Category Archives: CFIA

Dirty dozen of US foods

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Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) had nearly 8,000 records of foods tested for presence of glyphosate, which I came to acquire a copy of after years of working on this issue with various levels of the Canadian Government going back some number of years, to the time when Mr. Harper was the Prime Minister. My interactions started with the issues that Canada at the time did not even have a lab that would test foods for glyphosate, which I considered to be an outrageous and unacceptable state of affair. Thankfully, within a year, labs started getting themselves accredited for testing foods for glyphosate, more or less concurrent with the time when World Health Organization classified glyphosate to be a probable carcinogen.

While this matter was kept outside of the media or Government outlets, i was fully aware of a scheme going on to test foods available in Canada, of both Canadian and imported kind, for glyphosate. This started my next level of effort with the Government to get my hands on the food test records. In between all this there has been letters, meetings, petitions and motions initiated by me and sent to Health Ministers spanning two governments, demanding disclosure on various aspects on glyphosate, from its approval for agriculture, to setting of MRLs, to its aerial use over forests, prairies and watersheds. Those details may not have a direct relation with this blog, but all these efforts and years of involvement brought me to where I was three months ago, sitting on a huge pile of test records on foods collection in Canada, and around a thousand and five hundred of those records involved foods originating in the United States, and a similar number for foods grown in Canada. India and China provided the most samples after USA and Canada.

All these records were scanned by me and converted to editable text and numbers using optical character recognition software, and error corrected. Finally, multiple giant spreadsheets were created to sort through the data for analysis. That prompted me to write and publish an online e-Book to alert the people. I named it “POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA”.

The book is over 300 page long and has more than 300 tables, along with charts and images. Many of the tables give the actual raw data with regard to glyphosate content and description of the food sample, its origin etc.

Some of the findings were as expected while some are totally unexpected, and often shocking.

Here are a few examples:

  1. Canada and USA produce the most toxic foods on the planet, with regard to glyphosate contamination.
  2. Within North America, Canada produces foods with significantly higher levels of glyphosate.
  3. Within Canada, the west is where one can find more glyphosate contaminated foods than from other regions within Canada.
  4. Western Canada is ground zero, for finding nasty foods.
  5. Cleanest of food suppliers are Peru, Thailand, France, South Africa, Mexico, and China. China apparently exports cleaner foods than what locals consume inside China. For example, imported foods from China, averaging 3 ppb contamination, is 28 times cleaner than foods produced in the US, and over 45 times cleaner than foods produced in Canada.
  6. Foods imported from Mexico is 70 times cleaner than Canadian foods and over 40 times cleaner than foods originating in the United States.
  7. Conventional foods desiccated by glyphosate is far more contaminated than GM crops that are roundup ready.
  8. Out of the main cereals, rice is about the only one that is more or less without any glyphosate, except for some rice, rice flour or rice based products produced in Canada and the US.
  9. Lentils and chickpea (garbanzo) produced in North America, as well as foods made with these ingredients are highly contaminated with glyphosate.
  10. Although soy flour may contain high glyphosate, tofu made out of soy has none.
  11. Wheat bran produced in Canada has an average of around 2,500 ppb of glyphosate in every sample.

Foods from over sixty nations have been tested, but not all of them contributed large number of samples. However, a few nations did have high sample depth, USA is among them.

The table here was truncated from a long one, with each and every type of food that was recorded by CFIA to have come from the United States. Then, for now, all food types that hat had less than 10 samples were set aside.

Of the remaining samples, how many belonged to which food type was entered in the second column from left, against each food types. How many of that food type proved ‘negative’ or had to glyphosate, was checked. These two figures allowed calculations on what percentage of the samples were dirty (proved positive in glyphosate screening). Then all the glyphosate and AMPA values were added and then divided by the total number of samples for each food type, to get average ppb contamination level, which is shown in the last column.

Then the table was sorted by ppb values in descending order, and included as the first item within the subchapter of foods from the United States.

So this table is the dirty dozen of American foods.

We shall then proceed with looking at more details of some of the dirty dozen that have high glyphosate levels and high enough sample depth to provide a glimpse of what is happening with toxicity in US grown foods.

The top two items in the second table above are in violation of the MRL (Maximum residue Limit) set by the Canadian Government. What is interesting to ponder, or perhaps correspond with the authorities about, is what happens with such violations are noted. Ideally, the product should be withdrawn. Public should be notified and warned not to buy or consume it. Those that already bought this item should be advised to return it to the store and get a refund. The producer should be prosecuted. The issue should be out on mainstream media for public awareness.

None of that, as far as I can remember happened or happens. I do not remember a single instance with I was aware of such foods being recalled or public warned.

So, are we to suppose that those MRLs which are themselves set arbitrarily without providing any proof of their authenticity, are also not being implemented? In our food safety mechanism we might have a reproduction of the “wild west”.

In the case of violations on foods imported, in this case from the US, should the US Government and public also not be notified? Is anybody from the US aware of this situation?

I use the term toxic and poisonous interchangeably to mean the same thing, and I deny the mainstream any right to control the meaning of the terms toxic or poisonous with regard to glyphosate.

As long as the public is denied independently verifiable proof that glyphosate in food is safe at any level, over the lifetime of animals consuming it even in low dose, to me, all talks of glyphosate being safe is worth little more than magic or voodoo.

Mainstream can continue to consider glyphosate as safe, and I shall continue to believe it is the most dangerous synthetic chemical to have entered our food system and threatens to undo the long term health of the human society as well as all flora and fauna of the land.

And thus, the table above is the opening section of the “dirty dozen” of US foods. We shall also have more such tables covering the remaining items in dirty dozens list from USA, Canada, Unknown, and some other countries.

The book is already online, but constantly being improved, proof read, new tables, charts, subjects and value added. All updates should be free for legal owners of previous copies. However, there is a catch. Apparently, free updates are decided on case by case basis by Amazon after receiving an application from the author. Standard guidelines provided by Amazon mentions that additional chapter and added pages do not qualify for free access to later versions of the book by folks that bought an earlier version. I did not know that till I started inquiring with Amazon. Now I am trying to impress upon them that this book is a reference and analysis of the most controvercial herbicide in our food system and there is no other book of this kind, covering data that is not available to anybody else at this point of time. And later versions cover critical data on foods form the US, a significant producer of foods that are contaminated with this herbicide. I hope to impress upon them to make a difference and allow free updates to owners of earlier copies.

Otherwise, I would suggest that potential readers might like to wait for about a weak or two before purchasing the book. For all these confusions, the price of the book is lowered temporarily by a few dollars. It will be back up to around $ 9.99 as soon as sections covering US foods and foods from China and India are completed. Target is by the first week of April, 2017.

The book can be found in Amazon, NAMED “Poison foods of North America”. Book cover, designed by me, is shown here with the link.

I also made a three minute video on the book, as shown below.

 

Lastly, this book is not designed to add to the debate on if glyphosate is safe and at what level. I have no interest to join any such debate. I am uninterested in the opinion of the glyphosate supporting industry and their supportive political and media outlets. I live in a free country and the meaning of any word or term such as toxic or poisonous, is not owned by the industry. The meaning is not even etched in stone and changes with times depending on perception by the people.

So, the mainstream can continue to harp that glyphosate is safe. I shall continue to believe it is dangerous and unsafe at any level of concentration, until proven otherwise by independent verification and the regime of secrecy around it has been dismantled.

So who is this book for? It is for those that have, like me, already decided that glyphosate is a seriously harmful molecule in their food web and they would rather find a way to avoid it right now. Those are the people this book is for.

The mainstream science, media, political class and the regulatory authority has lost public trust on this issue. This book is not aimed at influencing their opinion. This book is for the people – the rest of us.

Tainting the Cornucopia of North America

Dr. Vallianatos, retired US-EPA scientist and author of the book “Poison Spring” read and reviewed this book on Huffington Post. Link.

Reading Poison Foods on Kindle App

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The eBook ‘POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA” is up on Amazon now. It sells under the the banner of a Kindle edition. It describes how a person could adapt and modify one’s eating habit in order to avoid being slow poisoned by a steady dose of glyphosate. The analysis is based on 7,800 odd records of foods tested by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), of which I got a copy of the raw data of the tests.

As a result there has been some confusion among potential customers, that they might be forced to buy a hardware device from Amazon, in order to read these books. Well, as it happens, that is not true. Amazon sells a free app for various devices. I have found reading the book on my computer to be the most pleasing because of the lovely appearance of the tables.

This blog is written for those who have a doubt if they can read the book “POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA” if do not have a kindle reader device, and think they cannot read this book without that device. Many are reluctant to buy this device only to read one book. This blog is for them and the purpose is to assure them that they do not need to buy an additional device just for one book.

A kindle app logo looks like the one at the right. It is available free of charge at Amazon, and there is an app for each kind of device in your home, such as a computer, or a tablet or a smart phone etc.

The book cover is shown below. I initially thought this would be a temporary cover and I shall move on to a better looking cover later on. But, I think human brain associates some images with the matter represented by that image. In other words, this book cover image is now linked with the book on glyphosate in Food as tested by CFIA. So I shall let the cover stay for now.

The book, if read through my MAC laptop using the kind app, looks quite pleasant. One of the chapters are shown below as a sample.

Finally, I made a four minute video showing how it actually looks on my mac laptop.

Hope this will assist folks.

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.