Monthly Archives: February 2017

Food from China largely free of glyphosate

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We did not expect Chinese foods to be free of glyphosate, primarily because of two reasons.

  • China is the world’s largest producer of glyphosate.
  • China is known to be the largest importer of Argentinian, Brazilian and US RoundUp Ready Soy. The Argentinian Soy being grown in the Pampas is known for aerial spray over the plains which are suspected to be linked to birth defects of indigenous people that live there.

However, the records from CFIA’s testing of foods available in Canada, both of local and imported origin, show a trend of remarkably clean foods as imported from China into Canada.

This had originally made me skeptical and doubt the quality of my transcription of the CFIA data, or the selection of sampling varieties by CFIA. However, as more data is transcribed, totalling over 3,700 records, I can see that the samples have a wide variety. Also, readings of similar foods grown in other countries including Canada and the US are showing much higher level of glyphosate in them. Eventually I had to acknowledge, grudgingly at first, that for some inexplicable reason, the foods exported from China to Canada are a lot better in terms of glyphosate poisoning, than one might expect.

There are around 120 samples of foods listed by CFIA as originating from China, among the fist 3,700 odd records. The average parts per billion count of glyphosate and AMPA turns out to be below 5. This makes China among the best five countries whose foods are available in Canada, and whose sample numbers as tested by CFIA is above 40. The few countries that beat China in this category of clean food supply, are Mexico, Thailand, South Africa and Peru. This has been covered in a separate blog. A few other countries also have exported very good food to Canada, and their numbers are catching up, such as Bolivia, with 23 samples and an average ppb of 4.

Since soy is a big item in Chinese cuisine, there was an expectedly high number of samples tested that contained soy. So a separate table was prepared for them, as shon above. With 26 samples, the average ppb count came to be just 5, and the worst one, a dry, roasted, salted, gluten free soy product, had 51 ppb of the herbicide.

Although soy is also a bean, it was separated from other beans because of the number of samples and because of its prevalence in Chinese food. The rest of the bean containing samples were compiled in a second table, shown above.

A single bad sample, of Pinto Beans with a combined ppb of glyphosate and AMPA measured 204. All others had either zero or low values of the herbicide. The average ppb in this group, totalling 24 samples, came to 10.3.

Next come the grains. Again, out of 21 samples, only a few had any glyphosate or AMPA. The highest concentration was only 24.8 ppb in a sample of Barley. The average ppb for this group was 2.3.

And then comes a long list of almost fifty samples that all showed zero glyphosate.

I consolidated that longish list by category type and number of samples, as shown here. The largest number of samples in this group are baby food.

I remember the local story of baby food scandal in the interiors of China some years ago, when I heard it from locals during one of my past work visits to the coastal region.

Apparently, there was this odd phenomenon of babies in the interior being reported to have a proportionately larger head for its body. Eventually some doctors and specialists went there to look into it and found a whole different and horrible story. The heads were normal, but the body was underdeveloped. The root cause was found to be lack of nutrients and too much of synthetic stuff that looks like food into the baby formulae.

At that time, China was making the major change from a state controlled economy to a free market entrepreneurship. In the process, food quality inspection and control was not as well established, especially in the rural areas, as they should have been. So free market entrepreneurship when rampant and at reached at times extreme levels of adulteration.

Also, at the same time, westernization and modernism was spreading into the rural heartlands, where nursing through breast milk was not as cool as giving modern balanced food through baby formulae.

The combination of all this was causing severe malnourishment in babies. This practice was reportedly put a stop to, and ruthlessly, by a new regime of quality control in baby food. That is what I heard at the time.

And now, so many years later, here is a list of 15 baby food samples from China, tested in Canada, show absolutely no glyphosate at all. Of course, glyphosate was not the issue at the time – adulteration and lack of nutrition was. The current test involves glyphosate and AMPA only. I suspect the reasons such large number of Chinese baby foods are in the test records is because Canadians that trace their origin back to China might be importing these foods for their babies. This is just a guess.

Anyhow, this post was made with the best efforts to show that, whatever might be the case with China producing glyphosate and importing Argentinian RoundUp Ready Soy, the   samples of foods imported from China and collected in Canada seem to show a remarkably clean range of foods comprising of grains, soy, beans and various other natural and processed foods.

All these records were based on the first 3,700 odd records, or about half of the total numbers of tests conducted by CFIA. When the rest are also transcribed, I should be revisiting this topic, if there is a major change in the findings.

A note of caution

We should remember that China is the largest producer as well as exporter of glyphosate, for Roundup as well as many other glyphosate based herbicides for sales around the world.

Following learned from some Chinese activists :
In 2015 and 2016, over 80 million tons of RR (RoundUp Ready) soybeans soaked with glyphosate residues were imported into China, mostly from USA, Brazil and Argentina. They contain neurotoxin solvent hexane (with carcinogen benzene residues) chemically extracted for the RR soybean oil with glyphosate/AMPA residue flooding the domestic food market (inside China).

The side-product RR soybean meal soaked with glyphosate + hexane + benzene residue is partly processed into animal feed, and partly processed into human consumed RR soybean protein, added to ham, sausages, frozen food, bread, cakes, soy milk, infant formulas etc etc. These are again sold on the Chinese market.

China still produces about 10 million tons of non-GMO soybeans, including much smaller amount of organic soybeans. American, European, Japanese importers actively purchase them for processing medical products, health care products and food products, and in many cases hire inspectors to test these soybeans in the field.

Chinese companies exporting food products to USA, Europe, Japan etc., are very careful in only using non-GM soybeans to process such products, Chinese government inspection bureaus also carefully test exported food products, making sure they are not processed by RR soybeans with glyphosate residue which only enter the food supply for Chinese domestic consumption.

For the above reason, China experiences the same dramatic increase of malignant diseases as in the USA

Reference article by Chinese Military Scientist on GM Watch.

Its a bizarre world.

Comments welcome.

Wheat finally shows up

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Its been a long while, over 45 days that I have been pouring over the CFIA data – transcribing, cross checking, error correcting, and reading through the results to make sense of it all.

It has been exhilarating and disappointing the same time. Exhilarating because I managed to get the food testing data from CFIA. Disappointing because it clearly shows that foods produced in Canada and USA are without a question the very worst in the world, when it comes to glyphosate/AMPA poisoning. More than disappointing, it has been heartbreaking to face the harsh and glaring truth that your government may be in collusion, knowingly or unknowingly, in slow-poisoning you, and in a manner that leaves a smaller and smaller path, not well defined that too, for you to avoid subjecting yourself to slow-poison from your food.

It is heartbreaking to see how this toxic, dangerous and unnecessary technology can strong arm its way into every facet of a supposedly democratic system and pollute its science, regulatory mechanism, academia, media, and the widest imaginable swath of political process, leaving virtually no clear avenue for the people to correct this wholesale chemical attack on society and an assault on nature.

But one thing that baffled, annoyed, disappointed me at the same time, was absence of the very foods that were suspected to be at the top of the this glyphosate pyramid: wheat, canola and corn.

And now, after 45 breathtaking days and a lot of sleepless or fretful nights, long hours of thinking through, transcribing and fruitlessly searching for the elusive data on glyphosate test involving wheat, corn and canola, finally I begin to see a glimmer of hope on one side, and the ominous indication that what folks suspected all along, is actually true. Wheat and wheat products have much glyphosate.

CFIA started sampling foods for glyphosate testing back in 2015. But it took till the middle of 2016, and almost 3000 tests of other foods, for them to first start taking samples of wheat and wheat products, collected mostly in the eastern maritime provinces marked by CFIA as “Atlantic”, for glyphosate testing. And the results do not look pretty at all.

Other than a few Canadian and US products, a vast majority of the samples are recorded as “unknown” of origin. This has been a source of major vexation for me. I suspect most of them are local, i.e. Canadian. Canada is not a major importer of wheat at all, since it produces more than it needs. Also both Canada and USA protect their respective agricultural sector against each other and against the rest of the world. So most of the US foods that are also grown in Canada, cannot be imported without a hefty tax, and vice versa.

I know this protection of local agriculture from foreign competition in itself was a very sore point for many emerging nations at the WTO talks, primary irritant being India. I might even add that such resistance against one-sided free trade deals involving only manufactured goods, banking and other services with the emerging nations while keeping agriculture out of the same deal was the straw that more or less broke the camel’s back with many of the emerging and third world nations backing and standing behind India on this account, which was cleverly sidestepped by the media, but more or less killed the WTO where it stood at the time. That collapse of the global free market trade talks in turn created the need for regional agreements, bypassing such irritant nations, and we started seeing the likes of TPP etc. I am yet to read any meaningful report from the media or any of the trade-guru with a fair, balanced and inclusive report on these issues covering all sides of the argument – one reason I also have a low opinion of financial, political, and trade experts as well as politicians that talk about such trade deals. They are buffoons and jokers, far as I am concerned – not worth the time.

Anyhow, these are the reasons I suspect most of the “unknown” wheat samples are of Canadian origin.

There are mentions of pasta – which do not say they are made of wheat flour, but I suspect they do.

One sample is from Italy, but it may well be that the Italians made that product out of wheat initially imported from Canada in the first place.

There is a lot more to do with and about wheat, from my end, to try and bring as much of the story out to the people as possible in the coming days and weeks. I shall also include them in the book.

I have no doubt that, should this effort gain traction and begin to get noticed outside of a small group of interested parties, then there would be counter comments from “experts” claiming to be scientists, nutritionist, politicians, lobbyist and the like, stating either that my statements are my opinion only (true), and are not based on facts (which can be argued since fact and fiction has been allowed to merge heavily and freely in the current system of smokes and mirrors). But these false-experts do not bother me since I hold these people in such low esteem that I cannot bother to consider their comments. Before I can take anyone’s opinion serously on this issue, he/she has to first earn my respect.

I would consider discussing glyphosate safety levels if and when:

1) Government encourages Scientific study on glyphosate in food and environment in public institutions such as universities to be funded by public and not industry, and bans the industry and politicians for interfering with the study

2) When scientists are funded and given a free hand in checking both good as well as potentially harmful effects of glyphosate on humans, on biological diversity, and on the micro organisms at the base of the food chain, and none of their findings are hounded, attacked, or withdrawn from the body of literature, allowed chips are allowed to fall where they may.

3) When twenty or thirty years have passed with such free and unfettered investigation has been conducted on Glyphosate

4) When safety tests on glyphosate that go with the application for approval and registry of this molecule is conducted by approved independent third parties outside of industry or political meddling, but at the cost of the producer of the product, as a minimum requirement for product approval, and all known avenues of a conflict of interest has been eliminated

5) When all such safety test records are automatically placed in public domain for anybody to recheck and raise an alarm if they find evidence that the pesticide may have caused harm to test animals

only then, I might consider spending even two seconds of my time to hear what these jokers have to say. Till such time, they remain jokers, in my mind.

My only response to them might be a suggestion that they fix a red ball on their nose, paint their face garishly, put on ballooning pants with polka dots on them, wear huge floppy shoes, and join a circus.

Meanwhile, I have much more homework to do.

Another thing that is beginning to show up in the records is – corn.

Mexico, Thailand, Peru, S.A., China among cleanest food exporters to Canada

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Subject covered in this blog will grow and expand, and may get included into the book eventually. This post is made after transcribing around 3,000 records and going back for some error correction and cleaning up of the data so far transcribed.

I look up at the statistics offered by the service provider who hosts my tonu.org blog site where I put up the WordPress blogs, most of which has been to do with food security in general, and Glyphosate in particular in the recent years.

One of the statistics provided is for me to see which area of the world had people that liked looking into and reading my blogs in the last few days. I could even check more details such as which particular blog post was or had been read, or which devices were used (computer, tablet, or smart phone etc). This is how I came to know that quite a few folks actually look at my blog using tablets and smart phones, and not necessarily computers. This was a sort of revelation for me, since I personally find a smart phone too small to read blogs. However, I understand that the so called smart phones are becoming very powerful and versatile gadgets where the “phone” service is only one part, and that there are increasingly more number of people that use just one device, such as a smart phone, for all their needs including browsing the net.

Who in the world is reading about glyphosate in Canadian food?

I also take note when folks from uncommon places, or places that do not seem to have heavy readership in the past look into my blog,

Russia had been an interesting cast. First, English is perhaps not the major language folks read or speak, though things are perhaps changing, and penetration of english as an international language is creeping into Russia as well. Also, Russia is largely a promoter of clean food. It has justification in being suspicious of the toxic agricultural technology coming out of the US. Also, a very large part of the total Russian food supply comes from home grown food – I think to the tune of some 40% or so. In other words, small farmer and home grown food is deeply enmeshed into the Russian culture. I feel this is a very good thing, in light of what is happening in the west with regard to industrially grown and processed stuff that goes in the name of food.

Clean Food exporters to Canada

And since my blogs mostly deals with the toxicity issue in industrial food systems that Russia appears to be wary of, and since my blog is invariably in English, I did not expect heavy readership from Russia, and am not surprised to see few hits from there.

However, I do see a persistent interest from the area of the three major Russian cities from the west – St. Petersburg, Moscow and Volgograd. These three names are sort of deer to me because of a different reason – I have been fascinated by Russian resistant to German invasion, and in particular the battles for Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad. Hitler lost all three of these battles, but the carnage and hardship endured by people in Leningrad (Ex Petrograd and todays St. Petersburg) as well as Stalingrad (today’s Volgograd) is unimaginable. This also confirmed to me that the Russian character (and not necessarily their past communist regime) has a fierce sense of patriotism and ability to withstand unimaginable hardships in order to endure and keep their nation from foreign subjugation. This is also borne out in the previous western invasions into Russia going back to the time of Napoleon.

I had read a vast number of books, of German, Soviet Russian, American as well as post Soviet Russian versions of the battles and the history continues to amaze me, although I abhor wars in general, I find the essence of the Russian character under stress to be something to learn from.

And so, when I see hits from these cities, two of which have changed their name after the end of Communism. They removed Lenin from Leningrad and gave back the original name, St. Petersburg. I am however, a bit confused about this. I know the town was founded by the Tzar Peter the Great of Russia and was named after him as Petrograd. However, the current name – St. Petersburg, implies it is named after a saint. Peter the great was a tzar, and although he is called Peter the great, he was a mortal and not a saint. So who is the current town named after?

Then, in random order, comes two areas from Africa. Africa has not been a place where my blog generates interest. Therefore I was happy to see Lagos, Nigeria, being one dot on the map. And there has been relatively consistent interest from South Africa, from towns such as Durban.

Regarding Alaska, I can make a faint guess as who it might be, since I had a recent exchange with someone there that has an interest in the subject of Glyphosate in food.

I noted Guadalhara, Mexico for two reasons. First, I find the name so charming – Guadalhara. I wish I knew what it meant and where the name originates from. The second reason is, Mexico is the only country in North America that provided consistently high quality food to Canada with virtually no glyphosate. I am preparing a fresh blog on countries that exported food to Canada, where the number of samples tested by CFIA is larger than a minimum of 40, and where the average glyphosate content per sample is less than 5 parts er billion.

Mexico tops the list with a few others, and stands like an exceptionally shiny example for North America, since the other two in the continent – Canada and USA go to the bottom of the pile as the countries that have the most toxic foods on average, with regards to glyphosate.

I am not yet ready for the blog since I have to delve into some specifics of which kinds of food are imported into Canada from these cleanest suppliers (of which there are a few more besides Mexico) and if there is something to be learned from that for the consumers.

Also, I made a sort of temporary halt to further transcriptions as I found some errors in the records between records 2,500 and 3,000 and decided to go back there with a magnifying glass and clean it up instead of leaving it for later. I did managed to clean most of it off, but lost some data in the process and am re-entering them, and feeling better for having done it this way.

Anyhow, on to the hit list map.

Buenos Aires, Argentina flashed up recently. I do not have much contact with folks there, but find the name Buenos Aires, very charming and understand that is means “good air” or something like that. Lovely !

I am very aware of the devastation going on with regard to industrial level growing of RoundUp ready GM soy in the pampas, where aerial spray of the chemical is suspected to be causing serious birth defects in the villages where the indigenous (first nation) people stay, and how laboratory tests in Buenos Aires conducted on flog embryo by subjecting the mother frogs to corresponding levels ( corresponding to body weight) of glyphosate resulted in comparable birth defects of the similar type that are being found in the newborns in the Pampas villages.

I am aware of the fact that most of this soy goes to China, for production of soy based food, which would have made me suspicious of the foods the Chinese are eating. However, the Chinese foods imported into Canada and tested by CFIA turns out to be very clean. This is another puzzle that I intend to dig into later. It is possible that Canada is not importing the toxic kinds of Chinese food, which may be left for the Chinese consumers. However, it also raises a second question – where do the Chinese restaurants in Canada get their soy sauce, or tofu from?

All these made me notice the spot – Buenos Aires, on the map.

Canada and USA has always been heavy readers of the blog, and the dots are so closely packed that I often cannot pick out unusual towns and villages from the map, exceptions aside, like Alaska.

Likewise in Europe. However, I have seen an increased level of interest of late from countries such as Poland. And today, I noted a repeat visit from Scandinavia, Ireland and Greece.

In Asia, India is a consistent visitor to my blog. Even then, I managed to pick up a new name – Bhawan, in the Himalayan foothills not far from Delhi.

Sihet in Bangladesh, Bangkok in Thailand, and Wuhan in China caught my attention. Thailand should be equally pleased with my next blog, since that is one more great country whose foods have been tested by CFIA coving a large sample base and found to be remarkably clean with respect to glyphosate poisoning.

From the middle east there has been some sporadic interests, often from Israel. This time UAE shows up.

That about sums it up with the blog hit map for today, as I ponder into the details of the few countries that so far seems to export very clean food to Canada, with regard to glyphosate poisoning.

Thanks for reading. Comments welcome.