Activist’s handbook on RoundUp resistance

Glyphosate and RoundUp are with us for a generation. And yet, their safety test records are kept hidden from the people. As I understand law, this hiding of safety data is illegal.

So, I have one Access To Information Act ongoing with the Canadian Government, to show to me all safety test data that is should have studied before approving the use of Glyphosate in Canadian agriculture. From correspondence generated through that, I have noted that the Government acknowledges my right to see such documents and yet drags its feet on disclosing them.

I have a separate petition on change.org, to ask Health Canada and the Prime Minister to release all safety test data on Glyphosate to the people of Canada, because hiding it would be illegal if the chemical itself is in our environment.

That petition has garnered 22,000 supporters, 98% of which are Canadians. I have since written to my MP, who also happens to be a cabinet minister in our federal Government, hon Carla Qualtrough, minister of sports and disabled persons.

She agreed to see me at the end of this month and carry the documents to be handed over to our Ministry of Health.

The petition itself has many updates, and the total package would take over 1,500 pages of printed matter, not including many audio and video files. The entire collection will be given to the Minister in a Disk.

Meanwhile, the petition, its updates and comments on the updates, have been converted into an interactive audio book, which can be found in the iTunes stores. The name of the book is still Glyphosate Petition. I think it might benefit from a change of name, to something like “An activist’s handbook to RoundUp resistance.”
The link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1098801707

Further, I made a video with my 13 minute rant on the subject, which you can see here.

[youtube IMb7iHCXRVU]

This book is for activists and those that want to make a difference with our Government.

  1. It is not for agro-industry scientists that wish to push voodoo science to the public without allowing independent verification of their claim.
  2. It is not for people that wish to promote the idea that all food should belong to patent holding corporations and their investors.
  3. It is not for those that wish to hang out with anti-GMO talking heads, who will speak about how bad the technology is, but will leave to us the unenviable task of confronting and challenging our Government, who allows these toxins into our food web.

It is for those of us that have done enough listening, and wish to directly involve in doing something, anything, within our means, to push back at our government.

Thanks.

A letter to a mayor

Apr 2, 2016 — To: The Mayor Ms Luis Jackson,
Delta Corporation
April 1st, 2016 (not a prank)
Subject : Test Glyphosate in Delta’s water, soil and food.

Mayor Jackson,

Good day.

I write to you, yet again, regarding potential dangers linked with exposure  to Glyphosate for residents of Delta, and what the municipality could do.

Delta has fertile lowlands and farms. Glyphosate is the most used chemical in Canadian food production. Besides, since our town is actually in the delta of the Fraser river, and comprises of tidal mudflats and lowlands, most runoff from farms, as well as from the upland forests go through our midst. Both these regions use glyphosate, in agriculture by farmers and aerially in hilly forests by logging corporations.

In spite of being the most used toxin in Canada and the planet for a generation, safety test records and data of this weed killer are kept hidden from Canadians, possibly illegally, to protect commercial interest of the promoter.

Legal precedence is already being set in some countries, where supreme court has overruled federal Governments about keeping safety documents hidden from the people. Apparently, commercial confidentiality agreements and intellectual property rights cannot trump public safety. So, if a corporation cannot divulge safety records of its product to the public, the product itself may not be approved by the Government either.

I have two different channels of communication ongoing with the Ottawa Government about this. One of them is an online petition through change.org for the Government to disclose all safety test documents, based on which it is supposed to have approved Glyphosate for use in Canadian agriculture and environment. Link : https://www.change.org/p/minister-of-health-canada-justin-trudeau-health-canada-prove-glyphosate-is-safe

The petition has generated a large number of follow up updates with input from scientists around the world and other notables, and has over 22,000 supporters, 98% from Canada. The volume of information on the petition has crossed a thousand pages, and MP Carla Qualtrough has agreed to see me so I can present all that to her and request her to hand deliver it to the minister in Health Canada, to either place the safety documents in public domain, or inform Canadians why they do not have a right to these safety documents, or perhaps arrange a debate on the floor of our parliament about if Canadian citizens have, or do not have, a right to see first hand, all safety test data on this herbicide that has been entering our food chain in ever increasing dose for a generation.

Meanwhile for the town of Delta, and perhaps many other towns where concerned Canadians have supported this petition, there are areas where our municipal governments could actively engage, at the bottom tier of our political system, to address this issue in the following manner:
1)
Start having our food, water, and soil, tested for concentration of Glyphosate. This could not even be done just a few years ago since labs did not offer such services, especially about testing our food for Glyphosate. But this can easily be done today. Increasing number of accredited labs are offering a high quality service. And some of the labs are nearby, such as in Burnaby. This testing is legal, and reasonably easy to do for a Municipal corporation. The reason so many labs are now scrambling to offer this service, is because our Government has started a massive effort to test our food, but behind closed doors, more or less from the time World Health Organization decided to reclassify Glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.
2)
Start placing these test results online and available for any research student, scholar, scientist or concerned citizen to read, download and follow up on, should they so desire.

3)
Inform all parties, such as farmers, or loggers or nature park managers, that samples will be drawn from their areas after application of the herbicide, or when its concentration is noted to be highest, and also in off season, to get an idea of seasonal variation, and to start tracking the toxic load in regions within Delta.
4)
This data should be available to local hospitals and doctors, to check if reports of skin rashes, gastro-intestinal or auto-immune disorders, especially among children, seem to be following the rise and fall of prevalence of Glyphosate, in which case any research organization would now have some data to start working on, to investigate if some ailments might be linked to Glyphosate exposure. The municipality need not get involved in this research, but can easily and legally offer accumulated data. Why ? Because that aught to be our first line of defence against environment induced ill-health and it aught to be the duty of our town council to ensure the residents are protected from the most used and most controversial agriculture and environmental toxin in Canada.
5)
This data should also be available to wildlife research scientists that are investigating sudden population decline, unexpected mass death, skewring of sex ration in newborns, or disappearance of creatures starting from bees, birds, amphibians, herbivores and even whales.
6)
Invite volunteers to check if recommended limits of dose of glyphosate is followed by those authorized to use it, like farmers and loggers, or exceeded by anybody. I have reason to believe that application of Glyphosate is not supervised by anybody, even if the packaging warns that it is (or may be) relatively safe only if applied according to instructions and within the maximum recommended dosage limits. I believe a municipality has the right to allow citizen volunteers a right to check if such limits are maintained, even if the council cannot afford employing people to do so for them.

This is not the first time I have written to the Delta Corporation on Glyphosate and what I wished the town council to consider engaging in. This is unlikely to be my last. I wish the municipality would take this seriously.
This letter will likely be included in the petition asking Ottawa to place all safety data on Glyphosate in the public domain. The reason this letter, and others written to other politicians, will be included is that battling indiscriminate use of an untested (it remains untested as long as the tests are hidden from people) and potentially hazardous chemical will need to be challenged on multiple fronts and the people would need to engage in it directly, and apply pressure on the politicians. It is my hope that this update, which reaches all 22,000 supporters of the petition across Canada and beyond, will influence a few hundred others to also write to their respective town councils, MPs and MLAs. Even if a single politician or town ends up being the first in initiating a program to track our food, soil, water and environment for glyphosate concentration, that will amount to a kicking in of the door, a pathfinder, and a worthy achievement that others might follow.
Should Delta Corporation have an interest in discussing this further, I shall be more than happy to attend.
Looking forward to a positive response,
With good wishes
Tony Mitra, 10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E 3L7, Canada

Minister Qualtrough agrees to a meeting

Mar 22, 2016 — Minister Carla Qualtrough has agreed to a 45 minutes meeting about this petition. I am in the process of gathering a small but potent group to to see the Minister.

Here is an email sent to a few, which explains the issue, and should serve as an update.

++++++++++++++++++++++

Dear friends,

Here is an update on the Glyphosate issue along with a proposal, if one of you feel strongly enough to join me to meet our MP and minister Carla Qualtrough on April 1st afternoon in Delta BC.

In order to explain, I need to give the background.

Glyphosate is a toxic chemical that is the primary ingredient in the commercial weed killer brand named “RoundUp”. It is produced by Monsanto. It is by far the most used herbicide in Canadian agriculture, same as in USA and some other countries. Because it is used in agriculture, this chemical is expected to be in our food, and as such, is being found in various foods such as cereals, packaged food, milk, beef and poultry.

That Glyphosate is safe for us, is supposed to have been verified by Health Canada, before approving its use. In order to verify that, it is expected to see results of safety tests conducted on target animals exposed to this chemical. Health Canada says it has seen that, but in all the 30 years of its use in Canada (and 35 years in USA), no citizen of any country has been allowed to see these safety test data.

I have a communication ongoing with the Ministry of health, Ottawa, through Access To Information Act, demanding that the Government releases any and all safety tests it has seen that is supposed to indicate that Glyphosate is safe for animals, or give me the legal reason why it cannot show me these documents. The Government has acknowledged I have the right (as should any Canadian) to see the safety records, but is dragging its feel and finding excuses to delay the process, which started under the Harper Government and, far as I can tell, is continuing under the Trudeau Government.

Meanwhile, I have a separate online petition, asking the Canadian Govt to release all safety test documents on Glyphosate to the Canadian public. That petition has over 22,000 support signatures, 98% of whom are Canadian. Their comments, my follow up information and the list of all supporters would make over 500 pages of printed matter.


After having a string of email communication with Dr. Seralini of France, I am preparing to open a separate ‘Access To Information’ case with the Government of Canada, to check if it has at all seen any safety tests on the entire formulation of the herbicide “RoundUp” with all its ingredients, which, together, is suspected to be more dangerous than Glyphosate alone by an order of dimension, perhaps hundreds of times more dangerous.

Meanwhile, I wrote to Minister Carla Qualtrough recently about Glyphosate, about the fact that Canadians have not been able to verify if the chemical is safe, and that, according my understanding of the law (Carla is a lawyer), if the safety data of a product cannot be disclosed to the people, the product itself cannot be released either. I then asked her to grant me an audience of a half hour, where I may tell her about this petition and hand over the 500 odd page document with a request to her to consider taking that material to Ottawa and deliver it to the Minister of health, even on the floor of the parliament if need be, and ask her to either respond to the Canadian people’s demand to release the hitherto secret safety documents, or explain why Canadians do not deserve to see these safety records, or perhaps agree to a parliamentary debate over this issue.

I asked Minister Qualtrough to let me know in case she is unwilling to see me, so I can widen my search and find any MP, even an opposition one, who is willing to place this item on the floor of our Parliament for a general debate. I have reason to believe this chemical is also triggering a possible extinction of our flora and fauna through release over our forests from air, by logging companies.

I have been notified by the office of Minister Qualtrough, through email and two separate phone calls, that:
1) I may visit her office for 45 minutes on 1st April.
2) I may bring the 500 odd page document
3) I may bring a few like minded folks, if I wished.

That is the story.

I am in the process of getting a wide-ranging but small group, to come with me. I write this to you to ask if any one person (sorry, no more room) among you might feel passionate enough to accompany me.
have two noted persons that agreed to visit Delta and join me. One is Dr. Thierry Vrain, who should need no introduction here.

The other is Kenneth Young, Canadian Military veteran, advisor on chemical defoliant to Canadian and many other international institutions, Canadian Veteran Advocacy group, and strong advocate on speaker on permanent damage done to veterans through exposure to toxins starting from Agent Orange, and going on to Glyphosate. He has spoken three times at March against Monsanto events in Downtown Vancouver along with me and Thierry, and travels widely across Canada and overseas on this issue. Currently in Ottawa meeting with a Government sponsored committee to contribute in the consultation on possible policy changes needed to deal with toxic exposure and pesticides. He agreed to come to Delta on his own and join me on April 1st in this meeting and lend his voice as needed.

I also have some nature lover and passionate Delta residents wishing to join me for the meeting.

In summary, the primary object of the meeting is to highlight legality of releasing a chemical into our food web while hiding its safety record from the people, and if Canadian citizens have or do not have a right to demand public release of these documents, the volume of which I am advised by Health Canada to go beyond 130,000 pages, all of them kept secret for over a generation.

So, if there is someone here that wishes to join up, let me know. We are in the talking process to figure out how to manage the 45 minutes and who might talk on what. We are also planning a lunch or something on April 1st in Delta, prior to the meeting to iron out any issue and to present a cohesive front.

Thanks and best wishes
Tony Mitra


Material towards the online petition on public demand for disclosure of safety documents have gone so large that I am contemplating converting it all into a future e-Book for record keeping.

Meanwhile, a new blog might me done on the people that are preparing to join me for the meeting. Who they are and what they might do, etc. I will work on this next week.

A letter to my MP, hon. Carla Qualtrough

Sending a physical mail to my MP and cabinet minister Carla Qualtrough.

It involves disclosure of safety documents on Glyphosate/RoundUp that the ministry of health in Ottawa is supposed to have studied before approval of its use in Canadian agriculture. The safety documents remain outside reach of the Canadian people.

My letter is to request her to grant me a meeting at her constituency office in our home town of Delta, BC, so I could speak to her face to face on this issue, and hand deliver to her the 500 odd pages of documents from my petition, covering over 22,000 signatories, with their comments as well as all updates from me including comments from noted scientists that have worked on this chemical.

If allowed an audience with her, I aim to express my view, and ask her to carry those documents and hand deliver to the minister of health on the floor of the parliament, and request the ministry to respond to my request that the safety data be made available to the people of Canada.

Should she decline to see me, or declines to carry the documents or present it to the ministry of health, I shall then consider myself within my rights to seek another member of parliament, further afield from my riding, including someone in the opposition, who is willing to take the matter to the floor on our parliament, and request an open debate on the topic.

A copy of this mail has also been sent by email to hon. Carla Qualtrough.


———————
To: Honourable Minister Carla Qualtrough
From : Tony Mitra, resident of Delta, BC
Dated: Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Subject: Safety of RoundUp herbicide, the most used toxin in Canadian agriculture

Honourable minister,

I have been involved in trying to bring to light possible toxic effects of widespread use of Monsanto’s herbicide RoundUp, with “glyphosate” as its active ingredient. It is my belief that this chemical is more dangerous in our environment that even DDT was back in the 1960s when it got banned.



However without going into details of that, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the safety test data of this product has been kept hidden from the Canadian people, on grounds that the information is proprietary and confidential. It is my belief that if the safety data of a product cannot be disclosed to the people, then the product itself should not be released either.



I have had some positive exchange with the previous Government over this issue, but it did not go far enough. I now have two different correspondence ongoing with the present Canadian Government. 

One is a “Access to information act” request for Health Canada to disclose to me all raw test data it has so far seen, before approving the use of Glyphosate in Canadian agriculture. I am told that there are over 130,000 pages of such data, but the Government needs to correspond with the groups that did the safety test to check if those data can be divulged to me.



The second is an online petition, for Prime Minister and Minister of Health to disclose all safety data on Glyphosate and help prove to the people of Canada that the substance is safe. It is my belief that the product is damaging for humans as well as a wide swath of living organisms, and that is one of the reasons the data is being kept away from public scrutiny. Over 22,000 people have signed into that petition – over 98% of whom are Canadians. The updates on that petition, the supporting material, comments and names of signatories would go into several hundred pages of printed matter.


Link : https://www.change.org/p/minister-of-health-canada-justin-trudeau-health-canada-prove-glyphosate-is-safe?



I write this letter to request you to grant me a visit where I could meet you at your Delta office, along with some more like minded Delta residents, in order to express our concern directly to you and to request you to carry the hundreds of pages of the petition data to the Minister of Health, in Ottawa.



Should you be disinclined to speak with us on this issue, I would appreciate if I could be notified accordingly, so I can start looking for Members of Parliament further away from Delta, in search of someone who might wish to take this to Ottawa.



I so wish that you would find time to see us, even if Pesticides and Health is not under your care, because status of our eco-system, biodiversity, and health of our children’s future should be everybody’s concern.

Thanking you
Tony Mitra

Ledikeni, Sepoy Mutiny, Nova Scotia, and Glyphosate

It all started with me looking afresh at the list of 21,000 folks that supported my petition for the Government of Canada, Ministry of Health, to disclose safety test data on the chemical Glyphosate, in herbicide RoundUp and VisionMax, by Monsanto. That lead me to a few places in Canada were apparently named after a Mr. Canning where the petition had a few supporters. I knew the name Canning, as the last name of a noted English high born family of the mid nineteenth century. I remembered a place in India bearing the same name. Further, the name reminded me of a number of mystical water colour paintings of India created more than 150 years ago, by a noble Englishwoman named Charlotte Canning, or Lady Canning, perhaps the most prolific of all major female painters from India till date. Finally, I remembered a local sweet of Bengal that was named after Lady Canning – “ledikeni”. And all of this, somehow, was vaguely related to my effort to raise awareness on the dangers of the synthetic molecule glyphosate.

Charlotte Canning

Lastly, I contemplated covering this tenuous link between seemingly unconnected far flung towns spanning opposite ends of the globe, as a chapter of my never ending book – from the unique perspective of an immigrant from eastern part of India, to settle in the western edge of Canada, who was also involved in finding ways to expose, raise awareness on, and help curb within my means a reckless use of the toxin glyphosate, which I believes to be at the root of not just a global health crisis, but also a symbol of a crisis of civilization where sovereignty of nations were being undermined by corporate power.

Ironically, the first global corporation that emerged, and had enough power to subjugate large nations and even entire continents – is the East India Company, whose seat of power within India was a mere hundred miles from my birth place.

Courtesy Victoria & Albert Museum, London

The petition allows me to download a list of supporters and their towns, but not their emails of contact details. I was looking at the data to see if I could figure out which provinces and towns had how many people that had reservation about Glyphosate being present in our food or environment, and thus ended up supporting my petition.

In the process I came across two locations in Canada that drew my attention.

I had three supporters from a village named Canning, in Nova Socitia, on the far eastern edge of Canada, and four more from the town of Cannington, Ontario, in the outskirts of Toronto.

Courtesy – Victoria & Albert Museum, London

For me, a visit to the village of Canning, Nova Scotia, if undertaken by road, would involve a 6,000 km drive that would likely take me nine days of driving six hours a day, conducted largely across the border through nine states in USA and then three provinces in Canada, literally a coast to coast journey, from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

Having been born in in Santiniketan, near Kolkata, India, I could not help but compare it to a hypothetical trip from that eastern town of india, right through the country, then crossing multiple international borders and driving through Pakistan, Iran, Isis controlled regions of Iraq and possibly Syria, then into Turkey and driving right across its length to the edge of Bosphorus straight, to the city of Istanbul.

But of course I was not planning to drive, either to Canning, Nova Scotia or to Istanbul, Turkey. I had already been to Nova Scotia, and might have driven right past Canning on my way to Halifax. And I had already been to Istanbul a long time ago, as a sailor whose ship docked there.

Courtesy – Victoria & Albert Museum, London

But the name of Canning and Cannington, struck a bell. Coming from West Bengal, India, I was aware of a coastal village called Canning, to the south of Kolkata, and a Bengali sweet called “ladikeni” which is derived from an English noble woman of the time, Lady Canning.

I wondered if these names, Canning and Cannington in Canada and Canning in India, halfway across the planet, had any link. And, as I soon found out, they did have a common link – a family name of the British aristocracy, of Earls, a title that, in absence of any living descendant, died out a generation after family was elevated to the rank of Earl.

The village of Canning, Nova Scotia, and the neighbourhood of Cannington, Ontario were named after the British Prime Minister George Canning. The coastal village in India was named after Lord Charles Canning, son of George, who was the Governor General of India during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, later promoted to Viceroy, and the family rank elevated to Earl. He was also the last Canning of his lineage, since he and his wife Charlotte did not leave any descendant, and therefore were the first and the last Canning with the title of an Earl.

Sepoy mutiny was the first and only major nationwide armed rebellion against British rule in India. It was participated mostly by the sepoy, or the Indian rank and file soldiers of the Royal British Army, in which the general population of India did not take part. After a brutal and bloody rebellion, the uprising was eventually subdued, having failed to dislodge the British from power. It did, however, usher in a lot of changes to the nature of the administrative system overseeing the British colony for the next ninety years, till India finally gained independence in 1947.

The mutiny was the first major rebellion in India against British rule, where Indian soldiers actually killed many of their white superior officers as well as European civilians. It was also occasion where Hindu and Muslim soldiers fought side by side against a perceived common enemy, the British. The next time this was to happen would be during the second world war, almost three generations later, when an Indian National Army under Subhash Bose would fight the British on Indian soil in Kohima during the later phase of the second world war.

Images of the Sepoy Mutiny, 1857

The mutiny also signalled the end of rule of a Corporation – British East India Company. From that point on, the British Government under Queen Victoria, took over the reigns of India. The country would thence be a British colony for the next ninety years, till Gandhi and a new generation of Indians took up the movement and spread it to the Indian masses on a platform of non-violence from the inside, and Subhash Bose declared war on Britain by the Indian national army from the outside, developments that eventually resulted in a split subcontinent gaining independence as two separate nations – India and Pakistan, in 1947. Pakistan was to bifurcate again with Bangladesh as an offshoot in 1971.

Images of the Sepoy Mutiny

Meanwhile, Governor General and later viceroy Charles Canning made some significant changes in the way of British policy towards ruling India in the aftermath of the mutiny and the brutal suppression and revenge killing that ensued. Two of the best known measures where conflicting and controversial, and one of them had a long standing historical relevance to this day.

The first was his observation that the success of the mutiny and its brutal effect in killing British and other white people was because the entire Indian solider class fought together without internal friction and hatred, in spite of the historical animosity between the Hindu and Muslim factions. Therefore, the British should adopt a policy of stoking this hatred and keeping the soldiers divided along religious lines, so the soldiers would no more be united, and each would prefer the British to maintain balance of force and each would assist the British in preventing any effort of the other to take over the reins of India. Thus, the Indian soldier should never again pose a unified threat to British Rule. That policy advice and doctrine became a sort of standard British policy all the way to India’s independence, and was critical in triggering the eventual “partition” of the nation along religious lines after a horrific sectarian violence and religious riots – ending up in creation of the nations of a Muslim majority Pakistan as a separate nation alongside a Hindu majority India.

Viscountess Charlotte Canning at right.

The second notable act of Lord Canning was his decision that the British should not indiscriminately punish every Indian soldier that did not fight on alongside the British during the mutiny, and instead, make a distinction between the actual rebels that took up arms against the British and those that abandoned the army in the wake of the turmoil and went back home, to sit out the mutiny. For this act of clemency, against deep rooted and loud protest from other British officials, he was also given the nick name – “Clemency Canning”. His post of Governor General was also elevated to Viceroy. He came to India after Marquess of Dalhousie and he was succeeded by Lord Elgin.

Today, a lot of places around the world has bears the name of Canning, mostly for the father but also the son. Surprisingly, the place “Canning, West Bengal, India” is not listed, or I could not find a reference to it in wikipedia and a few other resources, possibly because no volunteer offered to add that information.

George Canning, FRS, former British Prime Minister

Bengali people like sweets. And one of the enduring sweets is ledikeni – named after Lady Canning. That was Charlotte Canning, or Countess Canning, wife of Lord Charles Canning, Governor General and later Viceroy of India. She reportedly liked that sweet, or might have actually created it or popularized it.

Charlotte Canning was better known around the world as perhaps the best known woman artist of India of the time, and perhaps even till now. Some three hundred and fifty water colour paintings of her can be seen in Victoria and Albert Museum in London, most of them of scenes and people from India. Most of them are in ink, pencil, pastel or water colour wash. Most of them are also exquisite and carries a nostalgic sense of the times a century and half ago.

Earl Charles Canning, former Viceroy of India

Photography was just being invented and popularized around the time, and had arrived in India. So, Lord and Lady Canning also arranged to create and collect a vast number of photographs depicting various regions and people of India, which has left an enduring photographic record of the times.

She died in India a few years after the mutiny, in 1961, at the prime age of 44, from malaria. In that short span, and an even shorter combined tenure in India, she produced some 350 water colours representing the country, and thus left her legacy that has endured perhaps even more than her illustrious husband or father-in-law.

Lady Charlotte Canning

Fast forward to the present and I was looking at the names of three people from a single village of Canning, Nova Scotia, a thinly populated eastern province in Canada signing up on my petition on Glyphosate. This should not come as a surprise – Nova Scotia, along with Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, are often lumped together in calculations of pesticide use,  and has the highest per capita and per acre pesticide load in Canada. The region also enjoys the dubious unenviable record of being a sort of cancer capital for Canada. The region was also being used extensively for aerial spraying of Agent Orange on an experimental basis, before it was used in Vietnam, and for which deformed babies are still a fact of life there, and people in the eastern Canada are still fighting for the Government to accept that people were poisoned during that horrific test by American producers.

That leaves four more people from Cannington on the outskirts of Toronto, Ontario that also signed into the petition. I did speak in Toronto, Ontario, along with Dr. Thierry Vrain, about the dangers associated with allowing glyphosate in our environment. Perhaps some of the people signing up from there had heard me speaking.

Ledikeni

And that leaves the Bengali sweet “ledikeni”, which survives till this day in West Bengal, India. A cheese-based fried sweet, its distinctive features is its molten sugar syrup of lightly flavored cardamom powder. One of the main ingredient of any Indian sweet is of course – sugar. In India, it is made from Sugarcane.

These days, the sugarcane plants is being desiccated with RoundUp, with Glyphosate as a killer poison, in many parts of Bengal, I am told. So, it is more than possible, and very likely that the sweet ledikeni, prepared in Bengal today, contains glyphosate and will bring its share of ill-health to the people of Eastern India, much as any sweet in Canada or USA, coming for sugar beet, also laced with Glyphosate, is bringing ill-health in North America.

Click to go to the petition

And that brings me back to where I am, looking at the list of 21,000 people that supported my petitions, and trying trying to find new ways to resist the approval of this chemical for use in Canadian agriculture on one side, and trying to add a chapter for my book on the other.

And, I so like the paintings of Charlotte Canning.

Rosemary Mason sends a letter

Rosemary Samson is a British Scientist. I came to know more about her from her article in Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry, this year, the heading of which is in the image below. Clicking on the image should take you to the article itself.

I knew we were in a phase on a major mass extinction. Still, it was both depressing and chilling, to face facts as Rosemary articulated. It forces us to look at the world afresh, and stop accepting business as usual model of existence for our human race. We were hurtling towards a cliff, and it is wholly man made, or more specifically, made by the GDP addicted technologically savvy corporate driven economic model of human development.

Subsequently, I got to speak with her, and even had her read out a section of Tagore’s “Robbery of the soil”, which, a century down the line, still appears so relevant on a global scale.

Anyhow, she did sign my petition, requesting the Canadian Government to disclose to the people what direct safety test data it has seen that indicates glyphosate (RoundUp herbicide) may be good for agriculture. You can find the petition by clicking on the image below.

And since she signed the petition, she started getting emails of my updates. Fast forward to an incidence where one of the persons that signed the petition had an uncomplimentary comment to make about qualifications of Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff and essentially question the wisdom behind the petition. This is a time proven tactic of the pro-Monsanto lobby shills, to divert from the topic at hand, and try to insult scientists or people  that are objecting to the chemical onslaught on Canada through large scale toxicity and endocrine disruption. And me being me, I made an update touching on the subject of Anthony Samsel speaking to me about the sealed Monsanto safety test documents on Glyphosate, first part of which can be seen here:

 

And that prompted a letter from Rosemary Mason. She said:

Dear Tony
Good that you have got Anthony Samsel on board!
You might be interested in this new document I have just sent to the medical worthies in the UK…who as you can see are promoting the corporations.
I am not sure that you are aware that EFSA has approved glyphosate…it claims it has no effects on human health or the environment. But in Chapter 3 on human health page 56, and Chapter 4 Loss of Biodiversity and chemicals in the environment page 72, I am disputing this.
 
We haven’t a hope of winning unless we get the press in the UK to publish, but it becomes increasingly unlikely.
This is my last document!
Warm regards for Christmas.
Rosemary

Her open letter to the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of UK can be read by clicking on the image below:


And of course, Rosemary was referring to the last of the papers on Glyphosate so far published by Samsel/Seneff team : Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases IV: cancer and related pathologies, published in Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry 15 (2015) 121–159 Received 5 August 2015; accepted 24 August 2015

. That can be read in full by clicking the image below:

My thanks go to Rosemary Mason of UK. I also hope that the British, and indeed the Europeans, will show sanity and courage in the face of unprecedented pressure from US trade, industry and Government lobby, and will act to save their own land, eco-system and people first, and American commercial interest later.

Canada should start for testing glyphosate

Time to ask our governments to start testing people and food for glyphosate

Things have changed in the past year. We have been badgering the previous (Harper’s) Government in Ottawa for two years to get labs set up in Canada where people could test their urine and food for glyphosate. Some of our letters to the minister has been hand carried by then MPs to the then Minister of Health to respond to.

Sample table of compiled results

Sample table of compiled results

The good news is – today an increasing number of Canadian labs are coming up to test food items for detection of glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in RoundUp herbicide.

Unfortunately, we still have not located a lab that will test glyphosate in human body fluids such as urine, blood or mothers breast milk. We hope that happens soon. But we have now found ways to send samples across the border to USA for testing, which was proving to be expensive and difficult due to US customs rules.

Meanwhile, from various communication we have had with the Canadian Government, including through the Access To Information Act, it appears increasingly unlikely that our Government has actually seen any result of safety test of glyphosate, and may have approved it based on maker’s own statement and third party opinions. We are trying to look through this cobweb by asking the Government to disclose and make public what safety test it saw while approving Glyphosate. The response has been unsatisfactory less than transparent, with a veil of secrecy wrapped around the issue.

So, a separate petition is promoted on line, for the new Minister of Health to disclose safety test data on Glyphosate for people to verify.

Meanwhile, it is perhaps now our duty as citizens concerned about public health and quality of food, to keep our provincial Governments informed of the fact that glyphosate may have been approved circumventing the law and without studying any safety test record. It should therefore be of interest to the local governments to start testing our food and our people, to see concentration of glyphosate, and to let the people know of these results. This testing is now possible and within reach of the Government, since tests only cost from CAD 100 to around 250.

Meanwhile, we the citizens can initiate limited testing ourselves within our means, and start putting the results up on line for people to see. A sample table is put up here.

Folks interested to write to their governments, federal, provincial and municipal, we encourage you to do so and invite you to join our collective effort.

This may not be easy for a single person, but together, we can force our Governments to show diligence in ensuring that safety information as well as contamination from toxins are measured and people are kept informed.

This is a blog that will likely evolve as the efforts coalesce. Watch this space and feel free to contact me.

Thanks

Tony Mitra


Meanwhile, here is a brief list of Glyphosate MRL from Health Canada on various food items

GLYPHOSATE MRL – by Health Canada

Database reveals questions, and offers hints

I started looking afresh at the Health Canada public website for details put up my PMRA on pesticides in food, and their maximum recommended Residue limit in various kinds of food.

First, the unit used for MRL (maximum residue limit) was not mentioned in the results of search. For example, if you search for safe maximum residue limit of glyphosate in wheat, it will produce result of 5, but will not say if it is 5 ppm, or 5 mg/Kg of the wheat, or 5 mg/Kg body weight for the consumer or 5 ppb or what. This absence of indication of unit is something I found puzzling and also unprofessional. I had to ask a lab test expert from New Brunswick, who told that form his quick look, the unit appears to be ppm. I presume it is ppm in the wheat itself, in other words 5 mg/Kg of wheat.

I intend to dig into this a bit more regarding PMRA’s limits, and what unit is used, and what exactly it means.


The other interesting things I noticed were, in general, as follow

1) Most all factory farmed animal products including meat and milk are declared to have some MRL value for glyphosate.

2) Most all vegetable products are not in the list, probably an indication that these are not expected to have any traceable glyphosate, hence no limit has been set.

Deduction to be made from the above two – if you are deadly serious about reducing glyphosate – you might consider becoming a vegan, or seriously cut down on animal products.

Among vegetables there are tantalizing exceptions.
Soybean and Corn being known as large RoundUp ready crops, and most north American sugar coming from sugar beet – these are expected to have glyphosate, hence they also have MRL levels declared. So, if you want to avoid glyphosate, stay away from them.

Garden grown beet apparently is OK, as well as most other vegetables and fruits.

But for Mustard – watch out.

This one family, strangely, has multiple varieties listed with wildly varying figures.

Some are not in the list, such as standard (non branded) mustard and seed, indicating these are unlikely to have glyphosate. But other kinds, condiment type, oil seed type, and Hare’s ear mustard, can have as high as 10 ppm glyphosate. I have no idea what these are, but am very aware that GM mustard is already being grown in some places, which must have some brand name. GM mustard is also being shoved down India’s throat, so they produce a heck of a lot of it for local consumption and perhaps also for export. I do not know their brand names or where they originate from. but this multiple variety of mustard oil convinces me to be very careful about it.

Sugarcane cane is not listed, even if some of it is grown in Asia with glyphosate desiccation. So sugarcane question remains confusion.

I do not know why refined beet sugar does not have an MRL but sugar beet has a high MRL. Is it because Health Canada accidentally missed it, or could the refining process somehow remove the glyphosate? Can someone answer these questions.

I have included my first jotting of these partial readings into my blog, where I wish Canada starts testing their food, to see where the glyphosate levels in food are at this moment.

I understand the Govt is right now testing a lot of food, and might re-adjust these MRL figures as new information comes to light.

I am jotting this down so that future adjustments might be noticed.

Its a lot of work and takes a lot of time. Anybody wants to pitch in and help, is most welcome.


Meanwhile, this response comes back from the Access To Information (ATI) and Privacy Act Division of Health Canada, about revealing the safety test documents relating to glyphosate that the Government is supposed to have studied before approving use of glyphosate in agriculture

Disappointing response from Provincial Governments on Glyphosate

I received an email, from the Ministry of Health, British Columbia, in response to my below letter. It is disappointing, and appears to shirk responsibility of health concerns relating to Glyphosate.

My letter to the ministry had , two basic items, a question and a suggestion.The question was if the BC Govt had conducted any test of food grown in BC for presence of Glyphosate, and if so, to make the results public.

  1. The question was if the BC Govt had conducted any test of food grown in BC for presence of Glyphosate, and if so, to make the results public.
  2. The suggestion was – if it had not tested any food, to put forward a scheme to start testing local grown food for presence of glyphosate, and again, to make that information available to the public.

I cannot copy paste the response here or anywhere, since it comes with a warning, that this email was intended for me only, and any distribution, copy or disclosure by any one else is prohibited.

However, I suppose I can still write my impression of what the letter says.

First, it avoids giving direct answers to either of the two points above. What is says in essence, are as follows:

  1. That the ministry is watching WHO announcement on carcinogenecity of glyphosate with great interest.
  2. Health Canada is responsible for food safety
  3. PMRA has published its re-evaluation of Glyphosate this year, and has considered glyphosate is unlikely to affect health if used according to label directions.
  4. The letter provides various links to Govt documents relating to i) glyphosate re-evaluation, ii) pesticide product evaluation database, iii) maximum residue limit for pesticides etc.
  5. The email ends with a suggestion that, although I am in contact with the federal Govt, I might consider contacting PMRA directly, and provides their email address.

It might have been more honest for BC Health Ministry to simply answer my question directly, such as:

A) No we have never tested food for glyphosate,
B) No we do not intend to test food for glyphosate even if labs are now available, since we believe this is Ottawa’s matter.

I decided to update the blog with this information, and then consider what next we might do.


Here are sample letters sent to two wings of the Government of British Columbia, Canada – the ministries of Health, and Agriculture, asking them to either disclose results of locally grown or sold food they have already tested for glyphosate, or, if they have not, to engage in a systematic effort to stat testing now, and to make the results available to the public

I am enclosing this sample letter so that people from other provinces and even states south of the border could consider writing to their respective local governments, and for people in our province of British Columbia could send the same or their own version of appeal to our Ministers, demanding that the government start testing our food, and to keep the people advised on results.


To: Minister Terry Lake,
Government of British Columbia, Ministry of Health
( Also, separately, to Minister Norm Letnick,
Government of British Columbia, Ministry of Agriculture
Minister Lake,
Subject: Testing of food for glyphosate contamination in BC 
I am a citizen and a resident of British Columbia.
I am concerned about possible links between glyphosate (in RoundUp and other brand herbicides) in our agriculture, and ill-health, as well as lack of information on which food contains how much of it. You are aware of a rising number of papers showing possible link between glyphosate and various illnesses, as well as World Health Organization reclassifying glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.My reason for writing to you is two fold.

The first is to learn if the British Columbia Government has tested food grown in BC, and/or sold in BC, for presence of Glyphosate. If it has, and if the results are available online for public, I request you to direct me there. If the results are not available, I request you to make them available to me.

The second part is a suggestion, in case the BC Government has never checked for Glyphosate in our food system. May I then request you to set up a system so that crops grown in BC as well as food sold in our stores be checked and catalogued periodically for presence of glyphosate, and the results be made available to the consumers. I am willing to assist you in this work should you so require.

I have separate communication initiated with the newly formed federal Government in Ottawa on a related issue about verifying safety of glyphosate through direct study of tests conducted on target animals instead of indirect decision based on third party statement. However, I believe, under the Canadian Constitution Act, our provincial Governments probably has enough jurisdiction to engage in direct action in ensuring that the people of British Columbia have sufficient information on what non-food elements have gotten is in their diet, especially glyphosate, which may have an adverse effect on their health. I am available to be of assistance in this effort, should the Government require.
I would here bring to your attention an emerging fact that more and more Canadian labs are now beginning to offer testing of food for glyphosate, something that was not available even a year ago.

I enclose a recently published fourth part of a series of science papers published in peer reviewed journals by two independent scientists from the US that do not take any support from the biotech industry. The paper covers their analysis of links between glyphosate and a number of diseases including cancer.
Thanking you
Tony Mitra
(contact)

Link to Samsel’s paper : Glyphosate, pathways to modern disease, part IV


MANITOBA

Here is a letter sent by Rose Stevens to the Manitoba Minister of Health, Ms Sharon Blady:

To: Minister  Sharon Blady
Government of Manitoba, Ministry of Health
Minister Sharon Blady,
Subject: Glyphosate and it ‘ s presence in MB food system
I am a citizen and a resident of Manitoba.
I am concerned about possible links between glyphosate (in RoundUp and other brand herbicides) in our agriculture, and ill-health, as well as lack of information on which food contains how much of it. You are aware of a rising number of papers showing possible link between glyphosate and various illnesses, as well as World Health Organization reclassifying glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.  I am still waiting for that meeting with yourself, Dr Thierry Vrain and myself, but have not heard back from your office in months.  This subject will make a very interesting issue during the up coming provincial elections in 2016.
My reason for writing to you is two fold.
The first is to learn if the Manitoba governement has tested food grown in MB, and/or sold in MB, for presence of Glyphosate. If it has, and if the results are available online for public, I request you to direct me there. If the results are not available, I request you to make them available to me.
The second part is a suggestion, in case the Manitoba Government has never checked for Glyphosate in our food system,may I then request you to set up a system so that crops grown in Manitoba as well as food sold in our stores be checked and catalogued periodically for presence of glyphosate, and the results be made available to the consumers. I am willing to assist you in this work should you so require.
My collaegue, Tony Mitra from British Columber has a separate communication initiated with the newly formed federal Government in Ottawa on a related issue about verifying safety of glyphosate through direct study of tests conducted on target animals instead of indirect decision based on third party statement. However, I believe, under the Canadian Constitution Act, our provincial Governments probably has enough jurisdiction to engage in direct action in ensuring that the people of Manitoba have sufficient information on what non-food elements have gotten is in their diet, especially glyphosate, which may have an adverse effect on their health. I am available to be of assistance in this effort, should the Government require.
I would here bring to your attention an emerging fact that more and more Canadian labs are now beginning to offer testing of food for glyphosate, something that was not available even a year ago. 
Over twenty thousand  Canadians have already signed this  recent petition requesting that our government disclose the safety test data on glyphosate   
https://www.change.org/p/minister-of-health-canada-justin-trudeau-health-canada-prove-glyphosate-is-safe?recruiter=16360852&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=share_email_responsive
I enclose link to recently published fourth part of a series of science papers published in peer reviewed journals by two independent scientists from the US that do not take any support from the biotech industry. The paper covers their analysis of links between glyphosate and a number of diseases including cancer.

https://www.academia.edu/17751562/Glyphosate_pathways_to_modern_diseases_IV_cancer_and_related_pathologies?auto=view&campaign=weekly_digest

Sincerely 
Rose Stevens
Manitoba

Altered Genes – Did Druker miss out on Glyphosate ?

 

 

I have read Steven Druker’s book Altered Genes, Twisted Truth. While being a passionate activist on food security issues, and used to be singularly focussed on the ills of GMO, I have shifted my stance now to be more aware, and more alarmed, about Glyphosate and its effect not just in food, but also in prairies, forests and just about everywhere, even in our lawns, and what it all is doing to this planet. I have been fortunate to have come to know a rising number of scientists from around the world, at the same time many other passionate people that flock to anti-GMO gurus to listen to them. I also consider North America is about the very worst of all continents when it comes to either general awareness of the problems with either Glyphosate or GMO, and also far less successful in resisting them, compared to any other continent where humans live.

So, I decided to sent a note to Steven Druker about his book, but primarily because I got bugged by some of his ardent supporters who seem to be fixated more on GMO than on Glyphosate, pretty much in line with Druker’s book. I hope to be able to catch up with Steven Druker some day, or perhaps have  a talk with him over the phone, and share views. My mail was sent to him through Linked-in since I do not have his direct email. In case that does not reach him, or he does not check that often, I decided to make it available to him as well as to the blog readers, here. I believe this is a constructive criticism that Druker would benefit from, and quite different from the vitriolic attack he sometimes faces on the web.


To: Steven Druker,

Author – Altered Genes, Twisted Truth

Dear Mr. Druker,

I am a Canadian citizen, and an activist on food security issues. I am also a blogger with an average daily readership of between a thousand and two thousand hits, mostly from North America, but also clustered in western Europe, South Asia and far east.

I have purchased and read your book, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, and have discussed parts of it with many different people including some scientists from Canada, USA, Europe and India.

I wish to pass you some mild criticism about your book. I hope you will take them in good spirit and perhaps attend to some of them in the next reprint. 

In my view, the most glaring issue in this book, a feeling also shared by some scientists, is not what it says as much as what it does not say. Your book does not give due credit to the seriousness of the threat of Glyphosate, the most used biocide in the planet, and other stacked biocides that are on the horizon. Mention of Glyphosate in your book is almost like an distraction to the main theme, which is GMO, and how it was unethically approved in the US.

I understand that GMO is a highly visible issue – even presidential contenders are talking about if they support or do not support GMO labelling. In short – GMO sells. Therefore a book on GMO, especially if it can expose Government corruption, will sell. That Governments are failing to protect the people and are promoting corporations and share holder interests, is a common belief across the western democracies.

India, for example, has only one GM crop approved so far – Bt. Cotton. But India is awash with Glyphosate and the provinces such as Punjab, with high agricultural activity, those that were once considered the granary for India, are now known as its cancer capital. Two year old kids are now having cancer, in regions where they grow absolutely no GM crop at all, all thanks to herbicides and in particular, RoundUp.

You are likely aware that Sri Lanka is having a running battle with WTO, IMF and the World Bank, because the country wants to ban Glyphosate altogether since their sugarcane workers started dying of kidney failure ever since they started spraying non-GM sugarcane just before harvest. Unfortunately, these international institutions are threatening the country of financial ruin through cutting of credit and devaluing their credit rating etc, unless it backs away from banning the chemical across the board. In other words, there is more than just FDA and EPA, that are following unethical practice, to push Glyphosate down the throat of other nations. Even the actions of the US State Department deserves your investigation.

Within the BRICS nations, China is an interesting case to which I shall draw your attention. Russia wants the BRICS group to altogether ban Glyphosate. South Africa is on the fence but would like to join. Indian Govt is on the fence but the people in general would like to join this ban. China is very against banning Glyphosate. Why ? Because China is the biggest producer of Glyphosate (for American brand names) and exporter. Therefore, they do not want the Glyphosate market to shrink.

Therefore, it is my opinion that, to do justice to the topic, you might need to give much a higher exposure to the saga of Glyphosate.

Another thing, it is my understanding that US regulators such as EPA require toxicological tests not just for 90 days but for a lot longer, up to two years. This may not have been evident at the time of writing your book but Monsanto’s tests, their reports as well as raw data have been selectively released to key people with non-disclosure agreements, after 35 years. Anthony Samsel has over 4,000 pages of it, and has started investigating how Monsanto misrepresented the test data to claim that Glyphosate was safe. However, some of the tests extended to two years. I draw your attention to your book on Glyphosate (RoundUp) references on, for example, pages 302, 303, 304 etc. Perhaps you would consider amending that in the next printing. In my thinking, that 90 days test requirement may be factually incorrect. The reason the test results were accepted as satisfactory was not because the period of the test was short, but because Monsanto may have cheated in presenting the data. Incidentally, I interviewed Anthony Samsel on the now selectively unsealed Monsanto documents. Two short videos on them can be found on my blog: http://www.tonu.org/2015/06/06/glyphosate_tradesecretfiles/

There is a growing movement across the planet to rise up against Glyphosate. You of course are aware that Glyphosate is now routinely used as desiccant on non-GM crops, such as cereals, in North America, and it is difficult today for people here to find a meal without glyphosate, even if they go for certified non-GMO crops.

You may or may not be aware, that scientists in the US that make their own bread from certified organic wheat, which they buy in sacks, have found the wheat to be contaminated with Glyphosate in some of the bags, enough to make them sick. This goes to show how endemic the problem is.

There are a rising number of independents studies creeping up from all across the planet, about serious health effects, even deformed babies, from Glyphosate exposure. Separate wildlife scientists in North America are finding evidence that our wildlife, mostly ruminants and other mammals, and even many bird species, are standing at the verge of extinction, primarily suspected as victims of Glyphosate and its damaging effects on their microbiome. According to some of these scientists, large game mammals in North America are going to face extinction soon, since many will be unable to produce viable offspring, due to damaged reproductive system or infertility, while some bird species will face extinction due to highly skewed sex ratio, again thanks to Glyphosate.

I can introduce you, should you like, to some of these scientists. These stories have not yet been told properly and their findings have not seen proper light of day, due to disinterest from Government, media as well as the public.

Meanwhile, you are likely aware that a rising number of labs across north America are beginning to offer high end, low detection level, repeatable, accredited tests to detect Glyphosate in all kinds of raw and processed food, as well as live crops and grain. Also, a lot of people now are beginning to test their Urine for Glyphosate.  I am told Hollywood is getting ready to publicize it too – not sure if this Hollywood story is correct.

Here in Canada, folks are getting engaged in testing their own food and doing self-labelling, bypassing the entire do-nothing government. I am personally involved in this effort, as well as notifying the major food store chains that our intension is to test their food and put the results up on the web.

Anyhow, it is my honest opinion that your book has done a disservice to the very real dangers associated with glyphosate, with or without GMO. Many scientists, including genetic engineers and agrologist and soil biologists consider Glyphosate in the long run to be a greater threat and easier to prove scientifically, than GMO. That may be one reason the industry likes people to stay focussed on GMO, supporting the argument that the industry is comfortable responding to GMO concerns, but not Glyphosate.

I would like to touch base with you some day, should you come this way. I live in Delta, near Vancouver. I am friendly with many scientists – biochemists, microbiologists, genetic engineers, top biologists, agrologist and the like, in USA, Canada, UK, Europe, Asia, and Australasia and have learned a bit from them about this serious issue.

I understand you are a lawyer. So you probably know that the only serious court cases in relation to GMO that has been lost by the regulatory authorities or the biotech industry and won by the litigators have been in India, on more than one occassion. I personally know the people that took the Government to court about GMO and actually won, putting a serious dent in the biotech industry’s effort to open that market. Unfortunately, Glyphosate has not faced that kind of focussed resistance and it is virtually everywhere in India, even without GMO, and is ruining their health, not to mention the ravages of farmer suicide that has crossed 300,000. Not all of them are to do with GMO, something that Monsanto and its partners are quick to point out, but nearly all are linked, one way or another, with Glyphosate, something that the same Monsanto would rather not have to answer.

Incidentally, Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai has recently published four papers, which conclude on a scientific basis that the concept of “substantial equivalence” is humbug, at least according to thousands of test results on GM against non-GM soy, when measuring glutathione and formaldehyde correlation. You might find it interesting to check on Ayyadurai’s work. I know him too.

Hoping to touch base with you some day, on phone of face to face.

Tony Mitra


Well, that was my letter to Druker. I hope I can have a good talk with him some day. I personally do not believe books on GMO will actually result in any measurable action in preventing its spread. I actually do not believe any prevention will happen through people singing petitions or by politicians either. Change has to happen with people directly engaging with their Government and rising op to stop this chemical attack. If it happens, it will be triggered by people other than armchair warriors.
That has been my observation even on the ground, such as in Eastern Europe or India. When Bt. Egg Plant was proposed for entry in India, there were hundreds of thousands of people on the march. It scared the daylights out of the minster of environment, who blocked it, effectively indefinitely, something that the new Indian Government is trying to undo, slowly.
In North America, people have forgotten how to rise up that way. Either for that reason, or for some other, we in North America are the worst off – which reflects in our health status in comparison to the other western nations, in every field. We are the sickest of them all, although we spend the most in healthcare, compared to all others.
I might add a discussion podcast, or perhaps a video, or other material, on what some of the other scientists and researchers, policy makers etc that have knowledge on it, might think about our Glyphosate problem, and how it has so far escaped the mainstream media, the political establishment and the public eye.
Readers are welcome to send me a note.


A few updates. I have received a very nice response from Dr. Don Huber in support of what Druker did in his investigative effort in the book, which is specifically focussed on the problems in the regulatory process of approval of GMO.
Dr. Huber agreed that I might copy his message here, which is

Tony,
Although your letter highlights the problem with glyphosate, it does a disservice to Steve Druker.  The PURPOSE of Druker’s book is to DOCUMENT the dangers of the PROCESS and the regulatory corruption that is present that is manifest in NOT JUST GMOs but also chemicals, etc. Without GMO, there would be much less glyphosate in our food even though I agree that desiccation with a systemic chemical like glyphosate is an abominable practice from a food safety consideration.
I commend Steve for his thorough documentation of the UNSAFE results of the PROCESS, and in doing it in such a readable and understandable manner! In visiting with him, he mentioned that he had several more chapters, but had to cut those because of length and didn’t want the purpose and focus of the book on the GMO PROCESS to be minimized.  There is plenty of room for someone else to write about glyphosate, as you know that those articles are published everyday.  Steve’s expertise is in the legal/regulatory arena which he shares very effectively in his book Altered Genes, Twisted Truth. This is a much needed discussion since the opposition to food labeling is based on “don’t condemn the process” which both Steve Druker in his book and Shive Ayyadurai’s excellent research (devoted solely to Unsafety of the PROCESS) document.  Just because there are unaddressed issues in society that need to be addressed, please don’t negate the important contributions a few brave souls have been willing to dedicate so much effort to thoroughly document.
You highlight a glowing need for a comparable documentation on glyphosate, but it should not be construed as a reason t criticize or negate what has been accomplished with Steve’s book on GMOs and the PROCESS as well as the betrayal of the public trust involved in the regulatory system!
Don
Don M. Huber
Professor Emeritus, Purdue University

I received another message from another scientist involved in this issue, and who knows Steven Druker personally. I am quoting the comment here, though I shall keep the sender’s name out of it since I did not obtain specific permission to disclose it.

I was disappointed as well by his “light” treatment of glyphosate. I think he was duped by all the propaganda that glyphosate is nontoxic to humans. I’ve tried to set him straight, but so far without success (I think).

Please give it a try!


I have also received a note from Dr. Samsel regarding his investigation of the Monsanto toxicological test. He corrected me in one area. The total number of pages of document thus released to him stands at over 15,000, and counting. It was 4,000 when I interviewed him last. So, Dr. Samsel has gotten a whole lot more now to sift through, regarding Monsanto, Glyphosate, EPA and the approval process.


Scientist friend Chenny from China supports Don Huber’s view, that Druker should not be responsible for highlighting glyphosate, since Drukers angle was GMO and FDA, not glyphosate and EPA, although glyphosate story is as important and damaging, as GMO.

Dear Tony,
I tend to agree with Don Huber’s comments.
If you carefully consider the whole book, you should understand that he approaches the issue from disclosing FDA regulatory procedures and result.
And, if you review FDA’s role over all glyphosate-tollerence GMO crops, you could see that they completely ignore the issue of glyphosate residues in glyphosate-tollerence GMO crops.
Part of the reason: “division of responsibility”, EPA (not FDA) is responsible of safety evaluation of pesticides, herbicides. Thus, once EPA classifies glyphosate/Roundup as safe to animals, humans, FDA then treats glyphosate/Roundup as safe and no concern to all glyphosate-tollerence GMO crops.
Monsanto takes advantage of this, in their “volunteer consultation” with FDA over all glyphosate-tollerence GMO crops, glyphosate residue is not even mentioned!
The same situation exists in China: When Monsanto applied for safety evaluation of RR soybeans/maize in 2003, glyphosate was not mentioned in any of their documents submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture, and RR soybean samples submitted to the Ministry for toxicology animal testing, were also grown without spraying Roundup. Ministry of Agriculture accepted all of this, especially because the same Ministry evaluated glyphosate/Roundup in 1988 and approved its “pesticide registration” classifying it safe to animals and human health!
This is why our efforts in China must start with the registration of  glyphosate/Roundup in 1988 based on falsified toxicology animal reports submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture, if we can not succeed on this issue, we have no ground to further attack the approval of RR soybean in 2003.
Accordingly, especially as a lawyer reviewing whatever legal effective evidence he can obtain, Druker will not (and cannot) discuss issues which are not available in the evidence he obtains.
Another even more important issue: Only by establishing widest possible united front against Monsanto and evil forces, the people can win. Accordingly, we must first evaluation if the person, like Druker, is a colleague on the same side, or an enemy on the other side, and treat them accordingly, and be careful not to miss fire and hurt each other on the same general side.
I suggest you give some further thoughts to the overall situation, and adjust you attitude and position with Druker.
Saying all the above, your critisim over glyphosate (not against Druker), is completely correct, and I believe that Druker also accepts. But, as a lawyer, and also for tacticle reasons, it is far more effective for his book not to discuss glyphosate, because this is completely not a FDA issue, it is a EPA issue.
Best regards
Chenny

Wildlife scientist Judy Hoy of Montana had an interesting feedback. She has not read the book, but believes Don Huber is right, in the sense that Druker’s book is on GMO and not glyphosate. Yet, she also mentions that, in effect, Druker’s book is nothing compared to the ravages that glyphosate brings on the planet. She also attached a graph in her response, of glyphosate against children’s autism.

Hi Tony,

I agree with Don Huber that Druker’s book was about GMOs in particular. (I haven’t had time to read it yet.) It would likely take at least two books equal in size to Druker’s book to report even a little of the extensive, sadistic damage Roundup/glyphosate is doing to the planet. Humans and most other animals will likely be gone because of that damage long before the total effects of releasing GMO plants on the planet reach their full potential.

Did I or anyone else send you The Earth is not Roundup Ready? It is a short document listing just a few of the things that Roundup/glyphosate are doing to cause global climate change and cause the demise of most species of vertebrate. It is based on what several scientists told me. I just put the effects in a list of sorts and sent it to other scientists.

I really don’t think that GMOs can work nearly as fast as Roundup, working synergistically with the other deadly pesticides (umbrella term), to destroy life on the earth. I may be wrong, but based on my observations for the last 20 years, I doubt it.

I thought your blog was great. Feel free to share our 2015 study with Steven Druker if you have the opportunity. It pretty much shows graphically and photographically what Roundup is doing to newborns of birds and mammal, including children. I have to say that I have a serious problem with governments allowing chemical companies to get by with maiming and killing millions of human babies. That is government condoned genocide, which I thought was not supposed to be allowed “ever again.” And as you say, one of the worst offenders is the United States (Canada may not be far behind if the birth defects on the animals are any indication.) Also, the serious effects of Roundup and the other highly used pesticides is extensively and actively covered up by all government agencies, almost all media, almost all conventional medical organizations and professionals, etc., which makes all of them accomplices in the mass genocide.

Best Wishes,
Judy


Microbiologist, soil biologist, and ex-agriculture Canada scientist Dr. Thierry Vrain had this to say about the book

I will play the devil’s advocate.  I read that thick book quickly and saw the space devoted to the danger of glyphosate – practically nil.   The whole book is about the history of evils that Monsanto has done, including the faked results of corporate research.   But there is nothing about the commercial successes of the RoundUp Ready technology (and desiccation of grains) taking over 500 million acres, and less than nothing about the herbicide sprayed on that half billion acres.  Don’t you find that a little strange ?

A one liner for yet another scientist, commenting not so much on the book, but about my role.

Tony, I am thrilled that you are so involved with this very important mission, and that you have a unique role to play!


This came from Victor Hafichuk, who had hosted us in his huge farm in Alberta during our GE talk tour event at Lethbridge. I had a time finding it in a snow covered agricultural landscape with no identifiable landmark anywhere, in the darkness. I still smile at that experience. This is the first feedback from a non-scientist.

From what I’ve learned, not only from you, is that glyphosate should receive no small billing. It seems to me that small mention of it is as bad as no mention at all, perhaps worse, like labeling GMO’s as though they’re legitimate food and that people ought to have a choice between food and poison. What’s poison doing on grocery shelves, anyway? We’re talking a fire-breathing dragon here, aren’t we? Should we be casual about the dragon or the fire? 

And keep up the good work, Tony. In the end, when all is said and done, Truth ALWAYS prevails, no matter the time or medium or apparent failures in the meantime….


GMO is a trojan horse, to quietly bring in glyphosate – says André Comeau, geneticist, Quebec City, working to develop plants that need zero pesticides

GMOs are a Trojan horse for pesticides. Alas the people are so poorly aware of the Greek literature that at least two thirds of them do not even know the meaning of Trojan Horse. But Trojan horse is the best descriptor of GMOs. It means nowadays, it is the doomsday gadget (GMO) that introduces a dangerous enemy (glyphosate), without giving any alert to the victims (that there is glyphosate in it).

 


Further feedback from Scientist Stephanie Seneff

I think he wrote a great book – one of the few that I have taken the time to read all the way through this year – but I can not help but say that I was disappointed that glyphosate didn’t get more coverage.

The only conclusion I can make is simply that he was not aware that it is so toxic.  I can forgive him for that, as it is hard for people to believe – even people who are experts on GMOs – that glyphosate COULD be that toxic, given that all the regulating agencies have given it the ‘okay.’

Stephanie


I received more feedback from non-scientists as well, but shall leave that aside for now. It is quite clear to me at least, that, the issue of importance of glyphosate as a very dangerous chemical that is on us in unbelievably huge quantities and is threatening life at a planetary scale, is agreed more or less by everybody.

Then there is a split, right down the middle, with some stating Druker did not need to tackle glyphosate (or he may be unsuited for that task), and the other half thinks Druker should very much have mentioned, even for two or three pages, the extreme danger glyphosate poses to the planet.

I believe, whether the book is by a scientist, a lawyer, a writer, an activist, or Mickie Mouse, if it is about corruption in the US institutions in accepting GMOs for agricultural use, it aught to have also covered the parallel ravages of glyphosate (in my mind glyphosate is a lot worse), just so the readers are not mislead into thinking GMO is the beginning and end of all evil, and you can drink glyphosate on the rocks before going to bed.

Steve Druker himself sent a long email to me – half scolding me and half demanding an apology. I would have posted his letter here too, as he had suggested, but he ended his email stating that I should not publish this letter till he has a chance to refine them a bit. Sine he did not send any such refinement, I have not posted his letter here.

A Petition about Glyphosate

I have had a series of exchanges with Health Canada on Glyphosate. These include :

1. A letter to Ms Rona Ambrose, the minster of health, hand carried by outgoing MP Alex Atamanenko to Ms Ambrose, on the issue of lack of laboratories in Canada (at the time, i.e. last year) where Canadians could test themselves (urine sample or breast milk), or their food, for presence of Glyphosate. That produced a convoluted response from the ministry, without actually covering the main issue, i.e. labs for Canadians. At the time, Canada had labs that test for Glyphosate only in soil and in water. That is all.

Things have improved since then. I do not know if it happened because of my question, and because MP Alex Atamanenko pushed it with Health Canada, or because World Health Organization re-classified Glyphosate as a probable carcinogen, or for a combination of reasons including the above two. Whatever the reason, a number of Canadian labs now offer testing of food items for presence of Glyphosate. Some will test only vegetables, or processed food. Some will test grains. Some might only test crops from the field. Some have this testing methodology and process accredited. Some claim they can get the accreditation but have not done so because it is costly and they do not know if the business will be enough to maintain this accreditation that involves high annual fees.

Some will only test target weed type plants that show visible damage due to suspected glyphosate attack, but will not test plants that show no trace of damage, such as RoundUp Ready crops.

They mostly use High Performance Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry or similar high end methods and have a lowest repeatable and verifiable detection level that is between 10 and 20 parts per billion.

Most will do such tests for any paying customer including the general public. Costs can vary from around 200 to 400, depending on various factors.

Unfortunately, testing of human body fluids such as urine, blood, or mother’s breast milk, for presence of Glyphosate, is still not possible in Canada. There is a system in the US, that allows Canadian urine to be transported safety and tested in the US, for USD 119 each – and effort in which I am personally involved. We have sent out the first batch of samples and are awaiting results. This is covered in another blog.

2. Safety test documents: Request to Health Canada, through Access To Information (ATI) act, for Health Canada to disclose to me the document, based on which it approved Glyphosate. This resulted in huge file being copied into a CD and sent to me by mail. But the document and its attached reports and links did not include direct test data conducted on animals that have been exposed to the chemical. Rather, it was a summary report comprising of visiting other scientific papers. So the issue remains unresolved, i.e. if Canadian Government of its Pest Management Review Association has at all sighted a direct safety test report with their raw data, or not. And if it has, then will it make those document(s) public. I intend to make fresh requests to Health Canada, with different wording, for disclosure of the safety test raw data.

3. Results of Canadian foods being tested for Glyphosate content. I know the Canadian Government has started testing our food for Glyphosate content. I know existing labs are scrambling to get on board, and are either developing their own technology or adopting/licensing European or American systems. I asked the Government, against under Access To Information Act, to disclose to me all such results. Unfortunately, again, I am being given selective results, involving tests of crops suspected to be clean already, such as organic plants, and not conventional, or RoundUp Ready plants. So, in my view, the Government is playing hide and seek with us on safety data on glyphosate.

4. A fresh petition: Now that we have a fresh Government to take helm, and this Government is promising to be more transparent, I intend to see if fresh engagements will help bring transparency in this field which has been opaque for too long.

This petition, which is now collecting signatories and is sort of open ended. I was thinking of closing it when it collects 500 signatures. A letter should be sent to New Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as well as the new Minster of Health, for them to disclose the safety documents relating to Glyphosate, and also to make the system transparent so that people do not have to run around to get an honest answer on issues of food safety.

Meanwhile, there has been some interesting sniping behind the back from some anti-GMO and anti-pesticide talking heads, who might be harbouring a desire to own the movement, or appear to be the omnipotent guru in their ivory towers.

One comment that has come back through circuitous paths is that it is not Health Canada’s duty to sight first hand safety test data and not their duty to prove to the citizens of Canada that a product it approved is safe. All Health Canada needs to do, perhaps, is copy paste whatever they get from the biotech industry.

The petition has gathered over 19,000 supporters by November 14. It also got under the skin of a Harold Ingram, who was kind enough to send me an email.

Naturally, that is not what we expect a Government to do. There are rule books and guidelines on that the approval regime under the ministry of health is supposed to follow.

I had a minute and a half talk with Dr. Shiv Chopra, and converted that into a video, for clarifications.

[youtube 7K54gEqDedY]

So, here is a request for those that believe such a petition is necessary – go sign it. Click on the petition image to go to that page.

Thank you.