Tag Archives: AUSTRALIA

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.

Glyphosate in the rest of the world.

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Sections of Excerpts from the book – POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA, covering food samples tested from the rest of the world.

There are more than 1,100 records of foods tested for glyphosate by CFIA that originated from countries other than Canada and the United States. For this book, I have grouped them as the “Rest of the world”. There are sixty six countries in this group.

There is a reason why this grouping was done by me. Foods produced in the rest of the world, exceptions aside, are an order of dimension better than similar foods grown in English speaking North America, with respect to slow poisoning from glyphosate.

Before folks get into a knot on my use of the term ‘poison’ with regard to glyphosate, I have clarified my position in the book already, which are, briefly as follows

  1. The government of Canada has not disclosed to me or the public any direct tests and data that actually provides proof that glyphosate is safe to be in food at any level of concentration.
  2. Therefore, in my view, all assurances from the Government that the levels present in food currently are safe, is worth little more than voodoo.
  3. Governments and scientists do not own the word poison. They are free to keep harping that glyphosate is not toxic and not poisonous, I shall continue to believe that it is an acute poison to many beneficial organisms that we need and a chronic poison for all other creatures of value including ourselves. I am not in the least interested to engage in any debate on the matter, unless the test results on safety of glyphosate is placed in public domain and be made available for independent scrutiny.
  4. Meanwhile, I have nearly 8,000 records of foods tested in Canada originating from nearly 70 countries, for presence of glyphosate. This book is to alert people about it

A truncated master list of the 66 countries with respect to glyphosate in food, as tested by CFIA, is given below. This section only shows the top half, due to size and bandwidth limits. In the book, the full list covers three pages.

The table covers all the rest of the world, outside of English Speaking North America. The portions shown here are the worst group on top,  and the ‘caution’ group in the middle. The top countries and their average level of glyphosate contamination are highlighted in read at left and right column. Countries that have a sample number of ten or more, and therefore might provide a better statistics are highlighted in yellow.

IN the worst group, with samples of ten or more, are Turkey, Poland, Greece and Lebanon. These are the real bad apples, followed by a few others with fewer samples.

The middle group, that are not as bad as the worst and not as good as the best, are highlighted yellow. Relevant countries here are Japan, Italy, India, and Korea.

Countries in the good range ( not included in the table above) are many, which is a very healthy sign for the rest of the world. These countries are Bolivia, China, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Peru, South Africa, Ecuador, France, Thailand, Netherlands, Guatemala. The first countries in this list, i.e. Bolivia have glyphosate content closer to 5 and the last country, Guatemala have zero.

Leaving the bad apples of the rest of the world, let us go back to Australia for now. It occupies the highest rung for the nastiest average contamination in the rest of the world, although with only 4 samples. Further, with only 25% of them contaminated, with an average that is so high, it implies that only one out of those four were bad and that one must have had four times the average value. in fact, that one sample was bad enough to turn Australia into a potential nastiest producer of food outside of Canada and USA. So, one might dig into it a bit and figure out what is going on there.

There it is. This Mung Bean is the culprit that places Australia at the top of the nastiest of nasty list of the rest of the world, for producing glyphosate laden food.

But, far as I know, Mung bean, or Moong Dal, is a lentil of India and not particularly common dish for non-Asians. So what is this Mung Bean, and so highly toxic to boost, doing as an Australian produce ?

I do not know the full answer, but can hazard a guess. India is a densely populated country, and is upwardly mobile in the sense that it is finally shedding its abject poverty and malnutrition through two centuries of western colonization that squeezed it to bare bones, and is just now beginning to eat better. In the process its domestic production is unable to cope with rising demand, and with money in its pocket, India is beginning to import some foods from outside.

This has caught the attention of countries with agricultural land to spare and attractive markets to capture.

Enters countries like Canada, USA and Australia.  Each of them start growing lentils. While the US grown lentils have relatively lower levels of glyphosate, those from Canada are really high, as per CFIA records. And now it appears that the single sample from Australia is also sky high in unwanted toxicity. One also wonders how this sample ended up in Canada ? Is it being imported from Australia into Canada? Why? Is some store importing it because it is cheaper than local lentils? Who is growing it in Australia and why?

Perhaps someone will figure this one out and educate us. My suspicion is that it is grown for India and for people of the Indian diaspora, who are quite well settled and reasonably affluent in North America, Europe, the Middle East and even Australia, all of whom might be the secondary target markets for these lentils.

Of course, lentils from Australia, and if these are designed to end up slow poisoning people in India or the Indian diaspora living across the world, is neither the main nor the only story for this section on the “rest of the world”. So readers might just read on.

A talk with MADGE

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MADGE

MADGE

MADGE stands for Mothers Are Demystifying Genetic Engineering. How I love that name. Its a group founded by three women of Australia, incorporated half a dozen years ago, and is is engaged in, among other things, raising awareness on the harmful effects of GMO agribusiness on the ecology and health.

I came to know about MADGE through twitter comments they made about GMO in Australia, read up on them, and asked if I might talk with one of them for a podcast, in order to spread information about their good work in our corner of this connected planet. Fran Murrell of MADGE has my thanks for accepting the offer.

Frances Murrell

Frances Murrell

An alternative explanation for MADGE is “Mothers advocating deliciously good eating” – since all mothers are concerned with health for their children, and are usually the ones that buy food for the family. Therefore, this is a key group that should know what good food is. These women of MADGE have mostly seen how GMO played out in the world, became concerned about the path their nation was attempting to follow with regard to food security.

Australia has had very long periods of drought – the last one lasting almost ten years, which kept use of some of the GM crops such as Bt.Cotton to a minimum. However, as the cycle changes and Australia gets more rain, GMO cotton planting might increase, with all the anticipated side effects such as super-weeds, poisoned soil, and even stronger pesticides etc.

Meanwhile, Australian provinces are one by one lifting the ban on GM Canola, although demand for it from farmers and consumers are minimal. Like everywhere else, Governments do not fully fund educational institutions any more. So many of the science agencies in Australia are funded or co-funded by biotech corporations. In short, science is no more neutral. Money is talking larger than true science, in other words. Independent scientists, if they find issues of health or safety concerns in a GMO product, are often victimized, muzzled, or fired. More of GM crops are looming over the horizon in Australia.

But there is also a bright side. People are rising up in grassroots movements around the world, rejecting this industrial system of spraying poison and shipping food halfway across the world, and rebuilding relationship between the soil and all living creatures, spreading awareness, and volunteering in rebuilding a better world.

The talk, lasting 26 minutes, are converted here as a podcast. You can either listen to it directly from this page by clicking the play button at the bottom of this page. If you wish to send a suggestion or comment, please do so to tony.mitra@gmail.com.

Thanks/ Tony