticidal poisons, or the many other agricultural poisons which are designed to be suffused through all the tissues of the crop. When we eat any of these false crops, we are eating what are literally poison plants.

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Charles Benbrook, author of magisterial surveys of how GMOs have driven increased pesticide use, has stated that “Most genetically engineered soybeans now moving through trade channels worldwide contain 2 ppm to over 10 ppm of glyphosate plus its major metabolite, AMPA.”.

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*The US Geological Survey published a study which found that 75% of air and rain samples collected in Mississippi in 2007 contained glyphosate residue. The study compared 2007 levels in the air and water of various agricultural poisons with levels from 1995. In 2007 glyphosate, the main ingredient of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, was by far the most common poison. This is entirely on account of the explosive surge in its use since the commercialization of GMOs. In pre-GMO 1995 its usage was so low it wasn’t even measured. For comparison, atrazine, metolachlor, and propanil were detected in 50% or more of the samples in both 2007 and 1995. This is a good demonstration of how the claim made for Roundup Ready GMOs, that they would lower overall poison use, was a lie. Instead, glyphosate use has skyrocketed while the use of other herbicides has remained steady.

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*Researchers found significant glyphosate residues in honey, pancake and corn syrup, soy sauce, soy milk and tofu purchased in the Philadelphia region.

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*GMO Free USA, as part of its ongoing investigation of poison levels in popular foods including those marketed to children, has commissioned tests which found glyphosate residues (as well as identifiably GM DNA fragments) in Kellogg’s Froot Loops and Frito-Lay Sunchips.

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*Government testing for glyphosate residues in food is sporadic in Europe and nonexistent in the US. Nevertheless spotty testing in European countries has consistently found glyphosate residues in UK bread and wheat bran and German barley.

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This evidence is damaging enough to Monsanto that it has taken the step of commissioning its own fraudulent counter-study at Washington State University. The Monsanto project is directed and spoken for by a Michelle McGuire, a typical corporate-science cadre who has spent her career as a Monsanto propagandist. Propagandists like these authors (one of them is named “Lackey”, I kid you not) don’t even pretend to be real scientists anymore. Every Monsanto “study” already has two elements which automatically exclude it from the realm of science: The use of secret data and/or methods (by definition scientific information has to be fully public), and that it’s performed by or at the commission of the corporation itself. Both reason itself and the historical evidence record absolutely rule out accepting the corporation’s own “evidence” as having any validity whatsoever. We know the corporation does nothing but lie, and we know the fox cannot guard the henhouse.

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Another element we see here as well as with other pro-GMO “studies” like the recent sweet potato/HGT paper, is blatantly political and
anti-scientific editorializing by the “researchers” and their signal boosters. Based on the existing evidence, no legitimate scientist would say anything like “glyphosate does not bioaccumulate and is not present in human milk” or that “the Moms Across America study flat out got it wrong”. The evidence calls for vastly more modest statements than these, if one is a scientist. Will Ferguson, the corporate publicist who wrote the press release, tells various direct lies, such as that Covance Labs, the “independent verifier” of the original study’s analysis which was conducted by Monsanto itself (!), has no relationship with Monsanto. In fact Covance has a longstanding close professional relationship with Monsanto. Ferguson also claims to be one of those idiots who wouldn’t be able to find the US on a map, since according to his headline he thinks two small Northwest cities comprise “the US”. The Orwellian character of these studies and their publicity methods proves that they’re not scientific nor meant to be, but are meant to be propaganda blasts dressed up in pseudo-science garb.

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McGuire is not a scientist but a fraud and a criminal liar. I propose that fighters for Food Sovereignty become more relentless and assertive in publicizing this fact, in every such case of Science Fraud. This example is also the first of a series.

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