Category Archives: Book

Poison Foods of North America

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Glyphosate has been in the public eye for a while now. I hear that in California, a court has mandated that Roundup herbicide must have a comment in the label that it likely is carcinogenic, or can cause cancer.

There is further news coming from some reportedly leaked comments from within US-EPA that the manner in which glyphosate safety test documents and data has been accepted has apparently not gone well with everyone in EPA. Well, it is almost 40 years since glyphosate has been unleashed. It is high time that approval of glyphosate was put under scrutiny.

In Canada, the EPA counter part, Health Canada, has never released all the safety documents and data based on which it approved glyphosate for use in agriculture. According to my understanding of the law, it is illegal to approve and allow release of a product while withholding release of its safety data. I have had multi-year running issues with the government trying to get disclosure of these safety records.

It is because of these reasons that I do not accept the government set safe limits (MRL) of glyphosate in food. One cannot accept 5,000 ppb of glyphosate in wheat, when the government has not shown proof that glyphosate is safe even at 1 ppb.
Meanwhile, after some years of butting heads with the government on  a related issue of Canada not having labs that could test glyphosate in food, and after WHO declared glyphosate to be a probable carcinogen, thankfully the Government showed some inclination to test foods for glyphosate, but on the quiet and away from mainstream media glare.

By the summer of 2015, there were indications from labs that they were busy handling lots of orders from Ottawa in testing glyphosate in all kinds of food samples.
I had by then already been asking Health Canada, Agriculture Canada and Canadian Food Inspection Agency, for letting me have results of all foods tested in Canada for glyphosate. Finally, in December 2016, I got over 7,800 records of foods tested for glyphosate and its metabolite AMPA under order of CFIA.

The records involved more than five thousand samples and at times multiple records on each samples involving glyphosate and/or AMPA content. Samples were all collected from within Canada, but represented both locally grown and imported food. Foods from more than sixty countries had been collected and tested.

Attempt was initiated immediately, convert the data into an usable format and to analyze it and advise the people on which kinds of foods had how much glyphosate. Scanned images of pages of those records were converted using OCR software, error corrected and turned into electronic data that could be sorted, tabulated, and used for analysis
Same was done over the next few months. The results have in some cases been as expected and in other cases, totally surprising.

A few things became clear as more and more data were analyzed. For example, crops that were not genetically modified but were grown in an industrial scale in north America and were desiccated with glyphosate, had very much more glyphosate in them, than genetically modified Roundup Ready crops.

Another shocking realization was, Canada and the US were producers of the most toxic food in the planet. The difference was not even marginal. Canadian and American grown foods, especially those conventional non GM crops that used glyphosate as a pre-harvest desiccant, had an order of dimension greater level of glyphosate poison in them than the same crops grown anywhere else.

Since I have reason to doubt the Government set MRL while safety data is kept out of reach of people, I consider any level of glyphosate concentration to be poisonous – acutely poisonous to a large body of beneficial organisms and a chronic poison for all other creatures of value including ourselves.

And so, finally, the e-book was prepared and placed on line with Amazon.

This book is not designed to join a debate on if glyphosate is safe or unsafe to be in food or at what level it might be dangerous. This book is for those people that have already decided that glyphosate is an undesirable chemical that can cause serious harm even if taken in low doses over time. It is for those people that are looking for a tool to help navigate through this glyphosate minefield of North American food system.

The book will continue to be edited and more material added. Legal owners will get free downloads of all updates on it. The book is currently over 220 pages long on an iPad and over thousand pages long on a smart phone, as indicated through Amazon upload, though I have not checked it with my iPad or iPhone yet.

Book Description

Analysis of near 8000 records of foods collected and tested in Canada that originated in over 60 countries, for glyphosate content, between mid 2015 and end 2016 by Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

North American foods are most heavily contaminated by glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup weed killer. This book is for those people who do not look for continued debate on safety levels of glyphosate, and have already decided that glyphosate is an undesirable chemical to be in their food, and merely wish to have a tool with which they could try and avoid eating foods that have high glyphosate content.

The book has over 220 pages, 55,000 words, filled with over 250 tables along with charts and images. The data is sorted in chapters, starting with the Maximum Residue Limit (MRL) set by the government, comparison of glyphosate in food according to country of origin, and checking according to food types, such as grains, beans, flour, lentils, fruits, vegetables, and ready made meals. Under wheats, sub-sections check wheat bran, wheat flour, wheat germ, whole wheat, pasta, pizza, baking mix, couscous. It shows how glyphosate contamination of bran in wheat grown in Canada averages at over 2,000 ppb, or how 96% of all Canadian wheat bran tested were contaminated against 78% of the US wheat bran. It gives some of the worse contaminations of individual samples in separate tables, with contaminations between 4,000 and 7,000 ppb and how some of them are in violation of the MRL set by the government.

There are specific chapters on organic foods or gluten free ones, and tables comparing where eating organic ensures lower glyphosate contamination and where it does not ensure that. It shows which foods are free of glyphosate irrespective of being organic or not.

Glyphosate (RoundUp) has been in our farms and fields for a generation. That it is safe for humans is supposed to have been verified by the Government. Yet, the documents containing tests done on animals that prove that it does not affect mammals, or beneficial insects such as worms, bees, our gut micro-biome and the flora and fauna of the land, have been kept out of reach from the people.

My understanding of the law is – if the safety documents of a product cannot be released to the people, then the product itself may not be approved for release. While the Government is not saying people do not have right to see the documents, these data are one way or another kept out of reach of the people, often using arguments that the promoter of the product has patents and intellectual rights, and there is a confidentiality clause attached to the agreement with the Government.

This book is not aimed to join the debate on if glyphosate is safe and at what level of contamination it might be a concern. Rather, this book is designed for those people that have already decided to actively try and avoid having glyphosate in their food. This book is to help them select what kind of food, grown in which countries might be better or worse.

Canadian and US foods are about the most contaminated in the entire planet, and finding clean food free of glyphosate has gotten a major challenge, as the data shown in this book will indicate. Navigating through this glyphosate mine field may be of paramount importance for discerning people that are already conscious of potential health issues related to consuming a continuous dose of glyphosate over a long period.

I believe, without bias, that this book is the best guide and tool for consumers, especially those living in North America or considering imported foods from North America, to avoid a steady dose of slow poisoning through glyphosate. I believe this is the only one of its kind. There is no other.

Glyphosate in tofu

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This is going to be discussed in the book being written. But for now, here is the preliminary text on the issue of glyphosate in tofu.
It first came to my attention that while glyphosate was detectable in soy flour by the CFIA tests, it was strangely absent from 50 samples of conventional tofu. I could not figure out why or how the glyphosate disappeared from tofu, if it was already there in the flour used to make tofu. I asked a few scientists I knew. That started the ball rolling. And by now, the issue of glyphosate in tofu has gone beyond CFIA test records. It has started by me wondering why tofu tested by CFIA turned out with zero glyphosate while the soy flour it is made from contains much of the herbicide. I had made an earlier brief post on it on Facebook.

Well, the subject has caught attention of a number of scientists and caused a bit of investigation. While the jury is still out, and while no doubt some more investigation might continue by those that are able to conduct further glyphosate tests during the process of tofu making, a couple of details are beginning to emerge. These are :

As a preparatory step to tofu making, the soy flour is mixed in water and boiled. In this process some of the proteins that incorporated glyphosate, as well as some of the carbohydrates, get denatured, thus releasing the glyphosate out from their molecular bonds.

Next, the curdling of tofu is achieved by coagulants which can be either magnesium chloride MgCl2 or calcium sulphate Ca(SO4), salts of bivalent metals Magnesium or Calcium. Some countries like using MgCl2 while others use CaSO4 as coagulant.

Now, glyphosate, which is an amino acid, apparently very readily bonds with these salts of magnesium or calcium, and the resultant salt is very soluble in water.

So, during the process of tofu making, when the curdled tofu paste is pushed down and the water is being separated, to be eventually discarded, the glyphosate that had been released during the denaturing of the proteins and carbohydrates get caught and bonded with the coagulant to form Calcium or Magnesium salts in solution in the discarded water, and can no more be found in the tofu.

In some ways, the to fu making process filters out the glyphosate and gets discarded with the water. This is likely going to be tested eventually by someone in due course, as a confirmation.

Meanwhile, the issue remains about how much of the glyphosate was released when the stuff was boiled. There is a point of view that not all of it gets released, and some remain tightly bound with their parent structure, such that the boiling does not release them. Not just that, but their spectogram is not where glyphosate or AMPA would show up. Therefore LC-MSMS tests may not detect their presence.

Because of these two factors, a) most of the identifiable glyphosate having been captured and removed into the discarded water as magnesium or calcium salts and b) any remaining glyphosate stays undetectable by mass spectrometry, thereby becoming invisible and resulting in possible false negative.

That the above b) might be correct, was deduced by cross checking of scientists with their colleagues back in Asia, where comparative study of body organs was made between subjects that ate GMO tofu and those that did not.

Curiously, part of a new powerpoint slides made for the purpose was named Mitra-Samsel-17.pptx. That made me smile.

Here is one of the slides.

Anyhow, about any glyphosate that did not get trapped in the discarded tofu water, and evades detection, may still be able to cause trouble for consumers, though I should assume it would be less toxic due to the glyphosate that had been removed by the coagulant.

This brings the subject back to the techniques used by the labs, to prepare the sample before glyphosate testing can be done. Apparently most of the glyphosate in the sample can be released for detection by proteolysis using proteinase K or acid hydrolysis. Proteinase K is an enzyme derived from fungus and is not subjected to glyphosate exposure, while other animal enzymes may be contaminated with glyphosate because of their feed.

Therefore, using the right preparatory step taken by the lab before testing glyphosate in samples, especially of proteinaceous samples, might be critical. However, we do not know at this stage what methods were used by the labs employed by CFIA. To the best knowledge of some of the US scientists, most US labs had no knowledge of the problems relating to detection of glyphosate embedded in proteins. They often used an older method of using acidulated methanol to release glyphosate, which may give false results.

Anthony Samsel had the following questions.. “Also, I need to know about CANADA’s methods of testing for Glyphosate in these 7000 samples.. Is it GC MS, HPLC MSMS or ELISA and if they are using acidulated methanol.  The reason that I ask, most labs doing HPLC use  acidulated methanol in the method.  This can mask GLLYPHOSATE so that you don’t get accurate results they are too low and or low levels disappear completely giving a false negative result….”

I should be trying to find some of the answers. While I do not have a confirmation, I can see signs that CFIA first subjected all samples to an ELISA test called glyphosate screening. Results would be either ‘negative’ meaning no glyphosate found, or ‘positive’ meaning glyphosate was detected. No level of concentration of glyphosate was detected in this test. Both results will be entered in the CFIA data, as positive, or negative.

Then, all samples that resulted ‘negative’ will be put aside.

All samples that proved ‘positive’ will be sent again for a costlier LC-MSMS test which was able to detect presence and concentration of glyphosate and AMPA simultaneously.

The result is entered by CFIA as follows:

If there was only glyphosate detected, a single entry is made agains that sample – for glyphosate concentration in ppm

If both glyphosate and AMPA were detected, two entries are made against that sample – one for glyphosate and one more for AMPA.

Thus, a specific food sample can have following entries in the CFIA record:

  1. Just one record – negative
  2. Two records, one for ‘positive’ and another for ppm glyphosate
  3. Three records, one for ‘positive’, one for ppm glyphosate and yet another on ppm AMPA

That answers part of Anthony Samsel’s question, but still leaves out how precisely did the labs try to pull the glyphosate out of the proteinaceous matter? If the US labs knew nothing about using correct proteolysis, then can we expect Canadian labs to do better? This is a question I shall later try to find an answer to. For now, we do not know.

Lastly, the latest science paper that Stephanie Seneff and Anthony Samsel are awaiting publication of, apparently mentions that even Monsanto, or Dupont had found out years ago that if the correct proteolysis was done before testing, the yield in detectable glyphosate in a sample can increase 60 to 120 fold. Thats a staggering level of glyphosate that remains undetectable unless the right step is taken.

So, what do we learn from all this, and the fact that in the CFIA tests, soy flour showed presence of glyphosate, but tofu did not?

At this stage, your guess may be as good as mine.

 

Wheat is bad, wheat bran is worst.

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I have more or less cleaned up the 7,800 odd records received from CFIA on foods tested for glyphosate. That has brought me to study wheat products to greater detail, because wheat is regularly desiccated with glyphosate in North America and is a suspect crop to contain high glyphosate. The results of the investigation, described below, has helped me prepare two graphs. The first one is below, Graph-1, is a line diagram of average glyphosate (& AMPA) content in wheat subgroups. You can see how the figure for wheat bran goes through the roof.

Graph 1

Then there is the issue of other subgroups. Although their average content appears relatively low, the view of this presenter, (tony mitra) is that no glyphosate is good glyphosate and that standard toxicology tests for glyphosate is insufficient an yardstick for assessing safety limits of glyphosate. Therefore, preference is to have no glyphosate at all. Further, effort is made here to check how many of the samples of each subgroup contain glyphosate, and for that figure, apart from average ppb limits, to be as relevant an indication. To that end, the second graph (#2) was prepared, based on below Table-D. The picture is not pretty.

Graph 2

A few unanswered question remain. These are:

  • Glyphosate screening – where the result is negative or positive, but without specific µg/g concentration of AMPA or glyphosate. I suspect these screenings represented a cheaper first test and if the results are negative, then no further action is taken except recording it. For samples that have a “positive” indication, a further test, perhaps using HPLC-MSMS method, is used to measure the level of contamination. However, this needs to be confirmed with CFIA. If there is a different explanation of the glyphosate screen test, then the percentages in tis blog might change. I intend to sort that out before the book is published.
  • There are a few readings of AMPA, and many more of glyphosate. It is likely that the same sample, once proven ‘Positive” was tested for both, and readings of AMPA, where noted, were included. I need a confirmation of this from CFIA. If so, the number of tests might remains same but number of samples would shrink slightly, since a few of the samples represented two test results, one for glyphosate and one more for AMPA. This will likely reduce the “dirty” percentage, since there are now a slightly lower number of dirty samples. On the other hand, it would increase the average ppb content since the total ppb or glyphosate and AMPA wold now be divided by a lesser number of samples.
  • With regard to wheat and wheat products, I have a major question and concern – there seem to be no test of standard bread. Since wheat readings are comparatively bad, with a lot of the products having glyphosate, and since wheat is a major ingredient in bread making, I am baffled by the omission of testing bread. I intend to try and find out from CFIA what the reason might be, for not testing bread.

Table-A

Table-A gives the number of tests done on wheat, broken down into some of the common subgroups. More than a thousand tests are represented in the above table. Some of the readings may not be fully correct, such as RTE (ready to eat – meals) since the description of the item is not too indicative if wheat is an ingredient or not. However, for the rest of the groups, the numbers should be more representative.

The fact that “unknown” Category represents such a large volume of tests has been a source of vexation for me. I suspect these are likely almost all of Canadian origin, though perhaps procured in bulk without a container or a label marking the country of origin, and hence entered as unknown by the CFIA staff. Therefore, to make better sense of the breakdown based on regions, I am going to place unknown together with Canada and call it Canada+ in these studies.

Regarding other regions away from North America, only one subgroup item, Pasta, has a reasonable number (51). So that one might be analyzed to see if Pasta coming from overseas is any better than local produce. That is not yet covered in this blog.

Table-B

Table-B shows how man of the tests for some of the subgroups had a reading above zero, how many of the screenings showed positive, how many negative, and the percentages of clean and dirty results. Since I assume (to be confirmed) that the ‘positive’ results of the more economical ‘glyphosate screening’ tests have been followed up with further and more expensive tests for the concentration, these were ignored, while the negative results where counted, for the percentages. Thus, the total number of samples were those of the first (>0) and  third (negative) column. Thus, the percentage of dirty samples for pizza would represent the ration of 301 to (301+11), or 97.8%. This too might alter a bit after cross checking ore details from CFIA, especially about AMPA readings.

However, one can already guess that the general readings for wheat products are really bad with regard to glyphosate contamination.

Table-C

Then comes the next table, Table-C, at left, with blue headers. This gives the average ppb figures of glyphosate (& AMPA) for each subgroup. As you can see, the numbers for Wheat Bran has gone through the roof. I should be checking with some experts on this, but suspect the reason for this to be that the best sink for the desiccated glyphosate is the outer layer of the wheat, i.e. the bran, and thus it is here that most of the glyphosate resides. The numbers fall off sharply in flour and germ. I am a bit puzzled by the reasonably low figure of whole wheat grains (bottom most item), and wonder if that because it includes items that are not really whole grain, but misrepresented or misunderstood by me. I should be looking into it further.

How about organic?
The last column in Table-C (ppb Organic) shows the basic difference between conventional or organic. Bran is a good example. Average ppb overall is over a thousand, but for its Organic variety, the average is just 1.9. In comparison, Organic wheat flour (10.7 ppb) does not fare as well, though it is still a lot lower than standard wheat flour. An so the list goes. Two subgroups, Wheat Germ and Pizza, did not have a single organic sample, therefore its ppb glyphosate for the organic label could not be calculated, and has been blacked out.

But the issue of bran really stands out. Since a lot of bread are made of bran, and because bran has been a preferred source of nutrient for some due to its high fibre content etc, and absence of bread as a tested group is more vexing. Table-D is based on the last but one column of Table-B.

Table-D

And that brings up the this last table with red headers, showing what percentage of which subgroups of wheat contain glyphosate. As one can see, most all of the subgroups have almost 90 percent or above tests proving presence of glyphosate, with the exception of couscous, which has around 80% samples contaminated. This, along with Table-C, also tells you that, for Wheat Bran, near hundred percent (97%) contains glyphosate and average doze of the poison is over a thousand. In short, there is virtually no way one could avoid high glyphosate dose if one consumes Wheat bran.

These last two tables form the basis for the first two graphs. The picture is not pretty.

Thanks for watching and sorry for bringing you gloomy news. I am merely a messenger, and have gone through considerable difficulties to get hold of the raw data from CFIA.

tony mitra

 

North American infant cereals are contaminated with glyphosate

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I write this preliminary findings with a heavy heart and a serious concern regarding young children that might get damaged or hurt by glyphosate in their infant cereal.

I am in the process of going through several thousands of records of foods tested by CFIA for glyphosate, and am cleaning up, or typing more explanatory comments in additional fields so that later sorting can be done with less hassle and more clarity.  And in the process I have come across a group of records of foods that CFIA describes as Cereal – Infant. A total of 119 tests were recorded on them, some for just glyphosate screening, with positive or negative results, while others were specifically to measure amount of glyphosate or AMPA is ppm, which I converted to ppb.

There were basically only a few countries of origin for the baby cereals, USA, Canada, Unknown, Germany, Poland and Switzerland. The “unknown” category has vexed me throughout this study, and since its numbers are usually higher than all others, and since Canadian sample numbers (without adding the unknowns) are less than the US samples, I strongly suspect that all, or nearly all, of the “unknowns” are of local (Canadian) stock. As it is, I think it is a law for foods from foreign countries to be displayed accordingly. So, I have started adding the Unknown with the Canadian readings and calling the combined lot as Canada+.

So, now there were just five countries of origin – Canada+, USA, Germany, Poland and Switzerland.

The readings from these samples showed a stark and ominous contrast. High percentage of Baby cereals from Canada and USA were dirty, in the sense that they contained glyphosate (and/or AMPA) while baby cereals from Germany, Poland and Switzerland were all 100% clean. Of course the number of samples from these three countries were lower, with 3 from Germany, 13 from Poland and 5 from Switzerland. Canada+ had 64 tests on baby cereal while USA had 33. And 66 percent of all infant cereals from Canada+ and 61% of all infant cereals from the US had glyphosate. Thats like two out of every three tests. And none of the European varieties had any measurable glyphosate. The above table has been converted to a percentage chart below, which depicts the high prevalence of dirty results from North American baby foods.

This has been a major cause of shock for me. I shall be later going into these with more details, to see if specific kinds of infant cereals are worse than other kinds etc. I already found out that going with the “Organic” variety might be better, but not a guarantee of clean food.

The table below highlights the issue. 42% of all organic infant cereals from Canada+ as tested had glyphosate. That is almost one of out two organic infant cereals that were dirty. The corresponding figure for the US is 36% or about one out of three. Among the European samples, one did not need to check for organic labels – they were all clean with regard to glyphosate.

Although my work with this food group is not over, I decided to make a preliminary report, which is correct as far as whatever I have written goes, to the best of my knowledge. However, I shall be digging deeper to see if there is any identifiable pattern that might separate the clean ones from the dirty, among North American samples. Clearly, going with organic labelling alone is not good enough.

I found a few curious entries within the North American samples, which could be a give-away of its brand name. Three samples were described as Leapin’ Lemurs, Choco Chimp, and Koala Crisp. All of them were entered under infant cereals. I could not figure out what ingredients were used here, such as wheat, or oatmeal or rice etc, so I googled the names. It turned out, these are products by “Nature’s Path“. All three of them contained no glyphosate at all. So, out of this horror story, there was a sort of silver lining.

I don’t have an infant at home and I do not like to eat processed food any more. However, I am very aware and conscious of the fact that infants and kids are far more vulnerable to illness and auto-immune triggers due to their low body weight and insufficiently developed immune system.

So, for those that live in North America and must buy infant cereal, my preliminary advise would be one of the following:

  • Buy European infant cereal, especially from Poland, Germany or Switzerland
  • Or buy Nature’s Path products.
  • Press your local public servants to start testing locally sold infant cereals for glyphosate content and let the public know the results, including brand name and source of the sample. Refer to petition on this.

I shall be digging into this more later, since I am only at around 2,700th of the record out of over 7,800 of them, and since I am a bit down with a flue-like symptom with a sore throat and a fever.

Trying to do the best I can to complete the work by around April.

Thanks for reading. Be warned – Infant cereals are that much more important because infants are that much more vulnerable. There are no safe levels of glyphosate, so I am not getting bogged down with exact ppb numbers and considering all tests including the straight glyphosate screening tests that does not give amounts in ppm or ppm but merely indicates if result is positive or negative.

Those that are interested on why there are no safe levels of glyphosate and how the Canadian and US government uses old fashioned and inadequate methods for checking safety levels for glyphosate, consider checking up on Anthony Samsel on two separate issues:

In other words, EPA, Health Canada and the rest of the world needs to consider adding “enzymology” to the existing toxicology tests, before arriving at any conclusion on safety of glyphosate.

About Canada, Canada+ and Unknown
I am adding this section here as an answer to some questions raised by a reader, and also to address the issue from anybody else.

There are several reasons why I clubbed Canada with Unkown. These are:

  • Taking samples from within Canada, one would assume the largest bulk of reading would be of Canadian origin. However, in actuality, the largest bulk often is “unknown” followed by USA and then Canada comes third. This does not make sense to me. Though in the case of this infant baby cereals, the numbers are reversed, with “unknowns” constituting a slightly lower sample number among the big three. I think I can guess the reason.
  • Having a huge block of records without origin is absurd for any data collection and is perhaps a sign of sloppiness among the CFIA staff..
  • There are laws about disclosing country of origin of food items, and since Canada actively protects its internal agricultural market from competition from abroad and doe snot allow free trade in agricultural goods produced in, say, USA, that Canada also produces, to freely cross the border, I suspect most of these unknown food samples are of local produce, and that CFIA staff might have done a sloppy job of describing bulk foods that do not come in a package and therefore origin is not printed anywhere, but was likely displayed at the store where it was collected. And that is perhaps one reason why, in this particular case of infant baby cereals, the unknown category represents slightly smaller number of samples than Canadian and US ones. Most baby cereals are packaged foods, and usually not sold in bulk without a container.
  • This phenomena, of unknown samples usually outnumbering both USA and Canada, and Canada being the third largest source of supplies of foods collected inside Canada, applies to all other categories where the foods are not clearly processed and packaged, but are sold whole..

Lastly, if I keep Canada and ‘Unknown’ separate, then the glyphosate contamination for Canadian foods, including baby cereals turn out to be horribly and unbelievably contaminated. 87% of all Canadian infant cereals fall under that Category.

Attached here is a table of the infant baby cereals for only three countries, to highlight my point – Unknown, Canada and USA, where Canada and unknown are kept separate. As you an see, the results bode much worse for Canada, with only 13% clean and 87% dirty. Another way of looking at it might be, if you are buying infant cereals, and if you can find “Canada” in the label somewhere – don’t buy it. Chances of you getting a slow dose of glyphosate would be seven our of eight !

Glyphosate warning on black bean and chickpea flour

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Black Bean Flour – a note of caution

Some of these charts will end up in the book, though values might change a bit as more of the records are transcribed.

The large volume of tests on foods of “unknown” origin is becoming vexing. I suspect these are mostly local food, both for the sheer number of samples and also similarity of items and readings with Canada.

So, here I clubbed them together under the name Canada+.

The earlier pie chart was about flour made from black beans. It was made with only US samples in it, since there were very few samples from other countries while a lot were from USA alone. It showed only 9% of all black bean flour from USA was glyphosate free, and 91% had some of it.

And now we have here another chart, a column chart, and covers two countries – USA and Canada+, about the same black beans, but sold as is and not as flour. Total sample number was large, around a hundred between the two nations. Canada+ had about twice as many as US samples which sounded right, for samples being collected in Canada.

The data to be converted into visual charts were not the actual readings per se, but the percentage occurrence of event counts, when glyphosate tests satisfied one of the conditions. The conditions were 1) when a measurable amount of glyphosate was detected, 2) when presence of glyphosate was detected but amount could not be measured and 3) when no presence of glyphosate could be detected. These percentage values of the event counts were tabulated for two regions : USA and Canada+. The chart was then made of the figures, to show how much percentage of black beans from each regions was clean and without glyphosate, and how much was dirty.

In the chart, the bottom section was for the measurable percent, label starting with “>0”. This section represents the high value section, where glyphosate content is too high. This chart assumes no glyphosate is good glyphosate and that there is no safe limit.

The next section was called +ve where result proved positive, or glyphosate was detected, but could not be measured. The last, top most category was -ve or negative, representing percentage of sample that had no detectable glyphosate.

As the chart shows – American readings are better for unprocessed black beans. But even here, more than half of the samples had some glyphosate.

For Canada+ the figures were much worse. Seven out of eight samples would contain glyphosate. In my view Canada becomes a highly toxic source, probably the worst one in the world, with regard to glyphosate contamination in black beans, and USA is next in line. I would not buy black beans from either country unless it is organic, and if I cannot find organic or cannot afford it, I shall not eat black beans. As to other nations, I have not seen much test records from them yet, so cannot comment.

The green tick mark and the red cross marks were added for visual guide and clarity, and to drive the point home.

As Anthony Samsel tells me – a picture is worth a thousand words, and I have already type over 500 words to explain it !!

Chickpea story
I prepared another chart about chickpea flour, and was aiming to pen a small and sad story on this looming tragedy.

This is a major primary food source for people of India, primarily many of the of low wage day labourers of India. They take a fistful of chickpea flour, add a spoonful of water, knead it into a thickish paste, add perhaps a sliver of onion, a touch of salt and a few specs of crushed dried red chilli, and roll it in their palms to turn it into a ball, about the size of a tennis ball – and that is their morning brunch with a glass of water – before going to work. As a child, and also as an adult in more recent years, I have often watched them preparing this meal, sitting on a mat on the ground.
Since the word(s) chick pea, chickpea and garbanzo are often intermixed in the records and both chickpea and garbanzo mentioned in the same product description at times, I combined the chickpea with the garbanzo, for this story. Also, a huge number of samples are marked as of “unknown” origin, which I suspect are all local (Canadian), so I joined them with Canada’s own chickpea flour and called it Canada+.
Dropping a few countries with only one or two samples, I had India with 10, Canada+ with 64 and USA with 9. And I made this chart, based on percentages of >0 (high presence), +ve (positive glyphosate presence) and -ve (negative or no detectable presence).
It turns out, percentages of clean chickpea flour (with no detectable glyphosate) are:
India : 40%
Canada+ : 17%
USA : zero

So, flours made from black bean and chickpea/garbanzo, originating from three countries with reasonable sample numbers are suspect, of which North American samples are arguably much worse than the Indian one, but India too is catching up, with less than half its flour remaining uncontaminated. Also, since the CFIA data does not give brand name or more pinpointed source of their samples, there is no realistic way for a consumer to separate the clean chickpea flour made in Canada or imported from India, from the dirty lot. So buying chickpea flour from these countries become a slow motion game of Russian roulette.

This is a developing tragedy of global implication. And no matter what the government or the industry claims, there are no safe levels of glyphosate. Add to that the fact that hiding safety test documents on glyphosate while allowing its  use, may be legally indefensible.

Tony Mitra.

Glyphosate in corn

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Corn has been conspicuous in the CFIA not by its absence, but by absence of glyphosate from it. We understand most of the corn grown on industrial scale in north America as well as elsewhere may be RoundUp ready and laced with glyphosate. And yet, it shows up with relatively low concentration in comparison with some other crops such as say wheat or chick pea.

Corn story, on around 6,000 CFIA test records

While the reason for this deserves to be investigated separately, the CFIA readings as they stand, can also throw light on country specific data as well as data on which kinds of corn based food shows up with how much glyphosate. The table here is based on country profile from some 250 odd tests done on corn based foods out of about 6,000 total tests from CFIA.

The largest block among countries is, again, unknown. I suspect most of these to be of Canadian origin. Anyhow, the general average glyphosate and AMPA count per sample of corn based food tested by CFIA that originated from Canada or “Unknown” are 3. The country at the top of the list is USA, followed by Italy and Mexico.

USA
For USA, glyphosate starts showing up in some corn starch, and a lot of corn based pre-cooked meal, also often described as called cornmeal in one word.

Italy
In the case of Italy, there are many samples of corn based food with no glyphosate. However, their average seems to have been spoiled by a few cases of food items identified as San Zenone Organic Corn pasta, which show over a hundred ppb. So, in the case of this particular food description, even organic is contaminated. Many other kinds of corn based organic and conventional pasta, such as Penne Rigate, gluten free organic corn pasta – are without glyphosate. However, some but not all of the same Penne Rigate, but without the “organic” in it, has glyphosate.

Mexico
Mexico had a near perfect reading of zero glyphosate in foods originating from there. But it has been spoiled by some corn based foods such as taco shells, tortilla and corn chips.

Canada + Unknown
Among corn based foods from “unknown” and Canada,  tortilla, chips, corn flakes and corn bran are among the culprits, having detectable amounts of glyphosate.

Thailand, Philippines & China
Although the sample base is smaller, corn based foods from these countries as tested by CFIA appear to contain no measurable glyphosate or AMPA at all. Out of these, China’s story could be controversial since it is a heavy producer and consumer of glyphosate laced food. We are told that China also grows smaller quantities of organic food and is very careful in ensuring that only organic stuff is exported so that their market and reputation is not spoilt.

Glyphosate Screen Positive
Apart from all above, a large number of glyphosate screen test shows positive (as against negative) for many food types and that includes corn. Most of the positive results come from samples originating from the US, with much lesser numbers from other nations.

You can check a short pdf list of Glyphosate Screen positive items on a related issue – flours made from beans, by clicking here. It also shows the high prevalence of such samples originating from the United States.

Thats it for now.

Glyphosate in Mung Beans

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A friend had made a comment based on an earlier Facebook post of mine about glyphosate in beans from the CFIA test records. That post showed a high presence of glyphosate (+AMPA), showing concern about Mung Beans, which had higher average glyphosate (+AMPA) count than many other types of beans.

Well, we too use Mung Beans at home. We had two varieties. One was organic sprouting Mung Beans – mostly from Mum’s (Canada) and I suspected they’d be very clean. But this was in smaller quantity and I used them only for eating sprouts.

The larger amount was used by the wife for making dal, or lentil soup Dal has been a favourite staple of mine, to be had with rice, as a source of protein, helping to stay away from factory farmed animals.

So I looked into the individual tests of each Mung Bean, to prepare this table, and sorted according to origin of the Mung Bean sample. All readings are in ppb.

India – presumably the largest producer and consumer of Mung Beans, is totally missing from this table. So, either Canada imports no Mung Beans from Canada, or somehow they have not been tested. I shall look further into this later on. However, I have been told by some notables in Canada, that some Indian farmers have started growing lentils in Canada, using industrial methods (i.e. desiccated with glyphosate) for export back to India because India’s constantly rising demand is overtaking its local production. If that is true, then Indian’s might be getting more of Canadian toxic Mung Beans than Canadians getting any Indian variety. Anyhow, I intend to look into the Mung Bean packages next time I visit a store.

Thailand – all their food has so far been very clean, and Mung Bean is no exception. Therefore, if it is not certified organic, but an import from Thailand, you may still be fairly sure that it is clean as far as glyphosate in concerned.

China – this has been a puzzle throughout the CFIA test records. China is the largest producer and exporter of glyphosate as well local consumer. But, as I-Wan-Chen has informed us, they also grow smaller quantity of organic food and has been careful in exporting only the cleaner varieties of food in order not to lose export market. Also, many importers actually visit Chinese farms and take samples of export-crops directly for their own tests. So, if the Mung Bean is from China and being sold in Canada, be cautious but you might be safe here.

Unknown – I suspect these are either all Canadian, or Canadian + US. Anyhow, these are no good, except if it is certified organic. In other words, if you are not sure where the Mung Bean came from, and if it is not organic – my advise is to stay away. If it is organic – go ahead and buy it.

Austalia – if you find Australian Mung Beans – don’t even give it to your dog.

Also, if anybody living in India is reading this – be extremely careful of buying any Mung Beans imported from Canada/USA or Australia.  In general, if it is an English Speaking Anglo-Saxon nation – You may watch their movies, or their sports on TV, but don’t eat their Mung Beans.

Glyphosate in meat – a Trojan Horse?

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This blog is a place holder for my evolving views on glyphosate in food, and in particular, glyphosate in meat. This is to help me compose a book I am writing on the subject based on over 7,800 records of foods collected in Canada and tested by CFIA, a copy of which was sent to me recently.

For the first half of the tested records, a few food items were totally missing, such as conventional wheat, bread, meat, poultry or milk. Glyphosate was expected to be present in samples of such foods produced in North America, since industrial scale farming of crops and livestock was closely intertwined with industrial pesticides expected to be in the crop as well as the animal feed.

Anyhow, in the later part of the records, based on samples collected from around mid-2016, a small numbers of samples of wheat, wheat products, as well as some meat products that contained beef, pork and chicken started showing up.

This chart was first prepared containing the handful of individual sample foods containing chicken, from the first 4,500 odd records. As the table shows, the number of samples is too small to make a good general prediction. We wish many more samples of this food will come up in the later half of the records that are not yet fully transcribed.

The initial glyphosate (+AMPA) content in those foods were rather low. Some had trace (positive) amount and some even had none. This brought the average ppb content of all samples with chicken in them, to 19. I was puzzled by this low figure since most of the chicken raised and sold in North America were factory farmed, laced not only with antibiotics, which was not covered in this test, but also genetically modified RoundUp Ready crops laced with glyphosate.

I knew from studies made by Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff that glyphosate, apart from being a chelator and depriving the consumer of mineral nutrients from the food, and apart from it being a major adversary and destroyer of vitally important gut bacteria through its anti-biotic function, it was also an analog of glycine and would thus slip past their immune system to enter cell biology and be mistakenly picked up by the animal’s cell RNA and eventually be mis-incorporated into animal proteins. This proteins where glycine has been substituted by glyphosate, would be malfunctioning proteins and this would be a pathway to a cascade of diseases depending on where those rogue proteins ended up in the animal.

More importantly, the same defective animal proteins, if eaten by humans, is also likely to slip past our own immune system and in tern be mis-incorporated into our own biology as rogue proteins that becomes a trigger for our own series of autoimmune diseases.

Some of those issues have been covered in earlier blogs such as this one () and more will be covered as most reports are published by the scientists Samsel and Seneff.

But the low glyphosate readings in the animals puzzled me, of which this chart about the chicken is just one instance.

So I asked the scientists about it. In the process, I got to know a few things about testing glyphosate in meat. I have the permission of scientists Samsel and Seneff to quote them, so what produce them here:

From Stephanie Seneff

Your work is so important in getting this information out to the public, Tony.  I am really impressed with how much you have done already with this data.  We just went shopping for some eggplant after I read about the zero glyphosate levels in it!

One thing I would like to say about the meats is a concern I have that the glyphosate may be embedded in the proteins and not properly extracted prior to measurement. Monsanto found that they had to do extensive proteolysis in order to free up glyphosate that they knew was present because they had radiolabelled it.

This problem is well known for other toxic chemicals that are non-coding amino acids. For example, proteolysis resulted in a 60 to 120 fold increased level of BMAA, a non-coding amino acid analogue of proline.

Here’s a paragraph from the newest paper by Anthony and me  (still under review):

“There have been inconsistent results in measuring the levels of BMAA in different tissue samples, but this has been explained recently by the realization that any BMAA which is incorporated into proteins may be missed in the analysis without sufficient proteolysis. Ince et al. wrote: `When the insoluble, protein-containing fraction following TCA (trichloroacetic acid) extraction is further hydrolysed to release BMAA from protein, there is a further pool of ‘protein bound’ BMAA that is present in a ratio of between 60:1 and 120:1 compared with the pool of ‘free BMAA’.” [Ince, p. 348].

Ince, P.G.& Codd, G.A. Return of the cycad hypothesis – does the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/parkinsonism dementia complex (ALS/PDC) of Guam have new implications for global health? Neuropathology and Applied Neurobiology 31 (2005) 345-353.

Animal protein with glyphosate embedded in it can be predicted to be extremely allergenic (worse than plant protein), and I think it could be a major source of the epidemic in autoimmune diseases that we’re seeing. This is especially worrisome because animal proteins are more likely to match up with human proteins through molecular mimicry and cause trouble with autoimmunity.

Stephanie
Stephanie Seneff
Senior Research Scientist
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

From Anthony Samsel

Tony,

Let me add to what Stephanie just said.  All meat and fowl is contaminated with Glyphosate as well as other glyphosate  related molecule like N-Acetylglyphosate from some GE’d corn and soy…  Glyphosate esters, salts and metabolites as well as reaction products i.e. five nitrosamines of Glyphosate are also present.

As far as the numbers Canada found in meat they are too low based on DUPONT and MONSANTO studies.  I have numbers from some of my lab work with beef and pork much higher as well as glyphosate in collagens from animals like 120 ppb + ….

Also, I need to know about CANADA’s methods of testing for Glyphosate in these 7000 samples.. Is it GC MS, HPLC MSMS or ELISA and if they are using acidulated methanol.  The reason that I ask, most labs doing HPLC use  acidulated methanol in the method.  This can mask GLLYPHOSATE so that you don’t get accurate results they are too low and or low levels disappear completely giving a false negative result….

Glyphosate reacts with methanol forming an ester of glyphosate which does not show up in the chromatogram where you would find glyphosate….  so, the lab will say we didn’t find any or the results will be low and under the radar so to speak and viewed as not a problem …

There are no safe levels of Glyphosate ….

Anthony

Anthony Samsel
Research Scientist / Consultant,
SEAPHS : Samsel Environmental and Public Health Services

One might wait till Samsel/Seneff’s latest article is published, for further details, or check some of their earlier published papers on it as listed here.

From the above two – it became clear to me that there is a possibility that the glyphosate readings in meat items as tested by some lab for CFIA might show a false negative or too low values of glyphosate. As Stephanie said – there were a 60 to 120 fold rise in detected glyphosate level, once the glyphosate embedded in animal proteins were extracted as a step prior to testing.

I aim to check later with CFIA for identification of the labs that did the tests on meat samples, to check if they used proteolysis or other methods as a pre-test process to extract embedded glyphosate that otherwise might now show up in the spectrogram. But that is in the future and I am not sure if either the Government or the labs will be willing to discuss these issues with me since I am not the client that ordered the tests. We shall see.

Meanwhile, I am assuming that CFIA did not specifically know about Semsel or Seneff’s work on glyphosate in animal protein, or of Monsanto and Dupont’s findings that glyphosate does not easily show up in standard spectrograms and false negatives or greatly reduced readings are very possible. Therefore it is likely the CFIA results on glyphosate in meat is showing greatly reduced values.

As Stephanie Seneff’s message indicates, very low levels of glyphosate in animal proteins may be more dangerous for human consumers compared to its plant based counterparts, simply because animal proteins might have an easier time slipping past our immune system by cell mimicry, since animal proteins are closer to our proteins than plant proteins.  We humans are also animals and evolved out of the animal kingdom, never mind religious scriptures.

And so, to see where it goes, I multiplied the glyphosate readings, added to their AMPA where applicable, by 90, which was the mid point between 60 and 120, to see where the projected glyphosate values would go.

This table shows those projected values.

This text may end up, after cleaning up and modification, in my coming book on the topic.

Thanks for reading. Comment 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.