There is more to a story than what goes around. I have seen enough part truths and veiled truths about how CFIA test results ended on my table, that resulted in writing of the book “Poison Foods of North America”.
The story going around is that the Canadian Government might have tested foods for glyphosate merely because WHO made a declaration that glyphosate was a probably human carcinogen. This is not true. Canada does not have the reputation of being that concerned about food safety. Had that not been the case, Canada would not be the producer of the most toxic foods of all, along with the US.
The story started long before WHO declared carcinogenicity of glyphosate. First, it started with me getting acquainted with scientists such as Anthony Samsel, Stephanie Seneff, Don Huber and Thierry Vrain, and being convinced that I should pay a lot more attention to the ravages of glyphosate and stop being fixated at GMO along. I needed to understand that Roundup Ready GM crops were first invented in order to sell more glyphosate, and that glyphosate was far and away the most sold biocide on earth and it was far more dangerous than DDT that was banned back in the 1960s. It was then that I got the first jolt. I had completed touring Canada with Thierry Vrain in 2014. It started with me getting fed up with the anti-GMO groups that refused to join hands with me to start asking questions to the government and to force them to a) disclose hitherto hidden safety documents and to b) start finding ways to test food for glyphosate.
MP Atamanenko
It took me a few hundred calls to the Canadian labs to eventually discover that Canada not only never tested food for glyphosate, which was being used in Canadian agriculture for more than 40 years, but that there was not a single registered lab in Canada that would test food for glyphosate. A very small number of labs tested glyphosate at the time, but only in samples of soil and water. Nothing else.
Sure, they could test food if needed. But they had to devise protocol for same, get accredited and spend a lot of money to set up new sections in their lab, where new instruments would be used, without contaminating sections where soil and water were tested for glyphosate. All this costs money. Since the Government and the medical system was not asking for testing of foods for glyphosate, there was no market for it. Tony Mitra asking for a handful of samples was not a reasonable market indication.
It was then that I started writing to the Government, starting with the Health Ministry under the then Harper Government, to do something so that labs start testing foods for glyphosate – the most used herbicide in Canada. My efforts caught the attention of MP Alex Atamanenko, who called me up from Ottawa and asked for a copy of my letter to the health minister Ms Rona Ambrose. He took that letter, added his own cover letter and demanded that Ms Ambrose responds to my letter and makes a statement on why Canada has no lab that would test glyphosate in food and why the government was not testing the most used herbicide in Canadian agriculture.
That, more than WHO declaring glyphosate as a probable carcinogen, got the government to start testing glyphosate in all foods. Had the Government really been concerned about cancer risk, then it would have done an honest job of analyzing the results and discovering that Canada produces the most toxic foods on the planet along with the US, and would have done something to arrest the toxic avalanche. But Canada did not take any of the corrective measure. Instead, to hide the fact that Canadian foods were more toxic than other countries, it mixed all results, took an average, which was much lower than Canadian figures and make a blank and dishonest declaration in April 2016, that CFIA has done the tests and found foods to be quite alright.
Anyhow, here is my 22 minute rant on the issue.