Category Archives: Glyphosate

Releasing glufosinate tolerant crop is a braindead thing to do

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There are three recently published scientific papers that seem to indicate that glufosinate can trigger microcephaly.

Microcephaly is a serious birth defect where a baby is born with an impaired brain and a smaller head than normal. The cause for this birth defect can include pregnant mother being subjected to acute starvation, or more commonly, exposure to toxins.

There has been various hot debates around the world on the reason this defect. The birth defect has been noticeable where pregnant women may have been exposed to agro-chemicals such as glyphosate in regions such as Argentina or the Yakima valley in USA. Zika virus has been blamed for some of the cases of microcephaly. However, scientists believe the real culprit to be NALED insecticide often used to kill mosquitoes, to be the cause at least in the Yakima valley and possibly also in Brazil. NALED, like Glyphosate, is also an organophosphate. However, glyphosate has remained under focus in many other regions including in the US due to the sheer volume of it being used and the plethora of diseases it is suspected to be connected to, including brain disorder, it being an amino acid analogue of glycine and easily able to cross the blood brain barrier.

In Argentina, Roundup-Ready soy is being replaced reportedly by another GM seed variety that is tolerant to glufosinate, because glyphosate had become a controversial and hated herbicide, and was also starting to fail due to extensive resistance among the weeds.

While discussing this with US scientist Stephanie Seneff, she pointed out three recent science papers that seem to also link glufosinate with microcephaly. These three papers are as follows:

The first paper, from 2010, involving research in Florida and Texas, in the US, finds a conserved glutamate to be critical in the construction of an enzyme called Asparagine Synthetase.

The second paper from 2013 involving an international group from Canada, Israel and the US, points to encephalopathy resulting from a deficiency in this same asparagine sythetase enzyme, which is essential for the development and function of the brain.

The third – from a French group, published in 2016 indicates that female rats exposed to glufosinate at a critical stage of pregnancy lead to neurogenesis or impaired brain in the babies.

Now, Stephanie pointed out, as had Anthony Samsel to me before, that just as glyphosate is an amino acid analogue of glycine, glufosinate is an amino acid analogue of glutamate. Both glycine and glutamate are among the 20 canonical amino acids that are used as basic building blocks of life, for protein construction of all living biology on planet earth.

So, while getting rid of glyphosate is an absolute must, replacing it with glufosinate is the very worst alternative imaginable.

This is not only of vital importance to Argentina and everybody else going for glufosinate based herbicides, but also for India, where genetically engineered mustard has been under focus for a while.

I personally was astonished and horrified to learn that this GM mustard was tolerant to glufosinate. I found that to be far more dangerous and objectionable, than whatever gene altering of mustard might do to the consumer. However, the best I know, the debate in India remained focused on the theory of genetic alternation and its legal, social, economic and political implications. Glufosinate, far as I recall, remained under the radar, much like glyphosate has remained under the radar in India until local papers and MPs started picking up my warning that India was likely being mass poisoned with glyphosate from imported pulses, and the matter reached both the Indian Parliament as well as pulse growers association in Canada.

Just a minder – one more time:

  • There are 20 amino acids that form all the proteins of all the living world.
  • Glycine is the most common of them all.
  • Glyphosate mimics glycine and thus gets inside our proteins, turning them rogue.
  • Glyphosate is suspected to cause a plethora of diseases through multiple mechanisms that affect living cellular biology. This includes cancer, autoimmune disease and brain disorder.
  • Glutamate is another of the 20 amino acid building blocks of life.
  • Glufosinate mimics glutamate.
  • Glufosinate will very likely also lead to encephalopathy or partially formed brains in newborns, as the three papers mentioned here indicate.

For India – GM mustard is glufosinate tolerant – a braindead way of developing new food strains.
For Argentina – replacing Roundup ready soybean with glufosinate tolerant soybean represents a catastrophic failure of safety concerns.

My thanks go to Stephanie Seneff for bringing this to my attention while discussing glufosinate resistance. I am forever grateful to Samsel, Seneff, Huber and Hoy for keeping my eyes open on this issue.

The image at right on Microcephaly and the figure for India, found through google search, puzzles me. How many cases are found in India. It says less than 1 million. But one million is a lot. Is it less than 10,00 or 1,000?

If I take annual birth rate to be around 20 million one million cases of microcephaly would mean an extreme high rate of one in twenty or 5% !

I would really love to get my hands on the real figures for India, and also the trend. Is the occurrence of microcephaly rising year to year ? If so, how much?

By the way, the red arrow in the image above is my addition.

If you google Microcephaly in India, the search result starts to show up a whole list of links relating to zica virus. There are regions where the zica virus has reportedly been present since the 1940s and yet there is no microcephaly. On the other end, there are cases of microcephaly where no zica virus has been found. But reports that link microcephaly with exposure to glufosinate is given right here, below, though in real life, the direct link has not yet been established. Potentially, glufosinate can lead to microcephaly since it is a neurotoxin. The insecticide NALED (Formula: C4H7Br2Cl2O7P), often used for mosquito control, has been almost always present where microcephaly has been noted, with the exception of Argentina. The warning is even present on the package of NALED – not to let it get into drinking water. In other words, it can harm any animal eating or drinking it.

What is going on with google search ?

The three papers can be read or downloaded here:
1) A Conserved Glutamate Controls the Commitment to Acyl- adenylate Formation in Asparagine Synthetase
2) Deficiency of asparagine synthetase causes congenital microcephaly and a progressive form of encephalopathy
3) Perinatal Exposure to Glufosinate Ammonium Herbicide Impairs Neurogenesis and Neuroblast Migration through Cytoskeleton Destabilization

4) Separately – Watanabe 1997 comes to the same conclusion on glufosinate. Although glufosinate was not considered to be teratogenic, mutagenic nor carcinogenic, this study found that it indeed was teratogenic in mice and rats in whole embryo culture, and that it specifically induces apoptosis in the neuroepithelium of developing embryos

Don Huber sent a note:

Tony,
Keep up the good work!  Also remember that all of these chemicals are
mineral chelators and that minerals are the enzyme cofactors for all of
these processes cited.
Thanks for sharing.
Don
Don M. Huber
Professor Emeritus, Purdue University


Anthony Samsel explaines : Glufosinate cannot be used in place of Glyphosate on genetically engineered crops unless they have been specifically engineered to be resistant to this herbicide. The encoding of the Phosphinothricin acetyltransferase (PAT) gene imparts glufosinate resistance.

Dual herbicide (Glufosinate and Glyphosate) resistant genetically engineered crops, which include some varieties of corn etc have both the PAT gene and a glyphosate tolerant gene.  I have 50 varieties of these GE corn hybrids in my seed refrigerator for experimental purposes which also includes these GLyphsoate/glufosinate  dual herbicide resistant varieties. 
 
The Glyphosate resistance genes include:
 
  1. The cp4 epsps gene.
  2. The cp4 epsps (aroA:CP4) gene is the gene which produces an over abundance of 5-enolpyruvyl-3-phosphoshikimic acid impart resistance 
  3. The Glyphosate oxidoreductase gene (GOX)  
  4. The gat4621 gene which uses the glyphosate N-acetyltransferase enzyme to catalyze the inactivation of glyphsaote herbicide.  It essentially converts glyphosate to the N-acetyl form rendering it non-toxic to the plants.
  5. There is also the mepsps gene which is a modified 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-ohosphate synthase (EPSPS) enzyme which imparts Glyphosate resistance.
Glufosinate is an analog of Glutamic acid one of our 20 proteinogenic amino acids.  Its principal metabolite found in urine and feces is 3-[hydroxy(methyl)phosphinoyl]propionic acid.  Glutamate has been used in reference to Glutamic acid.  I like to use Glutamic acid.  Glufosinate is an analog of Glutamic acid.  You can see the difference between Glutamic acid (the anion) and Glutamate below.  Glutamic acid in H2O ionizes attaching a hydrogen atom (glutamate form).  Glufosinate, an analog of glutamic acid, has an amine group in place of an oxygen molecule.
It is possible that glufosinate can also cause microcephaly.  Glufosinate is a neurotoxin.  Glufoiosinate was found to have teratogenic effects in mice (Watanabe, 1997) as apoptosis (cell death) in the neuroepithelium of developing embryos.

The abstract of the Watanabe/Sano paper is copied here:

Herbicides containing glufosinate ammonium are widely used in many countries including Japan. Many Japanese cases of accidental and suicidal poisoning by glufosinate have been reported since 1989. We report a case of a 64- year old man who ingested glufosinate in an attempted suicide. The patient suffered mental disturbances and hematological changes together with gastrointestinal effects shortly after ingesting the poison, and later developed generalized convulsions, impaired respiration and circulatory failure. During recovery he exhibited loss of short-term memory (retrograde and anterograde amnesia). Neurotoxicity is a characteristic of glufosinate poisoning, although the mechanism is not clear. From the analysis of clinical symptoms of previously published cases, glufosinate toxicity appears to arise both from the active ingredient and the surfactant in the formulation.

The glufosinate containing herbicide brand used in the above case was reported to be BASTA, the same product the GM mustard developed for release in India is reportedly resistant to.

Cheers and have a great day all.

Tony Mitra

Glyphosate & India – Part I

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

Debal Deb at his Odisha farm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hindi article by Bharat Dogra on Deshbandhu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July 25 – Kalikapur Kolkata

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those will go into part II of this write up.

Glyphosate in Canadian Forest and the death of our forests and wildlife

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There is a three month old article on a web based platform from Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, called Prince George (PG) CITIZEN, that claims Moose living in the nearby forests are dying in large numbers from starvation, and the reason is suspected to be herbicide spray.

The article does not spell out glyphosate, but it implies it, from my point of view.


There is a long chain or correspondence under that article, with some arguing in favour of the use of glyphosate and commenting that the opponents of herbicide spray are just being unreasonable, unscientific, with a knee-jerk reaction against herbicides. A lot of others are countering that, and are apparently opposed to the idea of using herbicides over prairies, grasslands and forests. The article got shared by someone on Facebook and thus it came to my notice.

I posted the following long comment in that discussion chain, where it has not appeared yet and is presumably waiting for approval of the admin. I am copying it here, as I believe it deserves to be on record that can be traced back in later years.

Here is what I wrote.

——-

Glyphosate was first approved by Health Canada in the 1970s for agriculture. It saw Monsanto’s test results on lab animals subjected to measured dose of glyphosate in their feed, based on which our government is presumed to have concluded that glyphosate was safe to be in animal food in small doses, and hence approved its controlled use in Canadian agriculture.

However, the Government has kept those safety test data and reports hidden from the public till date, forty plus years running. This non-disclosure of the safety data, irrespective of whatever agreement the government made with the herbicide promoter, makes approval of glyphosate in Canada to be constitutionally illegal in my view. And yet, the Government hides the data and the use of glyphosate continues.

Now, regarding spraying over the forests.

It is under jurisdiction of provincial Governments to allow or disallow any use of herbicides over crown forests. I have had several freedom of information act applications with the British Columbian Ministry of Forest Management as well as Environment in an effort to discover a few facts such as:

1) could I have a copy of whatever evidence the BC government saw that spraying glyphosate over our forests was safe for our environment and biodiversity before it allowed glyphosate to be sprayed, and

2) could I have the records of how much glyphosate has been sprayed over our BC forests, year upon year, from the first year of application till date.

I got reasonably candid responses back.

A) The BC government has seen no evidence whatsoever, if glyphosate is at all safe for our forests, on the grounds that the chemical was already approved by Ottawa. This despite the fact that Ottawa approved it only for controlled application in agriculture and that Ottawa has never disclosed the data that was supposed to prove glyphosate to be safe for any living organism.

B) The BC Government does not have the data on how much glyphosate has ben applied by the logging firms over the years, and if I paid the BC Government several thousand dollars (because answering my question requires more than 5 man-hour labour by the government official that my freedom of information act allows me), then the BC government would ask around to all the logging firms if they kept those records, and then collect them, compile them, and then prepare an answer for me. I refused to pay those extra dollars, and I got only what the BC government had – which is small amounts of glyphosate applied by backpack carrying persons on small bushes and weeds at the edge of forests here and there, which was organized by local municipalities etc and not the aerial spray directly over forests as arranged by logging corporations.

Glyphosate is a mimic of glycine. Glycine is the most common (most prevalent) of all the twenty one amino acids that make up all the proteins of the entire living world, from a bacteria to a whale and includes all proteins in humans, plants and wildlife.

Animals and plants are constantly producing more proteins to replace old ones, and even more of them when the plant or the animal is young and growing fast. Our biology does not know how to distinguish glyphosate from glycine, mainly because glyphosate was not around in nature in the long history of evolution of life on earth, and is a synthetic chemical invented two generations ago. Therefore, with glyphosate in the food, creatures pick it up in place of glycine, and mis-incorporate them into newly formed proteins. These plant and animal proteins, with glyphosate in place of glycine, do not work as intended. The proteins become rogue protein and can trigger a cascading series of diseases, many of which are synthetic ones that did not exist before.

All this has been already investigated and reported including in peer reviewed journals.

Canada has not conducted any such investigation on safety of glyphosate. Any scientist in Canada that wishes to look into how glyphosate works on in biology of the plant and animal kingdom, is usually fired or made to shut up. As a result, Canada is in essence similar to a third world country where mass poisoning of the land and the people is a politically accepted practice to allow profit to foreign corporations.

Welcome to Canada.

Here is another post from Facebook that might deserve to be stored. 1st July 2018

Canada has a long history of poisoning the land and its people. Glyphosate was introduced into Canada soon after it was approved in the US. We are talking about mid 1970s.

I was personally instrumental in raising hell through a sympathetic MP in the Canadian parliament for testing all foods for glyphosate – something no country was doing. Eventually it resulted CFIA ordering over 8000 tests covering over 3000 food samples collected in Canada but originating in 68 countries.

I obtained a copy of all those test results from Health Canada and analyses them. It proved that North America produces far and away the most poisonous foods of all, and within North America, Canada produces measurably more toxic foods than even the US. Its all in the book.

Available at Amazon stores

I have sent nearly 25,000 signatures demanding that Canada discloses the hitherto hidden safety test documents from Monsanto that it saw back in 1970s before approving glyphosate, and has since kept out of reach of the public. This alone makes approval of glyphosate illegal in my view. Even 25,000 signatures did not move Justin Trudeau.

I have now changed to going after elected politicians that collaborate with the pesticide pedlars and allow mass poisoning of the people.

Canada started growing huge quantity of red lentil (masoor daal) recently, in order to export to India. That daal is toxic like hell, and Indians are getting mass poisoned through it, apart from a runaway increase in use of glyphosate everywhere in India, under the radar, from Kanyakumari to the Himalayas.

Meanwhile in Canada, wildlife is facing immediate extinction, thanks to glyphosate spray over grasslands, prairies and forests.

Welcome to Canada.

Storing these bits and pieces of my social media posts, so one day they might be retrieved and included in my book – Lonely Road, a journal of a food security activist.

Letter to MP Bill Casey – Review legality of glyphosate approval

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A letter to a Canadian Member of Parliament

To: Honorable MP Bill Casey
cc: Honorable minister Carla Qualtrough
Dated: Saturday, June 30, 2018
Subject: Need to review how safe glyphosate is, for Canada
Honourable Mr. Casey,
I am a Canadian citizen that has been trying to get the Government to disclose hitherto hidden safety test documents that are supposed to prove that some glyphosate in food is safe for humans. Health Ministry saw such safety test data before approving the use of Glyphosate in Canadian agriculture back in the 1970s, but has been hiding it from the people for two generations now. This technically makes approval of glyphosate illegal, the way I read the law.

I have a multi-year Access to Information appeal (Access request Health Canada – A-2015-00743) ongoing where I demanded that Health Canada discloses all the safety test data and report it received in the 1970s based on which it first approved the use of Glyphosate. The Government acknowledges that I have the right to the documents. And yet, it has been dragging its feet and the documents remain hidden till now.
I had met my MP, honourable Carla Qualtrough, and handed over almost 25,000 signatures of people demanding that the Government releases hitherto hidden safety test documents on glyphosate, and have had a meeting with her. She took the data to Ottawa and has since gone silent, and refuses to revert why she no more wants to correspond about disclosing those hidden safety test reports.
A further e-petition raised by me on the House of Commons platform also have resulted in obfuscation and obstruction, and the public is still denied the chance to scrutinize the test results that are supposed to prove that glyphosate in safe for animals.

MP Bill Casey

The province of New Brunswick has a nasty history of poisoning the land and the people with continued use of glyphosate that has been decimating its wildlife and making the area the cancer capital of Canada.
You know California has passed a law to have all glyphosate based herbicide sold in the state to carry a warning that glyphosate is known to cause cancer.
I write this letter to you to not only initiate a government review on glyphosate, but also to:
  1. Demand full public disclosure of all safety test reports and data, involving comparison of  health parameters of lab animals subjected to glyphosate exposure with another group of identical animals eating glyphosate free food. These tests results and reports have been conducted by Monsanto in USA and elsewhere.
  2.  Initiate independent government funded tests on safety of glyphosate
  3. Review the basis for Health Canada’s Maximum Residue Limit (MRL) levels set for glyphosate in various kinds of food, and a historical trend of increasing the safe limit continuously, when presumably actual levels in food keeps reaching the previously set safe limits. The Government is yet to show proof that glyphosate at any level is safe to be in foods such as grains or pulses, till date.
This is a public interest letter. I am a food security activist that have dedicated large parts of my time to pushing for transparency on this extremely dangerous molecule, glyphosate. This letter may be published on my blog (tonu.org) or be otherwise made public on social media. I shall be glad to also make public any positive step from your office.

MP and honourable minister Carla Qualtrough. She took over 20,000 signatures and met me about asking Health Canada to disclose hidden safety documents on glyphosate. But then she went totally silent. Later she voted against bill C-291 which would have made it mandatory to label all GMO items in food. She ensured that such a bill is defeated so the people cannot tell if they are or are not eating GMO. She did not ask her constituents, which includes me, if they want this bill defeated. She took a unilateral decision to deny the people a right to know. This I believe explains where Minister Qualtrough stands, on issues of food safety and food security.

 

I am copying this letter to MP Carla Qualtrough since she is mentioned here. I may also separately write to MP Karen Ludwig of New Brunswick, who I understand is also interested to push for glyphosate review.
I am currently visiting India, my birth country, but can be reached by email or phone.

Thanking you
Tony Mitra
Home address: 10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, Canada
Currently in India using local phone +91-98317 13068

You hate Monsanto ? Big deal !

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The million dollar question is, what are we prepared to do about it?

André Comeau got fired as an ag-scientist in Canada because of his stand and effort to find a way to grow wheat without using glyphosate or other herbicides. Canadian government fired him. He sacrificed his career but did not change his opinion that toxic chemicals in food system is unhealthy and should not be supported.

Not everyone needs to be fired. But it is my opinion that this problem is political, i.e. our politicians are extremely corrupt, across all party lines, that we do not have an effective democratic system, that the people are ultimately at fault for this sorry state of affairs, and that the ultimate solution, if Canada and the world is to be saved, will have to come from ordinary citizens.

Citizen activists will need to stand up to fight the this toxic avalanche enabled by our government, and shift focus away from Monsanto, Bayer and other corporations. People will have to change focus and recognize their own politicians as parties responsible for the poisoning of Canada.

The people will have to find a way to put the fear of God into future aspiring politicians, so that a new generation of them can be in government, whose primary job would be what the constitution says, i.e. follow the wish of the people and work for the greater good of the people, and not work for the profit of corporations.

It is not upto NGOs, talking heads, anti-GMO gurus, various group leaders, authors of books, internet clean food promoters, product pedlars or anybody else’s responsibility to save our nation and our planet. It is our job.

The buck stops are our feet – at your feet if you are reading this.

My perpetual question to the people are – what are you prepared to do ?

I am invited to address a crowd of educated Bengali intelligentsia tonight in Kolkata, India – and my ultimate question to them too will be the same.

  • It is not alright to just be aware of glyphosate.
  • It is not alright to just avoid glyphosate and eat organic.
  • It is not alright to just hate Monsanto.

My crying question to every listener remains : what are you prepared to do about it other than saving your own family by eating organic? What are you prepared to do to save your nation and your planet?

You need to do whatever you can within your means, individually & personally. If you do not do it, no one else might.

The buck, at the end of the day, stops are our feet.

I am pretty passionate, so readers may forgive my strong tone. I am not looking for followers. I am not forming an NGO for others to join me. I do not pretend to be a leader of a group. My posts are not to increase my visibility or to promote any product. I shall not ask anybody to give me any money or donation. Been there done that.

My sole aim for being on Facebook, far as glyphosate goes, is to show how ordinary citizens, without people support, without money, without legal help, without political power, cans till confront their nonplussed or crooked politicians, still confront their non-functioning governments, and still hope to achieve some result, no matter how small that might be, towards fighting this chemical attack on the planet.

I give personal examples of whatever I do, so that a few others might take example and try to do similar things within their own capacity, in their own regions, in their own unique ways.

As Marganet Meade said : Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

So, if you do not believe me, thats OK. Believe Margaret Meade and show what you are prepared to do.

Thank you.

Mass poisoning of India through glyphosate

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Today’s rant is only partially about the inconvenient truth regarding glyphosate. Mainly, it focuses on my departure from the common activities expected out of an environmentally conscious, anti-GMO activists.

Umm.. what do I mean ?

Well, to start with, I wish to declare that I, after years of going with the flow, screaming against Monsanto in North America, signing petitions and going on talking tours across the length and breadth of Canada, and being a part of many organizations, I have quit them all.

No, I have not given up on activism, but I decided I was wasting my time, and my time was too precious to be wasted. I became thoroughly disenchanted by anti-GMO talking heads like Jeffrey Smith of the US, Vanadana Shiva of India, author Steve Druker of the US etc, not so much because of what they did, but rather, because what they did to do, or tap danced around, and failed to alert the people about.

I also decided that almost all NGOs and resistance groups I had been involved in, were worse than a waste of time for me. They were definitely counter productive in the sense that they were using my time, my efforts and my money, to useless pursuits that were designed, in my mind, to fail to tackle the root of the problem. They continued to misguide the people.

In some ways, these groups and talking heads appeared to be flips sides of the same coin, and were both milking the system from opposite ends. Neither wanted the problem to be eradicated.

That was the impression I got after years of wasting my personal time and money, and I decided to cut my links to them all – hook, line, and sinker, and venture out all by myself. I was not going to ask for money from anybody. I was not going to try and speak with people as a means to try and solve the problems of poison in our food and environment. I had decided the most people that listen are essentially groupies that clap hands and hang out with notables but otherwise do nothing meaningful, and that the talking heads ensure that the population stays thus mesmerized and engaged in uselessness.

So then, what was I going to do? Well, I did not know clearly, but decided to focus on what appeared to me to be part of the root evil – our political system that allows unproven and potentially dangerous products to be allowed in through corruption in high places.

I had no money – no political clout, no people support – nothing. But, I had me. And I decided to go after the Canadian Government single handed within my capacity and try to address at least one or two of the root issues. Succeed or fail, I would at least have the satisfaction of trying and giving my best shot at what I considered to be a root problem.

All considered, I have had a measure of success, and have become a kind of an example, that going it all alone, without any support, for a single average citizen, is perhaps better than all other options out there. Perhaps some folks, just a handful, will take queue and chalk their own path in their own region, to tackle root issues, singlehanded if need be. Perhaps citizen activism at the grassroots level, without talking heads and professional leaders, was our only shot left to safe this planet, if it at all can be saved at this late stage.

Going it alone and without support has great advantages. I cannot be purchased, influenced, corrupted or sidetracked by money or bullshit. And money or bullshit can come from both sides of the coin, as I have found out.

And now, back to India. Glyphosate is likely mass poisoning India already. A nation of over a billion people, this is already the diabetes capital of the world. It is, in my casual observation and without statistics, is at the cusp of a major epidemic of auto immune disease. Glyphosate has penetrated India in unprecedented level and in unexpected areas. It is my suspicion that glyphosate plays a significant, if not the primary role in slow poisoning India. The so called resistance movement appears to be fixed and fixated on GMO alone, and allowed glyphosate to permeate the land from coast to the mountains. This fixation is one more reason how the poison peddling industry wins out, by keeping the public focussed away from the greatest danger, glyphosate, already affecting the whole of the nation.

Since I cut my links and burned my bridges, I do not need to be politically correct and be afraid of offending anybody. I do not believe the resistance movement is going to save India. If India is to be saved, the job will have to be done by the common man, performing the most important role in a functioning democracy – being a responsible citizen and wrenching the control of a failing democratic system away from the clutches of either big money or useless organizations that make a career out of talking against Monsanto. Monsanto has almost nothing to do with it. It is the politician that is betraying your interest, and that is happening because you have been sleeping, or listening to the wrong guys.

So, While I do not look to be speaking to the people, at times I do accept an invitation. Thus I may be speaking at a small study circle discussion soon by invitation in South Kolkata by a group of scientists and mathematicians. Details will be furnished here if and when official invitation is received.

The topic of my talk will be:

  • Glyphosate, the molecule that is mass poisoning India, and the world
  • how it remains invisible and under media radar,
  • how expecting solutions from Governments, political parties, and resistance groups are a waste of time,
  • and finally, how it is for the citizens to address this global and national crisis, directly, individually, each within his or her capacity.

Glyphosate, Tea, and Media

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Glyphosate in Tea, and the effect on the tea drinking population.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I had seen the evidence, from CFIA tests in Canada, that North America produced the most toxic of all seed based foods on the planet, from wheat to rye, barley, oats, to beans, chickpea and lentils.

http://www.ijehe.org/temp/IntJEnvHealthEng712-362183_100338.pdf

I also knew that people were getting poisoned far faster and with a far greater dose of glyphosate from non-GMO crops than GMO, which in general contained far less amount of glyphosate, with rice and quinoa being the only known exceptions.

I had seen further evidence that processed foods were on average lot more toxic with glyphosate than the same food in raw stage before processing. Such as carrots from the field (much cleaner), compared to carrots coming from famous branded tinned variety (dirtier with glyphosate contamination). Besides, most of the popular food processors including baby food and morning cereal makers somehow appeared to add a lot of glyphosate into their products, such as Kelloggs. I even wrote a letter to them about it, but only got a sort of holding message without follow up.

I had not paid too much to beverages, since not much of that was tested, and because it was so hard to guess what ingredients were included in popular health drinks etc.

However, coming to India, a major tea growing and tea drinking nation with high population, I became increasingly conscious of the issue of glyphosate in tea production. Tea garden owners have told me they have been using glyphosate in tea gardens for a long time, perhaps stretching a generation.

I have found that in rubber plantations, even in remote Himalayan foothills, glyphosate has reached.

Then Sri Lanka imposed a nationwide ban of glyphosate due to suspicion that it was killing farm workers from Kidney failure. Recently commercial pressure has pushed Sri Lanka to selectively open up Glyphosate in tea and rubber production.

So, when I heard about research papers from the US that seemed to find higher concentration of glyphosate tea compared to lots of processed foods and beverages, I found the authors of the study, but could not lay my hands on the published paper.

So I asked around and am thankful for agro-scientist André Comeau of Quebec, Canada, for sending me the link to the paper, which I have now downloaded and given it a cursory look, saving it for thorough reading in a few days. Apparently, a lot more glyphosate is noted in people’s urine that have drunk tea in the last 24 hours. I know glyphosate does bioaccumulates, so what is seen in the Urine is only a fraction of the stuff that one drinks. The rest goes into the person’s biology – one way or another, and ends up in all kinds of places it should not be – thus starting a long process of diseases or ill-health.

This chart is from that paper.

I used to think a billion plus people of India are getting mass scale poisoned primarily from imported daal (pulses) from countries such as Canada, Australia etc.

But now that I know how glyphosate has penetrated every aspect of modern farmlands growing virtually anything, from potato to cauliflower to rice, and how it is so visible in processed tea bags, I am beginning to suspect the billion strong population might be poisoned both from imported pulses, as as well most anything homegrown, from food to tea.

I feel increasingly sure the the tea-glyphosate link is not unique to India but across the entire tea producing world, from China to Africa, but we shall not know till someone starts broad based testing all these tea leaves, tea dust and tea bags.

It appears that the people in India, while being focussed on resisting GMO, might have allowed a thousand fold bigger tide of poison through reckless, and unchecked use of glyphosate everywhere on one side, and absolute absence of either any testing to see if any of that is safe, and same time without any test of how much of it is in the average diet of people here.

It looks like an unimaginable tsunami of ill-health is bearing down on India and all tea drinking regions, and I can already see the tell tale signs of it, with a cursory look at my friends and relatives and noticing the inexplicable rise of auto-immune diseases that were virtually unheard of a decade ago.

To make matters worse, the paper itself does not specifically say if the test also included presence of AMPA, the first metabolite of glyphosate. It is possible that the test excludes AMPA, in which case the actual toxicity from glyphosate/AMPA might be much higher than the figures shown. In absence of a clear mention, I am inclined to believe the data only contains glyphosate.

This should go into my blog – its too important and worrisome to ignore.

MEDIA MISINFORMATION

Then there is the issue of fake news, wrong news, yellow journalism, and news that are designed to give one sided information on safety of glyphosate, in this case in tea.

http://www.sundaytimes.lk/180513/columns/killing-the-goose-that-lays-the-golden-eggs-neglecting-the-countrys-highest-export-earner-293827.html

 The above news article, from The Sunday Times from Sri Lanka is a good example of bad reporting, and misleads the reader. On the surface of it, it essentially states what might be correct and obvious – that export of tea is a golden goose of Sri Lankan exports.

It further, take great pains to state that banning glyphosate on assumption of physical harm (death from kidney failure) is scientifically baseless. The actual sentence is “The latest blunder was the banning of glyphosate imports that is an essential weedicide in 2015 without a scientific basis“.

What the article fails to indicate, that proof that glyphosate in any food or drink is actually safe, has not been released by any government, and that non-release of such safety data makes approval of glyphosate to be illegal, and any claims that it is safe – little better than baloney.

The industry, that appears to have influenced every government on earth starting from USA, and prevented all of them from disclosing safety test report and raw data to the public, is careful is providing a plethora of scientific reports, all carefully picked, that indicate glyphosate was found not to cause any harm to animals. All these tests are, in fact, third party opinions and little else.

What actually constitutes proof of safety, is a comparison in health parameters of one group of test animals fed food with a measured dose of glyphosate, and health parameters of an identical batch of animals living an identical lifestyle and eating identical foods, without without any glyphosate. This comparison either proves glyphosate does not cause any harm to the animals or shows evidence of harm. This and this alone constitutes proof of safety. And this document, usually going into tens of thousands of pages of data on tests conducted usually on more than one group of animals, usually mammals, has been submitted to most governments in order to have them approve glyphosate for use in agriculture. And this is the document that has been kept out of public eye, which makes the approval illegal in my understanding of the law.

If a government cannot disclose safety test report and data of a toxin or non-food item to be used in agriculture, then the government may not approve nor release that item for use in agriculture either. That is how I understand constitutional law in most countries that are democratic and supported by a constitution.

The report should mention that Sri Lankan people have seen no proof whatsoever that presence of glyphosate in their food or beverage does not hurt the consumer. Also, Sri Lanka has not conducted any test of directly exposing glyphosate to test animals, like their sugarcane workers and tea garden workers have been exposed to glyphosate, to see if there is any adverse health impact on the animals.

The report also failed to disclose that sugarcane workers were dying of kidney failure only after the practice of spraying glyphosate on sugarcane was started, and some tea garden workers started developing throat cancer, suspected from exposure to glyphosate.

It is not very difficult to conduct tests on lab animals to see if comparative exposure to glyphosate duplicates these maladies on animals or not.

The paper has been harping on the golden goose of export dollars, but by failing to mention the health risks and the total absence of proof of any safety, implies that earning export dollars is worth more than deaths and illnesses of Sri Lankan Farm Workers.

That, to me is worse than yellow journalism. An honest journalist would not pen such a blatantly one sided article, but a poison peddler might.

What’s in the Anglo-Saxon drinking water?

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Whats in the Anglo-Saxon drinking water? And how might it concern India?

Is it just a coincidence that the three Anglo Saxon nations that stole continents from local inhabitants and acquired vast stretches of land for pillage, are the very ones that have the highest acceptable limits for glyphosate in drinking water – namely USA, Canada and Australia?

And now that I am visiting India, and some folks are asking about it, could there be a link between glyphosate in the Anglo-Saxon world and mass poisoning in India through imported lentils and chickpea?

Well, let’s start with this Anglo-Saxon drinking water first. The difference in the maximum allowable limit between these countries and Europe is not marginal, but an order of dimension higher.

Anyhow, how did I come across this data, and why do I consider this to be relevant from my point of view, now that I am visiting India ?

Well, the data was apparently compiled by the Government of Bermuda. I got it from the US scientist Dr. Don Huber, who passed me his powerpoint presentation with a few slides, to do with glyphosate. He did it in case I wish to use any of it in my talks in India.

Well, India is not in the above chart. However, I suspect that a billion and more folks here are getting mass poisoned in slow motion, through imported pulses grown in two of the countries in this chart – namely Canada and Australia. I have been involved in getting the Canadian government to test large samples of food, locally grown and imported, for glyphosate, and then to give me copies of the results. Canada became the first, and so far the only country on earth to have conducted such wide ranging tests of thousands and thousands of food samples from over sixty countries, for presence of glyphosate, and I had much to do with getting the Canadian Govt to start testing these food samples. Subsequently I became the only person, outside of the Canadian government, to have legal access to all these test results. That is how I came to know that Canada and USA produce the most toxic of all foods when it comes to glyphosate contamination, and in seed based foods. And that is how the reference book – POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA, got to be written, and used by scientists and research scholars that suspected but did not have the proof, that North Americans were getting mass poisoned from glyphosate through local foods. But what is the relevance for India, apart from a dangerous hankering to copy and emulate the American lifestyle, including eating industry processed junk food that are so laced with glyphosate?

The link, I suspect, has to do with pulses – specifically lentils and chickpea that India is unable to produce enough to meet internal demand, and consequently importing huge quantities, from countries that specialize in producing toxic foods, such as those in the above table.

North America and Australia does not have lentils in their diet and no past history of growing them. But now, these countries, with access to seemingly endless stretches of agricultural land, have gotten to plant huge fields for growing these crops, for the specific purpose of exporting to India. The impression given to the importers, I suppose, is that these crops are grown in more scientific and modern ways than what India herself grows in house, and therefore should be considered as superior to Indian counterparts. I would not be surprised if educated Indians, especially those that are culturally addicted by the western mirage, to take this as gospel. If it comes from the west, it must be superior.

If it is processed food from North America, if it contains industrially grown seed based foods, especially lentils and chickpea or mainstream cereals, expect to have glyphosate in it. This is from the test results by Canadian Food Inspection Agency, where Tony Mitra was involved in getting the Canadian Govt. to test these foods, and then to give him the  all the  results of multiple thousands of tests..

But back to glyphosate in drinking water, for USA, Canada and Australia. Whats the story here? Why are the limits so high compared to Europe?

I believe the maximum allowable limit of glyphosate in drinking water is so high in these countries because the existing levels have already gone high. Therefore, the governments I believe have continued to raise the bar, making these higher levels “acceptable”. This is what happens. When levels of toxic substances go up, these governments do not declare the food, or the water, to be unsafe. Instead, they raise the bar so from that point, higher levels of toxins are still considered safe.

Drinking water is not the only item where MRL (maximum residue limit) has been raised and raised again for glyphosate over the years, without providing any proof whatsoever, that these heightened levels, or even the original lower levels of glyphosate contamination, was safe for humans or animals.

My biggest gripe is that the government never provides direct proof with raw data, that such high levels of glyphosate are absolutely safe for animals eating or drinking them on a regular basis. And this makes approval of glyphosate illegal, in all countries. It is a fundamental right of the people to be able to verify safety of toxins and biocides (e.g. weed killers that are approved by the government). And yet, the governments of the entire world has kept this data hidden, while allowing glyphosate to become far and away the most used herbicide on earth. Talk about failure of democracy.

The relevance and link between toxicity in drinking water, and crops grown comes indirectly. What is happening to their drinking water, is not by accident, nor by act of God. High levels of glyphosate is being used in agriculture. That is how lentils and chickpea get so much glyphosate in them. Then, what does not get into the crops, gets into the agricultural runoff, into streams, lakes, and ground water. Eventually it gets into the drinking water.

Another country that is not in the above chart, but plays an increasing role in sending possibly toxic pulses to India, is Myanmar. I have not seen any test result on glyphosate in pulses grown there, which are imported by India. However I am told that the method used to grow the pulses are industrial models borrowed from the west, and that Myanmar has started buying a lot of glyphosate, for the purpose of growing pulses for India. I am told that the Indian government may be encouraging Indian agro-industries to buy land in Myanmar, to grow pulses for India. People need to have these pulses tested for glyphosate too, and compare the readings with those of USA/Canada and Australia. Indians are likely getting poisoned through their lentils and chickpea and they deserve to know the details.

India, the largest consumer and producer of pulses, sadly cannot meet local demand any more. India’s agricultural lands are getting less productive as years go by, thanks to wrong agriculture polilcies.

This is the business end of the decades old and faulty decisions taken towards a much hyped “green revolution” where hybrid seeds and heavy chemical use in agriculture was introduced in the name of progress, based on fraudulent science. This started the steady and relentless degradation of the soil, loss of indigenous varieties and knowledge, and disappearing water table. There used to be a popular saying about computer systems and software – garbage in, garbage out. I believe this also applies in India’s blind adoption of western industrial scale agriculture models that are designed to sell more chemicals, instead of fine tuning locally developed, sustainable and time proven organic methods.

Although I have not seen the statistics, I have seen evidence of a rising tide of auto-immune diseases coupled with problems with the digestive system in India, from people eating these foods as well as those growing them. I suspect the mass poisoning has started, and would love to see detailed testing and data on this.

People of India absolutely needs to force their governments at all levels to start testign their seed based foods, especially those that are imported from Canada and Australia, and let the people know. They should also demand that the proof of safety of glyphosate in these foods be made available to the citizens and people be allowed to scrutinize them as well as conduct independent verification.

Below two tables show comparative contamination in lentils grown in Canada and in India, as tested by the Canadian food inspection agency and analyzed by me. Let us take just one item, red lentil, or masoor daal. Both Indian and Canadian samples indicate 100 percent of samples to be contaminated with glyphosate. This raises various questions such as are all masoor dal grown in India toxic, or is only the toxic variety being exported back to Canada where Indian restaurants might be importing desi masoor dal ?

Either way, the average contamination level is 160 ppb for Indian red lentils. For the Canadian counterpart, also 100 percent are contaminated. This is understandable, since Canada does not know how to grow organic lentils except for a handful of small farmers that do not produce much and did not get sampled and tested by CFIA. But the average level of contamination of the industrially grown masoor daal, which is the type that is exported to India in large quantity, has almost a thousand ppb of glyphosate, or six times as toxic as the Indian variety.

And India is buying this stuff in millions of tons, for the local population, without any disclosure or testing, and keeping the consumers in the dark.

Whose fault is it?

POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA – Tony Mitra

POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA – Tony Mitra

Without disclosure of any proof of safety, approving this substance and feeding thus contaminated foods to the people may amount to eco-terrorism. The fault however lies at the feet of the people. In a functioning democracy, we cannot blame the government and its politicians. People deserve the government it gets. The buck stops at our feet. Want to know whose fault it is? Look no further than the nearest mirror.

Wozniak, Glyphosate and Indian cultural slavery

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I have been jotting down ideas in a loosely arranged new book, called “Lonely Road” or “My Lonely Road of Glyphosate activism.

Why do I write it ? It is my personal feeling that, for an activist concerned with glyphosate, or destruction of biodiversity and ecology, or a planet facing mass extinction and perhaps human civilization facing a systemic collapse – writing a book is an useless pursuit.

This of course is my personal opinion. Book writing is for book writers, for them to earn a living and for people to have something to read.

Don’t get me wrong. There is a need for books, for a thousand different reasons.

But, in my view, in my personal experience of an anti-Glyphosate activist, writing a book about it is an useless pursuit, if the goal of the writer is to trigger a chain of events that might help put a stop to the reckless use of glyphosate on planet earth.

But then why am I writing this book. contradicting my own beliefs?

Well, one of the reason is a selfish one – a human’s desire to leave something behind when he/she kicks the bucket. Another reason may be that some humans are instinctively record keepers and like to leave behind a footnote to future generations, a statement that someone else had walked this path before. Also, it can be just that some folks believe they ave a flair of writing, or that they have a story worth telling.

Some of those reasons may apply to me – but there is also another. It is a constructive way to pass idle time.

I do not watch TV, and have started avoiding mainstream newspapers and magazines, mainly because I am not only fed up with them, but suspect I might become brain damaged if I spent too much time watching or reading them. While internet provides a sort of alternative pathway to news, it is also heavily controlled and also as full of rubbish as any other platform designed for public consumption.

I don’t go to watch much movies. I don’t do drugs, and don’t drink. I do not frequent pubs and bars. I find idle yapping with folks to be boring to the point of being intolerable.

I like conversation and exchange of ideas with folks that share similar interests or are able to talk on global issues with some depth and not superficially. Unfortunately, such people are very hard to find. As a result, I am often speaking with such folks over the phone, across great physical distances.

I am rather opinionated and do not suffer fools well.

All these are my psychological baggage and that results in me having certain amount of quiet time for introspection.

And right now, I am in India. Have been here for a number of months and likely to be here for a bit more, for personal reasons. And, I have less ways to use my time constructively. Yes, I am doing some bird-watching. Yes, I have visited interesting places and met interesting people.

But, not being in my own environment back in Canada, I have more idle time with myself.

As a result, I took up filling out some of the chapters of my book here.

Question – why do I have a chapter on Steve Wozniak in a book about Glyphosate activism ? Is Wozniak a known critic or supporter of Glyphosate ?

Frankly, I do not know. However, I do believe there is a link between recent comment made by Wozniak in Delhi, India, which has been twisted around some by the media, and the reason why Glyphosate, and toxic technologies from the west, manages to get strongholds in countries such as India.

And I intend to write a chapter on this.

I read a few articles on what Wozniak said. Apparently he mentioned that Indians, the upwardly mobile Indians that migrate to the US, are usually academic types (book pushers) that get MBAs, get fat jobs and might drive a Mercedes. However, they lack creativity. The papers seem to say that Wozniak commented to the effect that this lack of creativity is the reason India does not get companies like Apple, Google or Facebook.

I am not sure if Wozniak meant exactly that, but feel pretty confident that he said what he did as a positive criticism of the Indian system, mostly education system, that encourages copybookism (a term I just coined) as against independent thinking, which is why the upper half Indians following this system end up being successful techno-coolies designed to be well paid cogs in the US style corporate machinery, like a new age incarnation of the century old character played by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. This is why Yuppy Indians are unlikely to be pathfinders of new horizons.

If Wozniak actually meant all this, then I disagree with him, again in a constructive way, and I think this has great relevance to why and how technologies such as chemical farming and glyphosate get a purchase in countries like India.

First – Indians are no more nor less creative than Americans. In fact there is no good way to even define an American, since most so called creative people in the US came from somewhere else, or their parents of grandparents did. But what essentially set the US apart from other countries, and especially apart from India, is that the system in the US encouraged creativity and brilliance, as well as encourage hard working coopybookists (another term I coined just now).

India, on the other hand, has a system where corporations grease their way through the Government which legislates and legitimizes business tycoons to get a stranglehold on certain sectors of business, often to the great detriment of the environment and the people, and shuts all doors to independent thinking, rational thinking, and creative thinking.

In short, it is not so much the people of India, but the system that Indians have rigged for themselves after independence, that promotes cronyism, corruption and hegemony and suppresses creativity, independent thinking, or rational thinking.

Of course, I am perhaps being a bit more harsh on India than I should be, but then, perhaps the readers will forgive me, since I come from years of frustrating glyphosate activism.

But hang on – things are not all that hunky dory for USA either, and this is another area that Wozniak is either unaware of, or is unwilling to touch. The vaunted US system is virtually bankrupt and on the point of collapse.

One could also argue if Facebook, Google and Apple are actually helping or harming the planet – but that would really drag this chapter into an endless road. I shall leave it for others to ponder.

US does not any more have a system that is just or which rewards rational thinking. It is a system that has given rise to the One World Order, a system that is busy devouring the planet. And its political establishment is corrupt to the core, borrowing a term from Shiv Chopra’s book.

But back to India. The upwardly mobile, english educated Indian population, both in India and outside, have largely become cultural slaves of the US system. They are hypnotized, like a deer caught in the headlights. They are unable to think straight or think outside of the American bubble.

And this cultural slavery is working in favour of glyphosate, in favour of Monsanto and in favour of industrial, chemical agriculture as much as many other items that only promote US hegemony and destruction of the biodiverse sustainable ecology of the planet, all in the name of phoney and fraudulent idea of “development” and “progress”.

And that is the link, in my mind, between whatever Wozniak might have said, and my take on why India appears to be almost blindly allowing their people to be poisoned in order to make profit for agro-corporations.

Anyhow, this is just part of one chapter of my book – in the making.

You can perhaps guess, this book is not designed to be popular either in India, or in the US.

But then, that is me.

Anthony Samsel on Glyphosate getting in proteins – such as Keratin

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In this first of three part interview, on items to be covered in a new article that Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff are currently writing, Samsel discloses his research on how glyphosate gets into all parts of horses that are fed glyphosate laced diet, including its hooves, which caused the hooves to collapse and not carry the weight of the horses.

Research on horses covered their blood, urine, feces, hooves and even semen. Glyphosate gets into the blood and can get into all tissues and all parts of the horse biology wherever glycine is needed. This indicates the near certainty that this is also happening to all other mammals including humans.

He got fingernail samples of human patients that are suffering from Scleroderma, and he found presence of glyphosate in their finger nails.

This ability of glyphosate to penetrate deep into our biology and integrate itself in places where it is unwanted, can cause an near endless chain of illnesses. What is even more surprising, is that most of these observations were already done back in the 1970s by Monsanto and Dupont. Anthony Samsel reconfirmed that by independent analysis that this indeed is the case and is also making the subject public, 45 years after they were first observed by the promoters of the product – and kept from our scrutiny. This hiding of the safety data on glyphosate, in my view, makes the approval of glyphosate illegal, apart from being extremely dangerous for all life on the planet.

Copy of published peer reviewed papers by Samsel and Seneff on Glyphosate:
Glyphosate-I
Glyphosate-II
Glyphosate-III
Glyphosate-IV
Glyphosate-V
Glyphosate-VI