Category Archives: CFIA

Toxification of chick pea

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This is a sad tale of degradation of global food, thanks to westernisation of the food web – money for peddling poison.

Chickpea used to be a favoured food source for me. In India, a vast group of low income labour class people, in the hundreds of millions, live on a daily diet of ground dried chickpea – called besan. It is also a major food ingredient in Indian cooking across the land and across the economic spectrum, rich and poor.

Today, chickpea is perhaps the most toxic of all food grains, thanks to westernisation of agriculture, profit making for investors. Along with it goes ownership, control and serious manipulation of science research as well as representation of scientific data by the profit making corporations.

In fact, manipulation and corruption is science is one of the base issues for astronomical rise in power of corporations – from Big Pharma, to Agriculture. These have become the new tools of colonisation. The third and fourth pillar of this demonic system are warmongering and profiteering on weapons and deaths, and controlling the finance of the world through banksters and the super rich.

Everything of relevance that goes around the world today, are rooted to these issues.

But back to the chickpea. This grain gotten to be the the most toxic among all main stream food grains for humans that we know about. But, how do I know this is the most toxic grain?

I know this because I am the person that worked for a number of years to get the Canadian government to test all available foods for measuring the most used and most controversial poison in the world food system – glyphosate. No country had tested their foods extensively for presence of this dangerous slow poison that is at the root of my destroyed immunity, till I managed to get the issue on the floor of the Canadian Parliament eight years ago through help of one exceptional MP from BC, Mr. Alex Atamanenko. It is because of him that Health Canada was forced to answer to my query and allocate multiple millions of dollars to conduct the most extensive and so far only regime of treating thousands and thousands of samples of food grown in Canada as well as imported from some 68 countries, for presence of glyphosate and give me a set of all results. It is because of that body of data that I could analyse and come to a number of conclusions, and eventually ended up writing the reference book – POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA. This image is from that book, containing over 400 charts, tables and data, that proves, for example, North America produces far and away the most toxic foods on the face of the planet, is seriously pushing this toxic technology to the rest of the world for owning and controlling the global food web. The data also shows that among all the food grains tested, chickpea happens to be the most toxic of them all. US plant pathologist and US bioweapons biosecurity expert, scientist Dr. Don Huber of Idaho explained to be the reason Chickpea accumulations more glyphosate more than any other grain. He even tried to train farmers of western North America how to avoid glyphosate and still get their pest control needs satisfied by using alternatives such as boron. But, economics drives the push for glyphosate. It is cheaper than boron, and corporations make more profit in use of glyphosate, than by items that are freely available and does not make profit for the agro-corporations.

Glyphosate is the molecule that is the Trojan horse that attacks our microbiome, are the thieves that steal the minerals from the soil and from the food that we eat, destroys our endocrine system the primary reason for runaway autism as well as other ailments such as diabetes.

Of course you will never hear it from your doctor. This is because the medical system, including all spheres of medical research and medical science have been captured by the same group that profits by keeping you sick. Any doctor that dares look beyond what he is taught and does independent analysis and speaks against the system, loses his license to practice medicine, and may even face charges for harming the population through disinformation. And yes, even the courts are in on it.

We have reached a point where doctors destroy health, scientists destroy science, lawyers destroy law, politicians destroy politics, economists destroy concept of economy, news reporters destroy news.

There is no free press, no freedom of expression, and no access to find truth easily. Propaganda goes for news and every pillar of the society is in on it.

Night is being portrayed as day. And if you disagree and question it – you are uncivil, and a danger to society, and deserve to be outcast and perhaps in a concentration camp. This is where we are now.

But, again, back to Chickpea.

The two tables in the image, both from my book, and based on data provided by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), under Agriculture Canada, which is under Health Canada – a wing of the Canadian Government.

The top table of the image shows how all non-organic chickpea from some countries. It is important to check how many samples were collected and tested. High number of samples indicate a lot of the stuff is available in Canada, and a lot of samples could be collected. Therefore the average is a good indication of the grain quality from that country. Low number of samples indicate possibility that the reading is not as reliable. Also, low number of samples mean less amount of the stuff is imported or otherwise available in Canada, and is perhaps less significant for us.

The last two columns are very important. They show how much of the samples are dirty. That means, for example, 85% of samples from the US were containing glyphosate. And, curiously, 15% were still clean (without glyphosate). In other words – if there was a way to find out where those 15% chickpea came from, one could perhaps even manage to find good stuff within USA. But by and large, the highest percentage of chickpea that are toxic, are produced in the US, followed by Canada, Lebanon and India. Curiously and sort of geographically, further you move away from North America, cleaner seems to be its chickpea.


But the real truth is – how much of those farmers have been influenced or coerced or manipulated, to use “westernised” and “modern” agriculture in the lure of providing sufficient food indigenously grown for their population. In general, westernisation has become synonymous to modern and better. If you do not westernise and modernise, you are not only backward, but also an ignorant fool and are going to be starving soon. This is what is being taught to people. Actual story is, you are handing over your food safety, food security and food sovereignty, to a foreigner and to their local collaborators. I do not know how else to say this.

The last column shows the average value of glyphosate in parts per billion. Obviously, the lower the better and higher the worse. And so, USA, Canada, Lebanon and India are bad news, of which USA and Canada are way worse, while they are busy trying to drag the other nations down to their level.

Then there is the question of the “unknown” country. According to CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) and I have communicated with them to understand this category – unknown means food samples where the origin in untraceable. Usually this means foods that are being sold in bulk in markets, in containers without packaging, and where the origin is not mentioned. This usually means food from local Canadian as well as cross border US farms. USA and Canada has an agreement where certain kins of food can be transported cross border free of charge, in bulk, and without need for packaging and mention of origin. A huge quantity of those approved food types regularly cross border between these two nations. Most food grains are included in this approved types. That is mainly why the “unknown” category turns up high in glyphosate content alongside Canada and USA.

 

The story behind CFIA testing food for glyphosate

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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.

 

A glyphosate letter to FSSAI

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To: Mr. Pawan Kumar Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI, ceo@fssai.gov.in

Copy to: Persons listed below

Date: Friday, November 16, 2018

Subject:  Glyphosate in seed crops imported from Canada, Australia

Mr. Agarwal,

I draw your attention to the report from Times of India, linked below, regarding FSSAI making a press release with assurance that pulses, beans and pea imported into India might be safe from glyphosate poisoning.

I would advise against arriving at such a hasty statement based on evidence that might deserve a lot more scrutiny.

Following items need clarification, from the newspaper report:

  1. Very few samples were found to contain glyphosate
  2. The level of glyphosate found were within limits
  3. Glyphosate may have been used by some countries to control weed.

I shall offer a counter point of view and suggestion on each of these points, as follows:
1) Very few samples contain glyphosate:

Countries such as Canada and Australia do not use glyphosate only for weed control. They use it to desiccate (kill and dry) crops just before harvesting. The process involves direct spraying of the crop at close distance with glyphosate, to force the crop to die and dry out, before the harvesting machine is used. This guarantees presence of and high concentration of glyphosate in harvested seeds. The level of contamination with glyphosate is usually an order of dimension higher than if the poison was used on the ground prior to planting the seeds, for weed control. That fact bears proof by CIFA’s own tests, the results of which have been published in “Poison Foods of North America”. Any crop that is desiccated with glyphosate prior harvesting cannot have no glyphosate. Therefore, if tests in India show no glyphosate in those crops, the quality of those tests are suspect.

I would also draw your attention to the fact that High pressure liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MSMS), the method usually used for high level of accuracy and repeatability for detecting glyphosate, is an exacting science and the attending lab technician needs to be highly skilled to identify the spectrogram of glyphosate among all the other signatures, separate it out and quantify it. Therefore, if the lab assistants are not sufficiently trained especially in this task, the results can be less than perfect. This method is not something where the sample is shoved inside a machine, and the lab attendant then watches his smart phone and awaits accurate results to be spewed out by the machine.

I would strongly suggest that the Government of India obtains a written guarantee from all exporting nations such as Canada and Australia, that they do not use glyphosate, or any other poison, for desiccation of the crops before harvest. I would suggest FSSAI investigates reliability of these tests and to explain how crops desiccated with glyphosate can have no presence detected. Further,  these results should be disclosed to the people so that they can stand public scrutiny.

I would also recommend that you arrange for tests of the seeds grown in Canada and earmarked for shipment to India, be independently tested in certified labs in Canada and results submitted to you prior shipment.

2) Level of glyphosate were within limits:

India has not set a safe limit for glyphosate. Further, India has not approved Glyphosate for use in agriculture at all. Therefore, no glyphosate can or should be considered as “within limit”. There is a possibility that FSSAI has been coaxed to accept limits set by Codex Alimentarius, which is very high and influenced by the toxic chemical lobby, to hoodwink innocent third world countries into importing toxic foods.

I had sent an earlier email to FSSAI officials warning about this, and am copying it here for your records.

India needs to reset limits set by external entities and set its own limit by conducting tests on lab animals subjected to measured doses of glyphosate. India is more than able to carry out honest tests and set its own safety limits than be coaxed by standards set under control of the same interests that make the profit in sale of such toxic foods. Allowing Codex Alimentarius’s limits for glyphosate in seed crops is like appointing a fox to guard the hen house.

3) Glyphosate is used by some countries to control weeds
This statement  is only partially true and not so relevant in this case. Glyphosate is used here as a killer poison to kill the crop itself, and not weeds, just prior to harvesting. Therefore, describing it as a weed killer is essentially passing misinformation. It is used as a crop killer, and not just weed killer.

I hope you shall pay attention to these facts and help India set very high, rather than very low, standards of food safety that is geared for keeping Indian citizens safe rather than keeping exporting nations make a profit at the expense of ill-health for people of India.

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Thank you

Santanu Mitra

49/65 Prince Gulam Mohd Shah Road, Kolkata 700033, India
+91-98317 13068, tony.mitra@gmail.com

Link to TOI news article: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/pulses-beans-imported-into-india-safe-for-consumption-fssai/articleshow/66640252.cms

Copy to:
 Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, Minister, food & public distribution, min-food@nic.in, ramvilas.p@sansad.nic.in

Mr Sanjeev Hans, PS to Minister, psfoodmin@nic.in

Mr Ashish Bahuguna, Chairperson, FSSAI, chairperson@fssai.gov.in

Ms Machavi Das, CMCO, madhavi.das@nic.in

Mr Kumar Anil, Advisor, advisor@fssai.gov.in
 Ms Rubeena Shaheen, Director, rubeena@fssai.gov.in

Mr Sunil Bakshi, Advisor, sbakshi@fssai.gov.in

Mr Bhaskar N, Advisor, advisor.qa@fssai.gov.in

Ms Suneeti Tateja, Director, suneeti@fssai.gov.in

Mr Raj Singh, Head, r.singh@nic.in

Mr. Prof. Ram Gopal Yadav, Rajya Sabha, Govt of India., Chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare, ramgopal.yadav@sansad.nic.in

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Glyphosate & India – Part I

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A lot of updates are due, that perhaps deserve to be recorded, all to do with glyphosate.

Debal Deb at his Odisha farm

Most of it started thanks to Debal Deb inviting me to spend a week with him in iin his rice conservation farm in Odisha. I accepted the invitation and saw quite a few things, and not just his efforts in conserving some thousand five hundred kinds of folk rice. I saw the variety of crops that were grown to sustain soil health. I saw the wonderful home garden with papaya and other trees bearing unbelievable numbers of ripe fruits and the flock of wild birds that frequented the area. I saw how the nearby villagers were influenced. I also saw the near zero carbon footprint housing erected with sun baked bricks. And, I got to yap with Debal.

This followed up with me yapping and arguing with Debal and Martin Brown in the evenings, where I perhaps ended up describing some of the dangers involved in glyphosate getting itself mis-incorporated into humans and other proteins by mimicking glycine, one of the canonical amino acids and part of the 20 basic building blocks of life.

It was Debal that first convinced me to speak about glyphosate, covering what I had learned from Scientists like Anthony Samsel on one end, and what I ended up doing in Canada on the other. And that first talk has turned into a keystone event in India. It started a chain reaction that is even now triggering more events here and there, in urban as well as rural enclaves.

The group at my first talk arranged by Debal Deb at Kalipur on the 24th of February, 2018.

Although Bengal media is refusing to cover the glyphosate story till now, it has one way or another broken into mainstream media in India. First salvo was fired by reputed Delhi journalist Bharat Dogra on two papers covering Hindi and English. The first came out in Deshbandhu, followed by an English article on The Statesman.

My talk at the Gandhi Peace Foundation, arranged by Angshuman & Bhoomi Ka

But before that happened, Angshuman Das of Bhoomi Ka, Kolkata heard me talk at Debal’s study circle and invited me to speak again at their venue in Kolkata. And then he followed up with a trip to Delhi for me to make a presentation at the Gandhi Peace Foundation in the month of may, organised by Bhumi Ka Delhi. That opened a lot more doors, including a number of articles in mainstream media.

Hindi article by Bharat Dogra on Deshbandhu

The Statesman article, titled “Health hazards of imported pulses” is here.

Then came the cover page news on the bimonthly eco-magazine “Down to Earth” by Vibha Varshney, who had attended my presentation at Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi in the month of May. But she followed it up with further research on her part, especially do with the issue that imported lentils from Canada might be very toxic. She tried to get comments from relevant Government departments, where the people refused to comment. I guess the Government got to know, one way or another, that the cat has been belled.

Then there were more talks in Kolkata, influenced by Samar Bagchi, such as one at the Ashutosh Mukherji science foundation. The partial group picture below shows some of the attendants.

Then came my twin talk at Bhoomi College and Ragi Cana at Bangaluru as invited by Vishala Padmanabhan and assisted by Bhoomi College & Ananya Mehta.

The Bangaluru visit was, in more ways than one, a watershed event for me.

This was also the first time when I had a class of youngsters in the front rows of the audience.

I learned, directly and indirectly, of many of the issues involving conserving biodiversity, interactions with the government on legislations that involve or affect organic farmers, on petty ego and undercurrents of human emotions getting in the way of finding a common ground and reaching resolutions.

I found in Vishala a fresh face of emerging Indian eco-consciousness, that I found both impressive and very endearing. I found in her friend Ananya an equally committed worker bee. Then there was Seetha, the founder of Bhoomi College that invited me to stay in her compound for two days and arranged for eating unique organic vegetarian diets at their excellent facility.

This followed up by two wonderful articles on two issues of Deccan Chronicle by journalist S.N.V. Sudhir.

One was for the Telengana issue while the other was for Andhra Pradesh.

I was asked by Sabuj Mancha (সবুজ মঞ্চ) and Disha (দিশা) to deliver a talk on glyphosate on the 25th of July at 5 PM at 186A Kalikapur Road, Kolkata.

July 25 – Kalikapur Kolkata

This is the same place where I had earlier delivered my first talk in India on glyphosate, as requested by Debal Deb back in February 2018.

I put up the pdf file of that presentation on the web. It is not password protected. Some of the slides had action items where multiple images get on top of each other. Single pdf image of those slides can get confusing. However, the news articles are listed in this blog post, for all to see.

Around this time, I was also getting a lot of additional information relating to glyphosate, from my scientist friends back in the US and Canada. One such helpful person was wildlife scientist  Judy Hoy of Montana. She actually sent me the photograph that showed visibly noticeable birth defect in the jaws of an endangered species in India – the wild cattle called “gaur”. The picture was of a calf sitting on the ground next to a metal pan, and is presumed to be under care of humans, possibly an orphan, that had likely suffered a birth defect while still a foetus in its mothers womb, through glyphosate exposure.

This blog might appear to the reader as indication that the level of awareness on the dangers of glyphosate has been raised just a little bit since Debal first identified the need for speaking on this issue and its relevance.

Interestingly, the big honcho’s of India’s anti-GMO groups and their alliances are, not unlike in the west, mostly pre-occupied with themselves and their bubble of anti-GMO echo chamber, and give all the impression of themselves being genetically engineered to ignore all dangers of glyphosate, which is saturating the landscape, while keeping their vision fixed and fixated on GMO only, like deer caught in the headlights, or a rabbit caught in the gaze of a hypnotic snake. I am told that some of the megalomaniacs that form the core group of these associations have asked “what is the relevance (of glyphosate) for India?”.

Its like someone spending twenty years studying seven volumes of Ramayana and then asking if Sita might be Lord Rama’s father-in-law.

This however, is not typical an Indian evolution. It took me some years back in North America, to fully. understand this phenomenon. The first group of people that were self-occupied and fixated with GMO and refused to acknowledge the need to resist glyphosate, were the very anti-GMO and clean food activists I used to hang out with. They were the fist line of defence of the biotech industry. They were the flip side of the same coin. The whole shebang, from agro-chemical corporations, their shareholders, politicians as well as all these anti-GMO groups and talking heads, were all on the same side of the issue, all ensuring conservation and propagation of toxic food industry, but each carefully creating their own image and avatar and pretending to represent this or that group.

I have since been told that this is the very definition of “controlled opposition”.

However, my extended trip to India has also opened my eyes on encouraging issues and signs that I was not aware of before and would never have known if Debal did not ask me to speak up on glyphosate at Kalikapur, and if that did not somehow spread the news under the radar and out of sight, far into the rural heartland where the real India resides.

It has opened new doors and I have been fortunate to glimpse at remarkable groups of people that are, individually and in small groups, already come to the concluding that chemical free farming of heirloom crops, and staying as far away from glyphosate as possible, is not only the way to go, but was the main alternative to an ecocide that was already busy writing the epitaph for the living planet.

Having Udupi & dosa with Vishala and Ananya at Bangaluru on a Sunday morning.

In many ways, Vishala and Ananya of Bangaluru represent part of this grassroots movement that bypasses the mainstream everything, and represent a new face of India that I find hopeful.

Anupam Paul at his Agriculture Training Centre in Fulia, Dist of Nadia

There is also the story of Anshuman Das, Anupam Paul, Tathagata Das, Rabin Bannerjee, Devpriya Mukherjee, Sujit Mitra, Shamik Bannerjee, Abhra Chakraborti and many others that are all coming to parallel and similar conclusions about the future of food, environment and humanity, and are taking steps, within their individual means, to address this issue from multiple angles. I have been enriched by contact with them, and wish to highlight their own trials and efforts to push back at this massive global endeavour to destroy what needs to be preserved, by human development, or what Debal might like to call – Developmentality.

Then there are entrepreneurs like Pravin Singhania and Abhishek Singhania (not related). they represent another angle – both having reached similar conclusion independently, to be directly involved in organic farming, one in order to feed clean food for his family, while continuing in his main profession which is not related to agriculture, while the other made a lifestyle change to make organic agriculture his profession. There are many others like them, that are buying or leasing farmlands and beginning to get involved in producing food. Its the beginning of a new level of realisation – that moving away from the soil, and expecting good food to automatically appear in stores, and leaving the issue in the hands of the Government, agro-corporations, or even the NGO talking heads, may have been an unmitigated disaster, for the world, and for India.

Then there are topics under discussion involving North American scientists Anthony Samsel, Stephanie Seneff, Don Huber, Judy Hoy, André Comeau, Theirry Vrain and myself (myself being the only non-scientist in the group), through mostly email. They cover a plethora of issues that are worth mentioning, all to do with glyphosate.
Here is a piece of information I have not harped upon too much while in India, but I should. The problem is too much to talk about and too little time. Anyhow, the thing is, India and most of Asia have heavy tea drinkers. India is also a major tea producer and exporter, much like Sri Lanka next door.

In Sri Lanka, there is also some indication that tea garden workers that use glyphosate to clear weeds around tea plants have apparently been suffering from throat cancer at a rate substantially higher than the national average, and glyphosate is suspected to be the root cause. The nation had implemented an island wide ban on import or use of glyphosate. But lately they have been pressurised to relax the ban and allow selective use, including in tea gardens. One of the pressure points, I heard, came from Japan, a major importer of Sri Lanka tea. Apparently Japan did not like the fact that Sri Lanka was trying to find alternatives to glyphosate for tea gardens. According to the Japanese, these alternatives are not proven safe, but, according to the Japanese, Glyphosate is deemed safe. As a result Japan threatened to cut off all import of Lankan tea , which would result in heavy loss to earning and jobs for Sri Lanka.

It is perhaps equally interesting that one fo the major producers of glyphosate in India has been recently bought over reportedly by a Japanese firm. And India is one supply source of glyphosate for Sri Lanka. I wonder if conflict of interest and share holder earnings for Japanese investors is clouding the whole issue of public safety in tea.

Meanwhile, an American firm has tested a lot of tea brands and found much glyphosate in most brands. Another group found prevalence of glyphosate in urine of tea drinkers.

What is happening in India – does anybody know ? I am aware that glyphosate has been used in tea gardens in the North East of India from the 1980s. These are issues that need to be highlighted, and I should do it, somehow within the time frame. I would like Indians to start checking the following:

  • How much glyphosate is in various brands of tea in India.
  • If there is noticeable health hazards among tea garden workers that use glyphosate
  • If there is noticeable health hazards among tea drinkers in India from glyphosate contamination
  • Testing effect of glyphosate in beverage on laboratory test animals

And last but not least, I have had my share of interaction with elected politicians in provincial ministry here in West Bengal, and perhaps more are in line.I have been trying to convince them to not allow glyphosate to be used indiscriminately, and blindly, without any proof of its safety. I have been asking them to demand that the safety documents on glyphosate be released by Delhi, failing which to ban the molecule. I have been asking them to consider initiating independent safety test on glyphosate and same time engage in broad based testing of local foods for presence of glyphosate. All these are critical issues. They too deserve a mention.

Those will go into part II of this write up.

Talking glyphosate, corruption, & citizen duty – in 17 minutes

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Talking about glyphosate poisoning of the planet, political corruption that makes it possible, and how the buck stops are your feet – all in 17 minutes.

Well – we are facing an existential crisis, and the buck stops are our feet.Question is, what are we, as individual citizens, prepared to do?

Here is my take, on Glyphosae, political and scientific corruption, and the need for citizen activism.

Glyphosate, being a mineral chelator, was denying our body from picking up essential nutrients from food by chelating (stealing) the minerals.

About a third of all our proteins (say around 40,000 kinds, give or take) function with a metallic ion placed in them. When our body creates a new protein of this kind, say to replace damaged one, it needs a metallic ion such as Manganese, or Iron, etc. to be attached to them in order for the proteins to function properly. This mineral is to be picked up from our food. However, glyphosate, if present in the same food, is able to steal that mineral. So, newly formed proteins would be denied its essential mineral, and remain non-functional as a result. Non-functional proteins lead to a pathway of diseases.

We humans and all animals have evolved in symbiosis with the bacterial kingdom, and a mass of bacteria use our body as host and in return perform essential services such as helping digest our food and assist our immune system.

Glyphosate kills bacteria, and thus it indirectly harms all of us, if we consume glyphosate along with our food. The claim that glyphosate is safe is patently false and to make it stick, industry has acquired a stranglehold on scientific research, destroying its neutrality and objectivity. More on this later.

Our immune system has not learned to identify glyphosate as a harmful substance because it is a synthetic molecule that did not exist in nature in the 4 billion year evolutionary history of life on earth. Our evolutionary process did not have to deal with it. That is why we have no defence against Glyphosate. This molecule was invented by man, only two generations ago, and as such is of extraterrestrial nature. It aught to be made extraterrestrial again – sending it out of planet earth. Let them make it and store it on Jupiter.

As if all this was not enough, glyphosate is a biological mimic of glycine, a canonical amino acid that is among the most common of the 22 amino acids that form the basic building block of  all life. By molecular mimicry, it slips past all our defences and gets mis-incorporated into our proteins. This invasion of glyphosate into our proteins turns them into rogue proteins, which can lead to a cascading series of diseases including synthetic diseases that did not exist before.

For scientific confirmation – one may read peer reviewed papers of Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff, linked in my blog tonu.org.

For me, glyphosate is unacceptable for a simpler and more ominous reason. A product may not be approved by a government for general release without disclosure of its safety documents and providing the proof that it is safe. However, test data and documents that prove glyphosate is safe for consumers, have not been disclosed by any nations anywhere, despite it being approved for use since the 1970s. To me, this itself makes approval of glyphosate illegal.

Also, no government was engaged in broad based testing of food to detect levels of concentration of glyphosate, the most used herbicide on the planet. This is not just irresponsible and unacceptable. It should be criminal.

Personally I could not get any organization, anti-GMO groups and various talking heads to join me in asking the government in Canada to disclose hitherto hidden safety document on glyphosate. Neither could I find anyone to join me asking the Canadian government to start testing our foods for glyphosate. That is how I decided to go alone.

In 2013 Canada did not even have a lab that could test glyphosate in food, mainly because neither our government nor the medical establishment had so far been interested in testing foods for glyphosate. As a result, labs did not gear themselves up for a non-existent market.

I subsequently started a single handed two pronged effort to get the Canadian government, as the time under Stephen Harper and the conservatives, to get off its backside and first disclose all safety documents and data based on glyphosate was approved for the first time, back in the 1970s. Then, on a separate appeal, I asked the ministry of health to get some labs ready to test foods for glyphosate and to answer why Canadians could not test presence of the most used herbicide in our food.

The first effort is still dragging on. The government does agree I have a right to see the safety documents. And yet, it drags it feet forever. I also learned that I was the first person in Canada to officially as for this information, although the molecule has been approved back in the 1970s.

The second effort was more successful. In fact, it moved mountains, primarily due to a dedicated member of parliament, Mr. Alex Atamanenko, who took up my cause and demanded that the then minister of health answers me why Canadians cannot test food for glyphosate. This resulted in the ministry of health finally responding to me in a letter and also arranging to have its food inspection agency to start broad based testing of all foods available in Canada, produced locally and imported, for presence of glyphosate.

As soon as I learned that the wheels of the Government was finally beginning to turn in favour of testing our food for glyphosate, I asked the Canadian government discloses all test results to me – not just for the emerging records on glyphosate but for all biocides in food that the government had already tested for. And thus December 2016 I got almost 8,000 just concluded test results of glyphosate in foods and later another almost 100,000 records of results of other biocides in foods.

Analysis of the glyphosate records proved to be a shocker.

First, seed based foods and food products produced in the US and Canada were an order of dimension more toxic with glyphosate than same foods produced anywhere else on the planet. North America produces the most poisonous foods on the planet. I call glyphosate to be poisonous on the grounds that its safety data has been kept hidden. By that omission, I consider approval of glyphosate as illegal and the product as unsafe and downright a slow and deadly poison. Also, That it in fact is a deadly slow poison, has been explained by scientists such as Samsel and Seneff in their peer reviewed papers.

Not only that, I found out that conventional non-GMO crops such as wheat, rye, oats, barley, chickpea etc have an order of dimension more glyphosate than GM crops like soy and corn. Thus conventional non-GMO foods were, in my view, very much more poisonous than GM crops.

In my view, going after Monsanto is a useless exercise, because Monsanto does not necessarily break the law. What is does is corrupt our governments and gets our politicians to change the law to suit its business model. I believe its claim of safety of glyphosate to be fraudulent. I believe that is why it influences governments to hide this safety record from the people and prevents independent scrutiny of these data. Our governments is thus knowingly or unknowingly helping slow poisoning of the people, by allowing widespread use of glyphosate in agriculture.

Therefore, if one has to identify the rogues that are responsible for poisoning our food, our health, and our future, one needs to focus on our ineffective and possibly corrupt political process and perhaps corrupt or illiterate politicians that could not distinguish glyphosate from their elbow, who are unfortunately in charge of the regulatory mechanism and end up changing the laws of the nation to allow glyphosate to be used in agriculture.

Other scientists have found problems not just with glyphosate, but also with other chemicals packaged around it to make the branded product such as RoundUp. While this may be correct, it is glyphosate and glyphosate alone, that goes to regulatory mechanism and passes approval that ends up as RoundUp herbicide. In my view the cumulative damage that glyphosate does, not just at the toxicological level but in destroying our biology by molecular mimicry, sets this molecule apart from other adjuvants that goes into the packaging of RoundUp and even other herbicides.

And while we have other herbicides, pesticides, insecticides that are all possibly harming the ecosystem, glyphosate again stands out by the sheer volume of it that is produced and used, compared to all other biocides.

GMO are also based on fraudulent logic, exploitative ethics, twisted science as well as designed to undermine food security and freedom of a nation. However, there are hundreds and hundreds of them, each following different sets of scientific detail. If I have to fight a single battle and not a thousand battles, then I would choose glyphosate to be in my primary target. Glyphosate is the 900 pound gorilla in our food web and environment. Killing it would effectively also kill the GMO project. We shall be on the way to have all foods grown everywhere to be naturally organic as well as belonging to the people and the region that grows these foods, and not property of western corporations and banks .

Agri-corporations and their enablers in our government is quick to show the weighty evidence of science papers that claim glyphosate is safe. Promoters of this model of agriculture peddling increased sale of toxic chemicals, support a viewpoint that there is a baseless conspiracy theory and paranoia created in the minds of people by some miscreants and hapless scientists, which is resisting progress and modernism in agriculture and fighting glyphosate. There is a misconception that a little bit of toxicity in food in way of glyphosate is both acceptable and necessary, in view of the increased population of the world. All these claims by the promoters of toxic agriculture are fraudulent and not supported by honest facts and honest science. But my response to this chemical onslaught is simple. I say – disclose the safety documents, or shut up.

As to the weight of scientific evidence and the so called science based assessment – this is what I have to say.

Scientific research on safety of technologies such as glyphosate and GMO needs to be public funded and public owned. Instead, it is funded by the industry. Our politicians have allowed this travesty to come about. The public has bought into this on the false idea that this makes science free for the people and reduced our tax burden. This is false. There is no free lunch. You pay junk money for science, and you get junk science.

The industry is not interested in funding scientists that wish to check if products such as glyphosate has a problem. As a result, research on possible negative effects of glyphosate does not get any funding. Science has thus become one sided. It has lost its neutrality and objectivity. This, to me, is not science. This is voodoo, and so called “scientists” promoting it are not true scientists. They are pedlars.

Lastly, all this talk sidesteps a few important points – and these are to do with my perception of what constitutes democracy, the role of citizenry and what should be my personal duty to uphold our democratic process where the people are the masters of the government, and not some poison peddling corporation.

The most important stake holder in democracy is the citizen. It is my view that we, each of us, incur a debt to society and to democracy, as we grow up. The society does a lot to groom us. And we are to pay this debt back through the course of our lives by doing something in return for our society, our neighbourhood and our nation. We take a lot from the the society. We are supposed to put back more than we take, so that we leave the kitty is a bit richer and not sucked dry in our lifetime.

And there is the crux. We as individuals, within our individual capacity, are to engage in citizen activism to uphold and improve the wheels of the nation. This is our job, and not the job of the politicians. The politicians job is to represent us, take our views, and execute our wishes as our temporary servants. Our job is to be ever vigilant to ensure that these temporary servants are not robbing us and selling us off.

If we are caught napping, and stop controlling the politicians, then our politics will start being controlled by someone else or something else – which does not have our best interest at heart. Democracy then begins to fail, or morphs into forms of dictatorship, or fascism or other forms of rogue governments.

As they say – if you have a nation of sheep, you get a government of wolves. So, I appeal to you, the people, to get busy paying your debt to the nation, and start holding the feet of your politician to the fire.

We are facing an existential crisis. The very well beings of your children and grand children depends on you doing your duty in your own lifetime. Nothing else will do. The buck stops at your feet.

Thank you.

Question for Robert Kennedy Jr, about Vaccine

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Hello Mr. Robert Kennedy Jr,

I am a Canadian citizen that lived in the US before moving to Canada. I am a food security activists that wrote the book ‘Poison Foods of North America‘ covering high toxicity in Canadian and US grown foods with glyphosate contamination.

I have studied issues with vaccines too and am aware of their possible link to a cascade of diseases for all sorts of reasons including presence of Glyphosate.

Since you are appointed by the US president to be part of a team to study vaccine safety, your involvement in this field has caught the attention of many, including people in Canada.

I have been advised by some folks that attended your recent visit to Ontario in some public event where you were there with Vandana Shiva and others. These attendees were concerned that your opposition to vaccines appeared to be very limited, only on the presence of mercury and not other things that are also considered as much if not more damaging to the people. In particular, about the presence of possible GMO and glyphosate and the extent of damage that these ingredients children that receive these vaccines.

In other words, there was a nagging suspicion in some of their minds that you gave the corporations such as Monsanto a pass, by failing to identify their products as potentially dangerous ingredients in vaccines.

I would like you to clarify your position in this regard.

My second concern is the difficulty in finding your email address, so this question could be asked to you directly, instead of through a public blog or an youtube. It is my view that people involved in serving the public should not hide their emails from the people. I wonder if you have anything to say on this.

Thanking you

Tony Mitra

10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E 3L7, Canada
604-649 7535
tony.mitra@gmail.com

MLA Sonia Furstenau – ban glyphosate from BC

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To: MLA Sonia Furstenau
cc: Lana Popham, Minister of Agriculture, BC
Dated: September 9th, 2017
Subject: Ban glyphosate from British Columbia
Dear member or legislative assembly Sonia Furstenau,
I am a Canadian citizen and a resident of Delta, British Columbia. Although I am not from your riding, I write this letter of great concern for all British Columbians, hoping to get your support in the BC legislative assembly. The issue is about banning the use of glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in pervasive week killer Roundup as well as many other lesser known brands of killer chemical concoctions.
I have been involved for a number of years in coaxing the Ottawa government to first set up labs to test foods for glyphosate, since Canada did not have such labs a few years ago, and then to engage in broad based mass testing of foods collected in Canada for glyphosate, then to give me a copy of all those test results. I finally analyzed them all to discover the shocking truth that Canada and the US produces the most toxic foods in the planet, when it comes to glyphosate contamination, and that foods collected in western Canada, that includes all land west of Ontario and includes the prairies, to have measurably more toxic foods in stores than in any other place on earth.  We in short are living in the global epicentre of poisonous foods. My findings are there for all to see in a 400 page ebook on Amazon titled Poison Foods of North America.
I write this letter for the specific reason. I seek your assistance in getting the newly formed Green partnered BC government, in working to ban the use of glyphosate from British Columbia, in agriculture, over forests and from every other area.
I have learned that it is legally possible and within rights of the provincial government to ban glyphosate outright, despite the fact that it is approved federally, and that the BC government cannot be sued by Monsanto or any other commercial entity for hurting their business interest, because it involves concerns of health and sustainability.
We know Lana Popham is the minister of Agriculture and that this issue might be within her jurisdiction. We know she had been a strong promoter of organic agriculture. I have written to her already, and a petition is created about this. However, we also realize that once one is in the government, and in the driving seat, one often comes under commercial pressure to compromise on their core principles. I do not know if Lana is under such pressure. But we decided to strengthen her hand any way by broad scale public support.
This letter is copied to her since she is referred here.
Apart from creating the petition, I have written to my MP, MLA and Mayor to also consider writing to Lana Popham to ban glyphosate from BC. I believe such letters would further bolster her hand. My municipality has circulated my letter to the all councillors and senior staff and decided to discuss it in their general meeting shortly.
I write to you because you have a track record of fighting to protect the land from ecological degradation driven by commercial interest. Many of us believe you might be the most committed person in the BC government to turn the issue of banning glyphosate, from a talking point, into a crusade. And at this point, we do need a crusade, and a crusader.
That is the main goal of my letter to you. British Columbia might show the path for the rest of the world to follow.

I am an activist that tries to encourage others by example. So this letter will be circulated on social media, and in blogs and perhaps video.
I shall be very happy to receive a note of acknowledgement and a pledge to look into this grave matter. I do not ask and never will ask, for any personal favour. I only ask you to consider saving the world.

Thanking you
Tony Mitra
10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E 3L7, Canada
tony.mitra@gmail.com
604-649 7535

Agriculture Minister – ban glyphosate in BC

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The province of British Columbia, Canada, now has a new government, a coalition between the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Green Party. This is a first in Canada where the environmentally conscious Green Party holds the balance of power.

New Ag-Minister BC – Lana Popham

The new agriculture minister, Ms Lana Popham, of NDP, had been a promoter of clean organic food and supporter of pushing back at GMO and herbicides in agriculture. I have met and known her from the time when she was an MLA in the opposition bench under the liberal government for two terms.

A new petition is hereby being created, asking her to consider ways by which the province of British Columbia can push back and ultimately ban the use of Glyphosate in British Columbian agriculture, and perhaps even impose restrictions on import of foods with considerable glyphosate content, and thus get the ball rolling and lead by example for the rest of Canada.

This petition is not aimed solely at residents of British Columbia. Since this beautiful western province is a major tourist destination for people within Canada as well as from the United States and the wider world, we are asking everybody everywhere, to chip in, sign the petition, and also write individually to the agriculture minister (AGR.Minister@gov.bc.ca) that you wish to have clean, glyphosate-free food when you next visit this beautiful land.

I read out the letter to the new Agriculture Minister in the video that goes with the petition.

===============================================================
I started asking my elected representatives (politicians from my riding in Ottawa, Canada, in Victoria, BC and in Municipality of Delta, BC), asking them to support this petition. The body of the message is also given here as an example for other citizens that might like to write similar letters to their own representatives, to support the petition, to write to the Agriculture Minister and to create a broad based support for her to lead the way for the other provinces to follow.

To: Carla Qualtrough, MP, Delta, BC, Minister of Sports
Ravi Kahlon, MLA, Delta, BC
Lois Jackson, Mayor, Delta, BC
Dated: Friday, September 1, 2017
Subject: Petition on Banning Glyphosate in British Columbian Agriculture.
Ms Carla Qualtrough, MP
Mr. Ravi Kahlon, MLA
Ms Lois Jackson, Mayor
I write to you about my petition on banning glyphosate from this province.
It is the active ingredient in the popular weedkiller brand ‘Roundup’. It is the most used herbicide in Canadian agriculture. Ottawa has never disclosed safety data and documents based on which it considered glyphosate to be safe for agriculture. In my judgment it is illegal to allow the use of a product while withholding its safety data. Our federal government is therefore breaking its own law in allowing glyphosate to be used in Canada for the last 35 years.
Ms Qualtrough knows something about it when I personally handed her over 23,000 signatures demanding that Health Canada releases all hitherto hidden safety documents on glyphosate. She should have first hand experience on how Ottawa continues to drag its feet on this issue.
Mr. Kahlon met me personally at my home for an hour prior to the last provincial election, and had promised to do something about getting Ottawa to release the hidden documents should he get elected. Now that he is elected, I remind him of his promise, and shall wait to see what he is prepared to do.
Mayor Jackson has not had any communication from me about glyphosate per se, although I have written to her in the past about pushing back at GMO from Delta agriculture lands. Anyhow I expect she knows about glyphosate. I am also requesting the mayor to share this letter with the rest of the Delta Municipal Councillors.

For reference you may consider reading my 400 page book, ‘Poison Foods of North America’ as an analysis on near 8,000 food samples tested by CFIA, that shows Canadian and US grown seed based foods to be the most toxic in the entire world with glyphosate contamination. I had a role to play in getting our federal government to set up labs that could test food for glyphosate and then for it to order massive tests of all foods available in Canada, locally grown and imported, and finally demanding that I be given a copy of all the test results. This body of data is the largest and most comprehensive in the entire world, and paints a very grim picture of Canadian and US agriculture. 

And out of this toxic mix, foods collected in Western Canada, which includes the mega farms of the prairies west of Ontario, proved to be more toxic than foods found anywhere else. We are at the epicentre of poisonous foods in the entire planet. We are also the sickest in the entire industrial world, in spite of spending the most on healthcare.
I write this letter to you three for the following reasons:
1) I request you to sign the petition asking the newly appointed agriculture minister of British Columbia, Ms Lana Popham, to find ways to push back at the use of glyphosate in British Columbian agriculture, despite the fact that its use has been, illegally in my opinion, approved by Ottawa.
I further request you to write individually to Minister Popham about above and also encourage her to find ways to restrict or impose tax on any imported food that contain measurable amounts of glyphosate.
I have met Ms Popham on a number of occasions when she was an MLA in the opposition bench, and know her to be a promoter of organic food and against the use of GM crops and glyphosate. Now that she is the Agriculture Minister, I expect she might be facing commercial pressure to compromise on her original views, and as a counter, she perhaps needs broad based public support. Your letters would therefore help.
2) I understand that in a functioning democracy, people aught to be the masters and the elected officials their public servants. However, the roles often get diffused and the public as well as politicians sometimes forget who is the master and who is the servant.
This letter therefore serves the second purpose where I, a citizen voter, am telling you, my representatives in Government, what my wishes are, with regard to demanding clean, glyphosate-free food in my province.
3) I also use these letters as an example for other citizens of Canada to let their own politicians to know of their wish.  this is the essence of building large body of public support for Minister Popham on banning glyphosate.
Therefore, these letters are designed to also be circulated through blogs and social media and forwarded email, to lead by example and encourage other voters to join up and work to take back the controls of democracy in this country, a control that appears to be slipping out of hands of its citizens.
In closing, I shall be delighted to receive a positive response from you or an invitation to speak face to face on this. I am willing to lead a delegation to see any of you should you wish. But even a negative response, or a non-response from you, will be used to encourage ordinary people to get involved.
I would however caution you not to use select science, or quote Health Canada or any other government institution, in telling me that glyphosate is safe. You do not have the right to make that decision. People have that right. The only thing Ottawa needs to do about glyphosate, is to stop parroting about its safety, and place all hidden safety documents in public domain.
Thanking you,
Tony Mitra

10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E 3L7, Canada
605-649 7535

Tony with Lana – 2013 April

Back in 2013 when I first met her, she was an MLA and a promoter of clean organic foods.

Today, she is the Agriculture Minister of BC.

I do not know if my knowing her earns me any currency today, but if it does, I intend to spend every last cent of it in trying to convince and help her in finding new ways to push back at Ottawa and cleanse our province from this toxic soup of glyphosate.

Pesticides in Potato

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There has been talks about possible presence of glyphosate and other pesticides in tubers such as potato.

I was informed by some that potato being grown some places in Canada might be desiccated by glyphosate prior to harvesting. But according to data received from CFIA, potato were not tested for glyphosate, and the word potato comes up sparingly in the items tested which were processed meals that contained potato. Potato might not have been the main ingredient in those products and the presence of glyphosate was not noted to be high or consistent. So I would say that the CFIA results were not conclusive that potato posed a serious threat to glyphosate poisoning to people.

Anyhow, I asked Anthony Samsel. This is what he said:

Tony,
Glyphosate causes DAMAGE to potato tubers…It is generally only used pre-plant and low levels do get into the tubers.. and cause reduced quality and yield.  The herbicides used pre-harvest to desiccate the vines are generally GLUFOSINATE, DIQUAT (Reglone) …..  
These are necrotic lesions caused by glyphosate in the soil…

necrotic lesions

(Above pictures, as well as the rest, are new to me. I have not seen such potato either in the store or in my backyard. I guess such items are removed before potatoes reach the store shelves. I might not have them because I do not use glyphosate or any industrial pesticide in my residence or garden.)

This is crippled shoot (at left) formation from the potato eyes called Cauliflower formation and is a telltale sign of glyphosate application to the field …

This is tuber cracking (at right) caused by glyphosate exposure from spray drift.

…. most potatoes have residues of herbicides and fungicides such as the fungicide Chlorothalonil… which never should have been allowed into the food supply.  This fungicide causes mammalian embryo fatalities and reductions in live fetuses…  Animal studies show that Chlorothalonil is a probable carcinogen…..
Anthony

The images and the text in blue are from scientist Anthony Samsel of USA. I have never seen such potato either but can understand why or how this might happen.

Meanwhile I did check the issue of Chlorthalonil in potato, among items tested by CFIA. There are more than 2,500 samples of potato tested by CFIA from 2008 till 2016 for presence of Chlorothalonil. Out of them all, only four samples had any chlorothalonil.

The above table shows some of the details available from the only samples that contained Chlorothalonil. For some reason, just one sample, the one on top, representing fresh potato from from the US contained over 3,700 ppb of Chlorothalonil and was in violation. The others contained less than 3 ppb, the last one was declared as organic.

The table is also the link to the full downloadable file of over 2,500 tests done on potato to find Chlorothalonil, by CFIA, between 2008 and 2016.

This is also included in the book Poison Foods of North America.

 

Other pesticides in North American Foods

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Poison Foods of North America is mostly designed to help people avoid glyphosate from their daily foods, and is for those that consider glyphosate to be singularly the worst synthetic molecule to be in their food, as a long term agent of health hazard and disease.

But I have also received data on foods tested for other biocides. I am slowly converting parts of this huge database to the public in shorter Pdf files that contain all the raw data as received.

The attached pdf file gives all the samples that tested 2,4-D positive, and excludes all that tested negative. All readings are as originally received except one column. The pesticide level was originally measured in µg/g or in ppm. I have multiplied the readings a thousand fold and expressed the same in parts per billion, or ppb.

You can click the image to go to the pdf file which can be downloaded and expanded for study.

Tony Mitra