Yesterday a Telegu language newspaper from Hyderabad, the province of Telengana, came up with this news on glyphosate, and indirectly mentioned what I had been talking about, without naming me.

A helpful organic farming entrepreneur from Hyderabad, Mr. Ramchandra has translated it over the phone for me. It says, in brief:

• Glyphosate is very dangerous
• It is used to kill weeds but it is also killing people
• Sri Lanka had banned it in 2014 because farm workers were dying from kidney failure
• Argentina banned it in 2017, because of pregnant women exposed to glyphosate were experiencing two to four times more birth defects than national average.
• India has allowed glyphosate to be used for tea plantations, but the approval for this use may be controversial and questionnable.
• Provinces of Andhra Pradesh and Telengana are working to ban this herbicide. An investigation is being initiated by the Government into possible corruption and briery involved where farmers are illegally being encouraged to use this herbicide by unscrupulous people for financial gain. As a result, glyphosate is illegally being used everywhere.
• 87% of Red Lentil (Masoor Dal) imported into India from Canada is reported to be highly contaminated by glyphosate.
• India is also importing pulses from Australia that are highly poisonous from glyphosate.

So, is the glyphosate juggernaut in India turning a corner, and coming to a possible road block in future? Are breaks beginning to be applied to the wheels of this juggernaut ?

Meanwhile, in Bengal, I have so far met two minsters of the government of West Bengal, India, regarding glyphosate. These are Mr. Purnendu Basu, minister of skilled labour (ex minister of agriculture) and Mr. Subhendu Adhikari, the minister of environment. While the issue of glyphosate has been brought to their ear, there has been no positive movement as yet, for the government to start focussing on the ravages to the land and its biomass from illegal and reckless use of glyphosate.

Having said that, I am lagging behind on a letter I am supposed to write to the Environment Minister as a follow up. I am delayed because I am unable to lay y hands of two documents that I was asked to attach to the letter. These are:

• Copy of the original order from Sri Lanka, banning the import, sale, or use of glyphosate
• Document showing the intent of the Government of Telangana, with regard to considering banning of all illegal use of Glyphosate. This is a new development, the details of which I do not have much information.

Mr. Adhikari, the Minister of Environment, Government of West Bengal, in the middle, with me with a cap on, and Dr. Samar Bagchi at right.

The fact that I am unable to get any help on the above two items, and do not know who to ask, is causing some frustration from my end. I hope to nail those two issues subsequently. Meanwhile, I appeal to all readers, if you can help, please do. However, please do not send me links to news articles about Sri Lanka and glyphosate. I do not need them. I am only looking for official document, signed by a Government official, such as the president of someone, passing the order or confirming the decision that the government of Sri Lanka is banning glyphosate.

And as to Telengana, I need whatever original document is available, for example, and appeal make to the government by some official, asking it to ban glyphosate.

Then there is a plan to go talk with rice farmers in the district of Purulia about glyphosate. But I must convert my presentation into Bengali, something I have never done on this technically heavy subject. But Mr. Rabin Bannerji has helped convert some rice farmers to move away from input intensive, chemical dependent hybrid rice to sustainably grown, chemical free organic folk rice, black rice in particular. This is a remarkable story in itself and whether the effort survives or fails in the micro level may be a pointer to if India is going to save itself at a macro level, from going under, both in agriculture as well as in its biodiversity and ecosystems. I am therefore interested to see first hand what Mr. Bannerji is doing in Purulia. I am told the audience would largely be women rice farmers and largely illiterate – but not uneducated. These women did not study beyond the first few years in school, so they might be considered barely literate. But they are certainly not uneducated. The instinctively know the wisdom of living in harmony with nature instead of in conflict with it.

Meanwhile, on the scientific front, we have already spoken many times about glyphosate being an amino acid that is analog to glycine and how it gets mis-incorporated into protein construction, thus producing dysfunctional proteins that trigger a plethora of diseases.

I often converse on email with scientists such as Anthony Samsel, Stephanie Seneff, Don Huber, Judy Hoy, Andé Comeau, and Thierry Vrain. When I hear something I like I ask them if I might quote it. And here is one quote from Stephanie seneff, about glyphosate getting into proteins as an amino acid.

The discussion that was preceding was various salts of glyphosate that are in the herbicide packages. Apparently, glyphosate itself is not too soluble in water. Therefore, corporations selling the herbicide cannot sell larger concentrations into smaller packages of solution that is easier to transport. In order to increase solubility in water, the producer sells it in some form of salt of glyphosate that is readily soluble. That solution ionises glyphosate and the salt making it easy not just for the plants to pick the toxin up, which often kills them if they are a weed, but also for animals to pick them up to, as explained by Stephanie Seneff above.

 Then there is the question of the metabolite of Glyphosate. Most things usually decay or breakdown over a period of time. So does glyphosate too. However, some of the first stages of such decay produces variants that are still very toxic, such as AMPA. It is no more a mimic of glycine, but it is very harmful on its own, without being picked up in place of glycine in protein construction. This is explained by Anthony Samsel below.

A lot is now known about harmful effects of Glyphosate and its first stage metabolites. A lot more needs to be discovered, as explained by Samsel in the last two sentences above.

To be continued …

Are young tea or alcohol drinkers likely to face early cancer or liver damage from Glyphosate?

If we are getting poisoned by glyphosate, which of our food and drinks are likely to affect us faster ?

If we are getting poisoned by glyphosate, which of our food and drinks are likely to affect us faster ? I CFIA tested thousands and thousands of foods for glyphosate, where I had a role to play. But Canada did not test tea or coffee or alcohol, since these were not considered food and my drive was to test food.

Separate small scale testing has been done on beverages. There is a test of wines done by Zen Honeycutt in the US, where she found glyphosate in most wines including wineyards that were organic or biodynamic ones. Then there is the test of various foods and a few tea brands, whose details are mentioned here. These too were just a handful of tests. These seemed to indicate that tea contains far more glyphosate than all other foods tested by the US team. There is separate comments on how glyphosate is to be expected in beer and whiskey etc, alcohol that are produced from wheat and rye, barley etc. I know that these desiccated grains have far more glyphosate than Roundup Ready soy and corn. So I would have expected glyphosate concentration to be high in these drinks, especially in products that used grains harvested after 2005 in North America, since pre harvest desiccation of grains started from that time.

But, I have not seen a comparative data on glyphosate concentration on all these drinks, i.e. tea, wine, beer and whiskey. Without seeing such comparative chart, and from what I have already seen, I suspect more non-alcoholic people, especially people from Asia, are getting poisoned from tea, where glyphosate is suspected to have entered from the 1980s. On top of this background, highly toxic lentils and pulses are now being imported from Canada, Australia etc without any testing if those levels of glyphosate are allowed in India, and more importantly, if India has ever checked on safety of glyphosate in seed crops by subjecting test animals to a dose of glyphosate proportional to their body weight. These two factors, tea and lentils, might be the first reasons for the epidemic of auto-immune diseases facing India right now, and which I suspect is going to swamp the nation in a decades time. ON top of these, we have a runaway use of glyphosate everywhere. It is omnipresent and ubiquitous in India.

My computer crashed last week, and is now with local Apple Service centre. I am using a backup unit, a 13 inch MacBook Air with much smaller hard drive and screen. I am not building up the programs and data from cloud and Time Machine backups.

Being in India for the last few months, my perspective on the subject has changed considerably. I have become less concerned about reaching out to the anti-GMO activist groups, or the media, and have gotten more interested on grassroots level activity going on under the radar. There are a to of things going on here, both good and bad.

Glyphosate is everywhere, with and without Monsanto. Public is unaware of it, its omni presence, or potential damage. Anti-GMO groups have their heads in the sand and blowing hot air from the wrong end. The people and wildlife are likely already facing a rising tsunami of health degradation. Some experts have predicted that conventional farming is going to collapse in India within the next two decades.

I personally feel the healthcare system and along with it much of the fabric of society is likely to also collapse from a tsunami of auto-immune disease.

One side of the discussion was initiated by me, trying to learn about salts of glyphosate and their water solubility and activity at the biological level when it gets into our stomach with the food. The other part was discussion relating to glyphosate’s ability to trigger cancer.

Obviously there are many kinds of cancer. We humans seem to have developed an elevated fear of cancer. If glyphosate kills you by liver or kidney failure or turning your brain into a cabbage, that is acceptable, as long as we do not die of cancer. This mentality has lifted the topic of if glyphosate can or cannot to trigger cancer to a high level of public visibility.

There are several studies and opinions on glyphosate’s carcinogenicity. I shall not go into much except a few comments:

• WHO declared it to be probably carcinogenic
• Another international group countered it
• Sri Lanka banned it because it was killing some farm workers
• Sri Lanka has since been internationally pressurised and forced to selectively allow glyphosate use in some areas such as rubber plantation and tea gardens.
• There is a suspicion that tea garden workers in Sri Lanka are getting throat cancer due glyphosate.
• Next door in India there is a news blanket on the Sri Lanka- Glyphosate story.
• Independent study of tea in USA showed glyphosate concentration in all tea brands tested, and the level of concentration to be higher than all other food and beverages tested.
• Another study found people drinking tea to have more glyphosate in their urine.

Sri Lanka as well as India tea gardens and rubber plantations are good cases to check what is going on with glyphosate. Glyphosate is regularly used in these areas for both countries. In India there seem to be no study or testing of health effects of glyphosate among agricultural workers. There is also almost no test 

Meanwhile, Excel Cropcare, a Mumbai based Indian firm that produces three kinds of glyphosate and is a major producer of glyphosate, has been taken over by Japanese multinational Sumitomo Chemicals.

Not just that, but it was declared that the new management would open up 30% of its shares for public to pick up. Its shares have skyrocketed.

Back in 2011 its share was valued at Rs 150. This year it has reached Rx 4,200 representing a 2800% rise in share value in 7 years. Share market advisory web sites are describing this share to be a hidden gem.

Considering glyphosate and a whole list of nasty biocides are part of the “Cropcare” products, I marvel at the idea of having the Indian public fund their own mass poisoning.

But the story does not end there. I am given to understand that India is one of the suppliers of glyphosate, legally and illegally, to Sri Lanka.

When Sri Lanka banned glyphosate after noting death from kidney failures of sugarcane workers, the ban was included in all areas and covered tea and rubber plantations.

Japan, a major importer of Lankan tea, has reportedly warned that a shift away from glyphosate to other alternatives is considered unsafe and as a result Japan is to ban import of Sri Lankan tea. There were various other financial pressures on the nation that resulted in Sri Lanka recently opening select sectors of its agriculture to use of Glyphosate.

Going back to tea drinking, could Asians, heavy drinkers of tea, be getting poisoned through tea? Could they have liver and other problems from drinking tea that is increasingly having glyphosate as tested in the US, but nobody is testing it in India?

Back to India, there are reports that the current crop of traditional farmers are leaving the profession. Their children want to study and get urban. Farming in India is going to be left to professionals, i.e. technology and chemical pushing firms.

I can begin to see the prediction from the ground that farming in India is going to face a collapse sometime within the next two decades. And that will be achieved largely by the money invested by a rising tide of upwardly mobile Indians.

I shall need some time to wrap my head around all the new things on the horizon. I shall likely not be alive to see the end of this transition, being 68 years old now. But the world is surely facing an extremely stark future, unless the opposite trend of going back to the soil wins over in the end.

Meanwhile, there is a good series of exchanges ongoing daily between Anthony Samsel, Judy Hoy, Stephanie Seneff, André Comeau, Thierry Vrain, Don Huber and myself. I am the only non-scientist in the group, but have benefitted enormously from learning of the intricacy of the issues involving glyphosate from them.

There are talks on how and if glyphosate by itself or with others can cause this or that disease. The item under discussion in the last two days involve near demise of wildlife in North America, from likely exposure to glyphosate and other biocides that come over in tiny quantities along with the weather fronts from agriculture belts over to forests.

According to wildlife scientist Judy Hoy, it is today extremely hard to find a single male white tail deer that does not suffer from damaged reproductive system involving visible abnormality in their scrotum and penis/sheath.

Judy Hoy says: “Specific new male reproductive malformations and consequent infertility were first observed on wild and domestic grazing animals on males born in 1995. The incidence rate on our study animal, white-tailed deer went up through 2001 and then remained at a prevalence for abnormal scrotum alone at between 65 an 70%. In 2014, the prevalence of malformed male genitalia (all of several different  documented birth defects of the scrotum and testes placement) went up to 80% and remained at approximately 80% since. When short penis sheath (micro-penis on human newborns0 is added, there are almost no completely normal male fawns now being born. It is extremely rare to observe a male deer, white-tailed deer or mule deer, with normally placed, normal length scrotum and testes and normal length penis sheath. Males of all other common grazing species that live in Montana and other western states have been documented with congenital male reproductive malformations.”

My question for India is – does this country have an equivalent of Judy Hoy, that has methodically tested wildlife for decades and has the data of possible similar effects on local wildlife? If the answer is a likely “no” (Judy is unique even in North America), then is it not high time that Indian educational institutes address this issue? Ask Judy to train field workers on how to measure and record wildlife, both alive and dead.

Part of the correspondence going around. This one was from me, the only non-scientist in the group.

Anthony Samsel said:Grapes for eating and for wine are contaminated with Glyphosate by absorption through the roots of the vines.  Grape juice and wines are contaminated this way because they use Glyphosate for weed control i9n the path rows and around the plants for weed and insect control.  No weeds less places for insects to hide.  This is also the case in orchards, nut groves and olive production too.
Grapes juice and wine products will have additional glyphosate added during production of grape juice and with wine after fermentation. Both end products are additionally contaminated from the glyphosate of the gelatins used in the fining process for product clarity.

The ongoing epidemic of auto-immune disease in India, I feel, may have strong link with mass glyphosate poisoning from imported dal as well as a runaway use of it everywhere, and total lack of control by the government, nor any kind of test on what it does to the planetary biology.

Comments like these from wildlife scienst Judy Hoy of Montana have gone into my blogs which are used as placeholders of rapidly flowing bits of information.

Later on they are to go into the book I amp writing, tentatively titled “Lonely Roads”. I have also been toying with the notion of an alternating title (or a subtitle) such as “Field notes of a food security activist”.

According to Judy Hoy, who has been studying, as well as performing autopsy on dead animals for several decades now, big game herbivore wildlife in North America is likely in its last generation before going extinct, all due to exposure to toxins, prime suspect of them being glyphosate due to its insidious ability to harm foetuses in womb, and because of the sheer volume of it being used every where.

Anthony Samsel suggested that I might want to test my urine to check if it is free of glyphosate or not, considering I am making effort to eat only organically grown rice and pulses for a while now. Its a good idea.

I shall still take time to wrap my head around all issues of Glyphosate in India, and have not touched the issues of politicians, although I have things to say, both good and bad about the system. Perhaps in another issue – part III, of India and Glyphosate series of articles.

Also there is still the issue of glyphosate’s ability to cause various kinds of cancer – liver cancer including Lymphoma and malignant Hemangioendotheliomas.

Those have to go into a future article – part III ?

Those of you that keep track of the issues relating to glyphosate, might be aware that a terminally ill cancer patient from California is suing Monsanto that his exposure to glyphosate gave him the cancer. This is the first of its kind court case, from what I gather from the news.

The man, Mr. Dewayne Johnson, was a school groundskeeper, who used Roundup (glyphosate) up to twenty times a year for many years, working as a pest manager for a county school system. He is dying of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that starts in the lymphatic system and is rooted in the body producing too many abnormal white blood cells.

His attorney claims to represent more than 2,000 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma sufferers who used Roundup extensively. Mr. Johnson’s case is the first to go on trial because he is nearing death.

Now, this is what I have to say on all this.

While I personally feel sad and horrified that so many people that used glyphosate in the US are known to suffer from this form of cancer, I have strong misgiving about such court cases. First, my understanding is that in a court, a person, or an organization, is to be presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

And in this and all other cases, there is no absolute scientific proof, far as I can guess, that the unfortunate people got their cancer definitively from glyphosate and not for some other reason. And in absence of such definitive proof, glyphosate, and along with it Monsanto, is going to go scot free.

I know about the IARC report, from World Health Organization, listing glyphosate as a “probable” carcinogen. I am also aware of other reports that state the opposite, i.e. glyphosate is “unlikely” to be carcinogenic. All these, to me, as well as to the courts, are “opinions” and do not prove either way, if the litigant did or did not get cancer from glyphosate.

Mr. Dewayne Johnson, contracted non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma from handling glyphosate, and is suing Monsanto.

The proof, in my view, can only be established in a proper carcinogenicity test by a group of research scholars using proper lab facilities and using lab animals exposed to measured doses of glyphosate and their health parameters compared with identical animals that are not exposed to glyphosate.

I know that Monsanto conducted many such tests. I know Monsanto submitted these test results to regulatory authorities of all Governments that have approved the use of glyphosate as a herbicide. I also know that all those governments are hiding these reports and have not made them public, which makes its approval illegal, in my view.

Further, I do not know of any country or any research group that is conducting carcinogenicity or other safety tests on glyphosate. I know of Dr. Seralini’s work in France which involves Roundup and not exclusively glyphosate. I do not know of any that did such tests specifically with glyphosate except in isolated cases such as Dr. Carrasco in Argentina.

The best way to solve this issue, as far as scientific proof and law in concerned, is first of all to force all government regulatory authorities, starting with EPA of the US and Health Ministry of Canada, to make public all safety tests on glyphosate, and then to ask independent experts to review and scrutinize these reports. Further, all nations should initiate independent tests on safety of glyphosate, irrespective of whatever the Monsanto reports are suspected to be hiding.

And lastly, whenever there is a mention of cancer, the public and news media starts hyperventilating.  But glyphosate can make you ill and kill you a thousand different ways apart from cancer of the lymphatic system. Why is dying of cancer any worse than dying from Kidney failure or having your brain turned into a vegetable?

Apart from demanding disclosure of safety records, and demanding independent study of glyphosate’s safety, there is another way – public pressure on the political system. After all, in a democracy, the people are supposed to be masters of their destiny and should decided if they will or will not allow glyphosate to be present in their food and environment, irrespective of what Monsanto, the pesticide traders or the industrial farmers might say. But for that to happen, people have to do something real, like performing hard duties of a citizen, and not just “sharing” stuff on Facebook.

I have been fighting a lone and so far unsatisfactory battle single handed with the Canadian government regarding safety records on glyphosate. I say single handed because because I got no real support. I am itching to go back home to Canada so I can start badgering our do-nothing politicians on this. I would have loved to see more Canadians follow suit in their own capacity, and hope that perhaps some day it will become the main talking point on elections and a politicians ability to win or lose may also hinge on his stand on glyphosate. 

Anyhow I have succeeded in making at least a dozen elected politicians, from municipal to federal, conscious of the fact that I am hell bent on spoiling their election campaign because they either refuse to push back at glyphosate, or prefers to sit on the fence. Also, I have forced at least one federal election (MP) candidate to withdraw from the race on account of me raising enough stink about his history of working for a firm that regularly sprayed glyphosate over British Columbian forests.

My parting advise to folks sharing these articles on social media is – spend less time on passing around this kind of news and more time on pushing back at rogue politicians, whose actions are the main reason why Mr. Johnson and hundreds of thousands of others are suffering today around the world because of glyphosate, as are a wide swath of our flora and fauna.

I am quite amazed at the degree of ignorance on glyphosate, not just among the general public, but also among people that have been engaged in fighting GMO for a generation, as well as farm workers that have been using it for a generation.

There is also a report from Sri Lanka that tea garden workers that used glyphosate as weedkiller are suspected to have contracted Esophageal cancer. Clearly, farm workers and everybody using glyphosate as a weed killer around the world, should seriously be keeping track of not just the court case of Mr. Johnson, but also be vocal activists to demand safety test and data on glyphosate, and as long as such data is kept hidden and such tests are not being conducted, to refuse to use it and insist that glyphosate be banned from their world.

I am right now in India, where awareness on glyphosate is as abysmal as it is elsewhere. Glyphosate has penetrated deep into this country with or without Monsanto, both legally and illegally. Farm workers are taught to use the term “dava” or “oushad” meaning “medicine” instead of “poison” when they refer to glyphosate. It should be illegal to use the term ‘medicine’ for weed killer poisons like glyphosate.

My name is Tony Mitra. This is what I feel and I am going to include these issues when and if I talk to people here in India on this topic. Thank you.

There are groups and there are people that make a career out of badmouthing Monsanto. Some of them become pretty good at it, and attract a lot of following, and donations.

But, looking from afar, a critical thinker and the citizenry might like to verify if hanging out with and supporting such people and groups are helping or hurting the cause. Globally, GMOs are increasing and not decreasing. Further, people are more poisoned by glyphosate through non-GMO seeds than Roundup reading GMO seeds.

Take western talking heads that make videos standing under the famous Eifel tower and talk about the Delhi High-court verdict that denies Monsanto to patent genetic signature of GM crops like Bt Cotton. They gloat over it as it it is a great victory of the downtrodden brown and black people that have historically been colonized and abused and their culture destroyed by the white man’s greed. As if Monsanto is the embodiment of the British Empire and that the Delhi High-court has put a stop to this new age white man’s high-tech colonization. In actuality, the original patent stays, but Monsanto has been restricted to charge the original small royalty set by the Government for its seeds and is not allowed to increase royalty. Further, Monsanto is allowed patent rights to the original physical characteristics of the Bt. Cotton Seeds, and not its genetic blue-print. Thus, any number of Indian seed companies can now improve upon that original Bt. Cotton seed, make 30 new varieties, equally toxic and unwanted, of Bt. Cotton, have them patented and sell to an ever increasing number of Indian farmers, all toxic and all designed to be marketed in such a way that indigenous organic royalty free seed varieties go extinct, without having to pay any royalty to Monsanto. Farmers can then pay royalty to Indian seed companies, and be the land can then be poisoned more by by Indian corporations, and less by Monsanto. This is “progress”, according to these anti-GMO talking heads.

This might be bad for Monsanto’s goals of monopolizing all of India’s cotton market, it is even worse for India and Indians, who can now be sunk under an avalanche of runaway varieties of GM cotton (Bt Cotton), all legally, all approved by the Government and exposing Indian farms, people and ecology to this increased threat.

Above is my six minute rant on this.

And then these talking heads ask you for your money, so they can continue to do their business as usual spreading misguiding news and false flag cases, and trapping your money. You feel good as if you did something useful, while actually your money is used to ensure it can do nothing useful in resisting either GMO or glyphosate or toxicity in food and nature.

This is what controlled opposition does.

These talking heads and anti-GMO groups make a profession out of staying away from resisting glyphosate. Take India, for example. GMO patents are being discussed and fought in courts, but toxicity through glyphosate appears to be outside of the local radar, and reached even remote biodiverse eco systems at the foothills of the Himalayas and tiny rubber plantations. Also, a huge amount of toxic lentils, pulses and chickpea are imported from countries that are the producers of the most toxic foods on earth. Nobody tests foods for glyphosate here and folks have no idea what glyphosate can do or how much of it is already in their daal.

I believe, people are better off staying away from such talking heads, saving them money and spend their time, and energy against politicians, not Monsanto, because it is the politician that is betraying the people’s trust by allowing agro-corporations to poison the people, and because it is the politician whose employment, or unemployment, should be in your hands.

Stop listening to the controlled opposition. Stop barking up the wrong tree. And learn to confront your political representative, setting her or his feet to the fire about testing local food for glyphosate, and for voting to protect your food from toxic poisons that benefit agrochemical industries.

There is a press report going around about a warning from me that people of India might be getting a steady dose of slow poison through lentils in their diet. India appears to import a lot of pulses from Canada, and from Australia and Myanmar. I have seen test records of Canadian grown pulses which are all desiccated by glyphosate, unless one sources certified organic products which are not available in any large quantity. I also have seen results of test on Australian Moong Dal (known as mung beans in Canada) as tested by CFIA which also had over a thousand ppb of glyphosate. India is importing these. Consumers do not seem to know if and when they are buying Canadian lentils or lentils mixed with local produce, and how much glyphosate is in their dal.

The third country that India appears to import a lot from is Myanmar. I have not seen any rest results from Myanmar, but from what I hear about Myanmar buying a lot of glyphosate for the purpose of growing pulses, which are exported to India. So, all in all, I suspect glyphosate in entering the Indian stomach in ever increasing doses and is likely one of the major contributing factors behind the apparent runaway increase of autoimmune diseases I see among friends and family this time around in India, something that I did not see some years ago.

Meanwhile, there is perhaps a misconception that dal grown in India is more toxic with glyphosate, than pulses imported from Canada. I do not believe that to be true, although a few small samples of yellow split pea from India shows high glyphosate. In general, pulses grown in Canada and USA have significantly higher level of contamination by glyphosate in test after test conducted by CFIA.

The graphs above shows the story of chickpea grown in North America, organic and conventional, compared with the same in the rest of the world combined. Yes organic is cleaner than conventional, but both are astronomically more contaminated if grown in North America compared to anywhere else.

 Chart above shows all the lentil samples from Canada placed against India. 87% of Canadian lentils are contaminated and the average level of contamination is 282 ppb. Only 40% of Indian samples were contaminated while the average was 25 ppb.

But at the end of the day, the people of India need to find ways to force their government to initiate broad based testing of food for glyphosate concentration and to make all results public. That is the only way Indian consumers will know how much of glyphosate they are consuming daily from their food. Also, they should most certainly get their government to separately test imported pulses and all grains from western producers who are known to use glyphosate as a desiccant, and be very careful of importing crops with glyphosate content that is much higher than the local produce.

As to the safe maximum residue level, the people should demand to see the documents that prove that glyphosate, at any level of contamination, has been actually proven to be safe for mammals.

Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff have written a series of peer reviewed papers on problems with glyphosate. They have been published on Researchgate. One can read or download published articles free of charge. Samsel and Seneff have so far a series of six articles published there about glyphosate. All of them are relevant. The later ones deal with hitherto less known aspects of glyphosate which describe newer threats of having glyphosate in our food and environment. The seventh article is being prepared.

I have read the articles and downloaded them for future reference. I decided to separately make available the pdf copies of those articles, all listed in one place, for easy access. This blog is that place. Please note, if you wish to read the original from the Researchgate. You may also do it from here, by either clicking on the original link at the bottom of the abstract, or clicking on the (pdf) link next to each article heading, such as Glyphosate I or Glyphosate II. You may first read the abstracts of each paper and move on, or decide to read/download the full article. There is also an additional list of all the pdf files at the bottom of this blog.

Glyphosate I (pdf)

Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Diseases.

Abstract
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup ® , is the most popular herbicide used worldwide. The industry asserts it is minimally toxic to humans, but here we argue otherwise. Residues are found in the main foods of the Western diet, comprised primarily of sugar, corn, soy and wheat. Glyphosate’s inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals. CYP enzymes play crucial roles in biology, one of which is to detoxify xenobiotics. Thus, glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of other food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins. Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body. Here, we show how interference with CYP enzymes acts synergistically with disruption of the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids by gut bacteria, as well as impairment in serum sulfate transport. Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. We explain the documented effects of glyphosate and its ability to induce disease, and we show that glyphosate is the “textbook example” of exogenous semiotic entropy: the disruption of homeostasis by environmental toxins.
Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome… (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236211603_Glyphosate%27s_Suppression_of_Cytochrome_P450_Enzymes_and_Amino_Acid_Biosynthesis_by_the_Gut_Microbiome_Pathways_to_Modern_Diseases[accessed Apr 13 2018].

Glyphosate II (pdf)

It starts with the Canada-India link on lentils and ends with possible glyphosate-heavy metal link just disclosed by Anthony Samsel.

It took me several months of stay in India, to come to the conclusion that the most important link between glyphosate and INDIA, for the people living here, might be through Canadian lentils.

I already had rear 8,000 test records from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on foods tested for glyphosate, and further near 100,000 records of other biocides in food. I already knew how bad the lentils and chickpea were, from the Canadian tests.

I knew Canada was growing and exporting lentils to India. I knew Jodi Koberinsky of Ontario was doing her Masters degree work on this Canadian lentil to India issue.

I knew the Canadian Province of Saskatchewan grew most of these lentils, having allocated upward of 7 million acres of land to it. India was unable to cope with local demand for pulses and Canada had become by far the largest exporter of pulses to India.

I also knew, by analyzing the CFIA data, that Canada along with USA produced the most toxic of all foods on earth, and that lentils grown in Canada contained high levels of glyphosate, averaging several hundred parts per billion and that over 80% of Canadian lentil samples were contaminated with glyphosate.

I also saw lentils imported from India and tested by CFIA showed lower levels of glyphosate. This points to the possibility that India is also using glyphosate in lentil production, but perhaps not as much as Canada, or that the so called Indian lentil were mixed up already with Canadian product.

Lastly, I knew from young women like Stephanie of British Columbia who lived in the agricultural belt in Saskatchewan, how her family was poisoned by aerial spraying of glyphosate around her home, how her dogs got sick, her children and pregnancy got affected, how they themselves got sick and finally how things started turning around when they migrated out of that place and resettled in British Columbia, where aerial spraying is used over forests, regrettably, but not over agricultural and residential areas.

I knew most folks in India ate lentils, either in their original form or as powdered version added to various processed foods.

And now, from several articles, I came to know that Canada was perhaps the largest exporter of pulses to India and the amount sold to India is considerable – enough to perhaps make a major impact in the slow poisoning of the Indian population.

Not just that, I now had information from friends that even in the remote and biologically diverse regions of the Himalayan foothills, where travel itself is difficult, glyphosate was already being sprayed around rubber plantations. Glyphosate had reached far corners of India as the first arrivals of a civilization gone toxic.

However, folks in India were not yet sufficiently aware of the extreme dangers associated with the use of glyphosate. I was mulling over all these issues, when I called Anthony Samsel in New Hampshire, USA, for a chitchat on glyphosate, lentils and how glyphosate might be affecting the very DNA of a plant by switching wrong genes on or off.

Anthony Samsel told me about the suspected Glyphosate-Heavy metal link and the need to test lentils with different levels of glyphosate and heavy metals like Lead, Cadmium, Aluminum.

This was breaking news.
This also could be the link that India needed.

India needed to:

• send samples to Anthony Samsel, which I would engage in arranging
• find ways to get the local government agencies to test imported lentils against glyphosate and find ways to reject the shipment if glyphosate content was high.
• get the government to engage in large scale and broad based testing of its food for glyphosate contamination and release the results to the people.
• get the government to disclose hitherto hidden safety document that is supposed to prove that glyphosate does not harm higher mammals.

I would also need to send Saskatchewan’s lentils to Anthony.

So, for now, lentil-heavy metal link was the breaking news, and the lentil-glyphosate link might just be the 900 pound gorilla at India’s dinner table, as well as all folks in North America that drop in to eat Indian food at local restaurants, as well as those that eat processed, packaged food that contains ground lentil powder.