Letter to the Minister of Health – Govt of Canada

Friday, June 20, 2014

Dear Honourable Minister Ambrose

Subject: Testing body fluids including milk for presence of Glyphosate, for Canadians

We are a group of concerned citizens in a grassroots organization, Canadians for Glyphosate Testing, that wish to know the extent to which this synthetic killer chemical named Glyphosate has entered our living space, our food and our body.

Glyphosate is the active poison in Monsanto’s RoundUp weed killer and in many other brands today, and is the highest selling poisonous chemical in the planet. It is also suspected to be linked with rapid rise of many serious illnesses from autism and cancer to celiac, crown’s, infertility and others, and with possible species extinctions in the past 20 years.

People are basically fed up with inaction from our medical and political system with regard to finding out to what extent people may have been poisoned by Glyphosate. it is their right to know, so they decided to engage directly and get the tests done with their own money, bypassing the entire Government health system.

In this endeavour, we were shocked to learn that there is no lab in Canada that can even test Glyphosate in body fluids. This is being considered as evidence that the Canadian Government never considered accumulation of this weed killer in humans as a safety concern, despite doubts raised on the subject globally both by independent scientists and public. Canada apparently has never ordered any long term independent study, outside of control of the industry or politicians, to test toxicity effects on mammals due exposure to Glyphosate or its accumulation in body. Canada does not even have a lab to check presence of Glyphosate in animals and people. Labs here can apparently test for Glyphosate only in water and soil, and nothing else, that too at a relatively steep cost of $250 to 300 per test – quite out of range for ordinary Canadians.

We have thankfully found labs in the US that will use ELISA screening (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) method to test for Glyphosate in all kinds of matrices such as water, urine, soil, milk, and various kinds of food at a more reasonable cost of $100 to 150.

Further, we found that some labs may consider performing these tests in large batches, if there is public interest, thus bringing the price substantially down, within reach of average people. Thus, the people in Canada are now engaging in a nationwide Glyphosate testing initiative. Groups are forming in all regions that will collect samples and order testing in batches, collecting funds to do so. Poor & homeless people are likely more exposed to the toxin since they cannot afford to be selective on what they eat. They are also least likely to be able to afford testing their urine. So we initiated a crowd funding scheme to support them.

Testing of milk, both human breast milk from nursing mothers and cow milk has posed a problem. Although individual labs can do these tests in USA for over $100, we could not find any lab initially that could do batch processing of milk at a lower cost.

Testing milk is important. Monsanto claims that Glyphosate does not pose a problem even if ingested by mammals, because the body flushes it out through urine and feces. Based on that assumption, the limit to which the chemical can be present in the environment has been set higher. Therefore, finding it in breast milk, or even cow milk, would prove that mammals cannot flush it all out and it can accumulate, and that the limits allowed in the Environment should be lowered drastically. Glyphosate has been discovered in breast milk from nursing mothers in the US recently.

Luckily, we have obtained details of how a lab can separate the clear liquid in milk from the white fatty matter so that this clear liquid can then be tested accurately for Glyphosate, using the ELISA kit. Technical documents on this have been passed to a few inquisitive US and Canadian labs. We hope that some day, Canadian labs would be able to test human breast milk, cow milk and a whole range of other food products economically, for Canadian citizens, even if the Government or the healthcare industry will not engage in it.

The purpose of this writing is two fold. This is not to plead with the Government to consider funding this Citizen’s test. People believe that the ministry of health might only look for excuses why this test should not be done. The people have therefore decided to bypass the Government and conduct their own tests, and find out how much they have been poisoned and from what sources.

The reason we write this are to ask:

1. If the Government might consider assisting and encouraging a few labs in Canada to expand their services to include low cost volume processing of human body fluids as well as food etc for presence of Glyphosate, so that we do not have to send money overseas and support the US lab science industry. We should be supporting our own.
2. Why does the Government bother setting safe limits of Glyphosate in water, if it does not care if the same Glyphosate accumulates humans and animals?

Please also note, this grassroots group is transparent and open source. This letter may be circulated among members, volunteers, local organizers and the general public, through emails, social media or on the web, and may get into my own blog at – www.tonu.org.

Thanking you

On behalf of Canadians for Glyphosate Testing

Tony Mitra
Blog: http://www.tonu.org/
Web: http://gmofreenetwork.com/