As most people who pay any attention to our food supply issues know, glyphosate is in pretty much everything. It’s in urine, breast milk and umbilical cord blood in over 90% of urban dwellers tested for presence. Over 90% of the corn and soy in this country are GMO variants…What could go wrong?
Additionally, a very likely cause of the increase in gluten intolerance is that some wheat farmers are flooding the wheat fields with glyphosate prior to harvest to cause the wheat to know it’s dying and push it’s energy into the seed quickly (increasing the weight of the yield) and to make it easier to harvest because the dead, dry plants are less likely to tangle and slow the equipment down. Not all are doing this, but some are…and it’s no good.
The article below details a recent announcement that the FDA (Food Destruction Agency) is going to test four foods for the presence of glyphosate. If history is an indicator, as it usually is, the FDA results will probably be “negligible presence found”, and they will pat themselves on the back for being good controllers of the food supply. But maybe, just maybe, a few honest people will be involved and real results might be put out-officially, or unofficially.
(NaturalNews) If it’s been deemed bad in other countries, that’s often when the United States comes in and welcomes it with open arms. In this case, we’re talking about the fact that a California judge recently dismissed two lawsuits that claimed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) illegally approved a harmful drug additive – ractopamine hydrochloride – used in animal feed.(1)
Indeed, despite having information about the weight gain inducing drug’s detrimental effects on animals, and that the active ingredient, found in the brand Paylean, is banned in 150 countries, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers turned a blind eye.(1)
FDA records revealed that pigs in particular have suffered horrific consequences from being given the drug, which is designed to make them gain weight without having to consume a great deal of feed. While cost effective for the farming industry, it’s been found to have rendered 160,000 pigs unable to walk, to experience hyperactivity and broken limbs, and even to die.(1)
In fact, a Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN) investigation determined that ractopamine is fed to “an estimated 60 to 80 percent of pigs in the United States” and has “resulted in more reports of sickened or dead pigs than any other livestock drug on the market.” Over the years, farmers and veterinarians have repeatedly expressed concern over ailing pigs.(1)
Still, the judge feels it’s appropriate to dismiss the lawsuits while these horrors continue to unfold.
Judge’s unbelievable reason for dismissing lawsuits
A portion of the judge’s explanation for the motion to dismiss reads as follows:
Due to statutory and regulatory requirements that applications to FDA for new drugs remain confidential… plaintiffs only became aware of the approvals, and FDA’s associated decision-making, when they were final and published in the Federal Register… Thus, plaintiffs were not able to participate in the administrative process prior to the FDA approvals at issue… Central to defendant-intervenor’s motion to dismiss, plaintiffs do not allege that they pursued any administrative remedies with the FDA relating to their NEPA grievances following the FDA approvals.(2)
So there you have it. The FDA is protected by secrecy, able to approve harmful drugs under a cloak of application confidentiality, knowing full well that participation in approval processes is limited. Not everyone is in on it, of course, especially those who the FDA knows would be likely take issue and dare to ask questions.
Organizations who take issue with this additive include the Center for Food Safety, the Sierra Club, the United Farmworkers of America and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, all of whom – along with others – originally filed the suit in 2014. They maintained that it violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Administrative Procedure Act when the animal feed additive containing ractopamine hydrochloride was approved. They are also adamant that the FDA did not properly test the feed additive, which is manufactured by Elanco, a division of Eli Lilly.(1)
What this means for you
What does this mean for your food and for those who advocate the humane treatment of animals? It means that animals will continue to be given drugs that severely compromise their health. They are dying, trembling and living in a constant state of fear.
It also means that the food you eat involves an additive – ractopamine hydrochloride – which has actually been deemed “not for human use,” yet has turned up in tested meat samples. This doesn’t just pertain to pigs, either; it’s been found that ractopamine is fed to turkeys and cattle as well.(3)
If this has you shaking your head in disbelief and disgust, it should. Once again, greed enters the picture – one that’s well-framed by loopholes and hush-hush regulatory processes.
It seems like every week there is another heavily weighted study showing how negative Round Up is for life. Here’s yet another article on a US study that, of course, Monsatan is baling about:
April 25 (Reuters) – Heavy use of the world’s most popular herbicide, Roundup, could be linked to a range of health problems and diseases, including Parkinson’s, infertility and cancers, according to a new study.
The peer-reviewed report, published last week in the scientific journal Entropy, said evidence indicates that residues of “glyphosate,” the chief ingredient in Roundup weed killer, which is sprayed over millions of acres of crops, has been found in food.
Those residues enhance the damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and toxins in the environment to disrupt normal body functions and induce disease, according to the report, authored by Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Anthony Samsel, a retired science consultant from Arthur D. Little, Inc. Samsel is a former private environmental government contractor as well as a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body,” the study says.
We “have hit upon something very important that needs to be taken seriously and further investigated,” Seneff said.
Environmentalists, consumer groups and plant scientists from several countries have warned that heavy use of glyphosate is causing problems for plants, people and animals.
The EPA is conducting a standard registration review of glyphosate and has set a deadline of 2015 for determining if glyphosate use should be limited. The study is among many comments submitted to the agency.
Monsanto is the developer of both Roundup herbicide and a suite of crops that are genetically altered to withstand being sprayed with the Roundup weed killer.
These biotech crops, including corn, soybeans, canola and sugarbeets, are planted on millions of acres in the United States annually. Farmers like them because they can spray Roundup weed killer directly on the crops to kill weeds in the fields without harming the crops.
Roundup is also popularly used on lawns, gardens and golf courses.
Monsanto and other leading industry experts have said for years that glyphosate is proven safe, and has a less damaging impact on the environment than other commonly used chemicals.
Jerry Steiner, Monsanto’s executive vice president of sustainability, reiterated that in a recent interview when questioned about the study.
“We are very confident in the long track record that glyphosate has. It has been very, very extensively studied,” he said.
Of the more than two dozen top herbicides on the market, glyphosate is the most popular. In 2007, as much as 185 million pounds of glyphosate was used by U.S. farmers, double the amount used six years ago, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data.
Read more at Reutershttp://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/25/roundup-health-study-idUSL2N0DC22F20130425#We3PpH2hcL7tFrpy.99
Today I received this excellent Monsanto History infographic. It is jam packed with the history of one of the most evil corporations on the face of the planet. I was asked to share it with my readers, and I am quite happy to do so! Here is the link for the full view. Thanks, Elly!
I don’t think this could have come at a better time. The Senate is due to vote on the Dark Act soon, and with such a prestigious medical journal now publishing an article stating that we should be labeling GM crops, it is not going to be easy for the Senators to keep holding the Monsanto line of “It’s great! And all the studies that show it isn’t are wrong because we say so.” Mind you, I am not going to hold my breath thinking the US Federal Government will do the right and decent thing, but this is still fantastic ammo. Here is an excerpt from an article. The link to the article is in the title below:
In the August 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, two respected experts on pesticides and children’s environmental health call for the FDA to require mandatory labeling of GMO foods.
Currently, the FDA does not require labeling of genetically modified foods, even though 65 countries mandate the labeling of GM foods, and more than 90 percent of Americans support it. Last month, the DARK Act, which would block states and federal government from making mandatory labeling laws, passed in the House. Next, it goes to the Senate.
What the article says
In the article, titled “GMOs, Herbicides, and Public Health,” Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, the Dean for Global Health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and co-author Charles Benbrook, a crop and soil scientist, say the time has come for three important steps.
One of these is GMO labeling. They write: “We believe the time has come to revisit the United States’ reluctance to label GM foods.”
As they explain, two recent developments are dramatically changing the GMO landscape:
The number of chemical herbicides applied to GM crops has increased sharply and is scheduled to increase even more in the next few years.
This year, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate, the herbicide used most widely on GM crops, as a “probable human carcinogen.” And the agency classified 2,4-D, another herbicide, as a “possible human carcinogen.”
The authors believe labeling will have multiple benefits. It will help track the emergence of new food allergies and better evaluate the effects of chemical herbicides applied to GM foods. And also, it will respect the wishes of the growing numbers of consumers who insist they have a right to know what is in the foods and beverages they are buying.
The article also calls for the National Toxicology Program to urgently assess the nature, effects, and possible poisons in pure glyphosate, formulated glyphosate, and mixtures of glyphosate and other herbicides.
Finally, the article calls for the EPA to delay its implementation of its decision to allow the use of Enlist Duo, a combination herbicide made with both glyphosate and 2,4-D that is designed for use on GMO crops…..(rest here)
Hats off to the author of the following piece. She’s been around the issue for a very long time and is familiar with the political terrain. This issue brings up an awful lot of philosophical, and flatly scientific questions. On the philosophical side, shouldn’t we, as human beings created in the image of Yah, have the right to care for and to treat ourselves and our families as we see fit? In the intentional dumbing-down of our society, did we lose our capacity to make decisions? On the more scientific side, how do we know that taking an isolate of a plant is going to be as positive for health as taking the entire plant with all of it’s constituents? Do we actually know how all these various components work together within all the various components of the human being? Or did we just discover an aspect and then presume that we have full understanding? We only discovered DNA in 1952 and the endocannabinoid system in the early 1990’s and how do we know that there isn’t another system within that which we haven’t discovered yet?
At any rate, as one would expect, those who desire profit above all else are setting themselves up to control our access to natural substances in their natural forms. Here is the article:
For those hoping that Big Pharma could still be blocked from the medical cannabis scene there is bad news: the deal is done. Look for the first naturally-derived, Big Pharma-produced cannabis product to be on the market by the first half of 2016, perhaps even sooner.
Epidiolex is a liquid formulation of pure, plant-derived cannabidiol (CBD) manufactured by the British company, G.W. Pharmaceuticals. It is currently on the FDA Fast Track and has entered its final Phase 3 study for pediatric epilepsy disorders such as Dravet’s and Lennox-Gastaut’s syndromes with results scheduled for the first quarter of 2016.
Barring an unlikely catastrophic finding, there are plenty of signs that Epidiolex will breeze through this final stage and will thus have cleared the FDA’s testing requirements. For any other drug the remaining details would be purely administrative but Epidiolex is derived from cannabis and that puts a few more hurdles in the way before marketing can begin. There are, however, plenty of signs that government officials are literally paving the way for this new player.
Among the most significant occurred on June 24, 2015. Before a packed hearing room, the U.S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, established in 1985 to “expand international cooperation against drug abuse and narcotics trafficking” took on the decidedly domestic issue of what to do about medical cannabis. The meeting was chaired by two unlikely medical cannabis proponents, Senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
For long-time medical cannabis activists it was a surreal moment to watch these two veteran senators (with a cumulative total of 57 years in the Senate) bob-and-weave their way through unfamiliar territory. Normally these drug warriors would be proposing tougher penalties and increased enforcement. But on June 24th, and in a subsequent editorial in Time Magazine, Grassley and Feinstein supported “expanding compassionate access programs where possible, to benefit as many children as possible.
The hearings were eerily familiar for this medical cannabis pioneer. They immediately hearkened memories of another time when pressure on federal officials forced a “readjustment” of policy. It was 1980 and public interest in medical cannabis was being fueled by heart-wrenching stories from cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Their compelling stories of marijuana’s effectiveness in reducing or eliminating chemo-induced nausea and vomiting had led to the passage of state laws that recognized marijuana’s medical value and sought to establish state-wide programs of research using federal supplies of marijuana. There was a big problem, however. The federal government, which regularly grew a research supply of marijuana on a small plot at the University of Mississippi, didn’t have enough marijuana to supply the demand from these states.
In desperation federal officials turned to the synthetic version of the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The drug was developed in the late 1960s to facilitate animal research. It was not originally intended for human use although researchers did begin using it in humans in the 1970s and in 1980 it was all the government had to stem the demand for medical access to cannabis.
The Task Force hearings lasted all day but it was the afternoon session that would bring the bombshell when representatives from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced that delta-9 THC would be released through the NCI’s Group C Treatment Program.
“Under Group C, a compound is considered to have documented medical efficacy for a specific indication and not be a research drug per se, although it remains investigational…We anticipate that this change would make THC available to practicing oncologists around the country….We would hope that at some time in the near future a pharmaceutical company would become interested in marketing this drug, but until that time, we feel a responsibility for providing this controversial, but useful substance, to relieve the suffering of cancer patients…” (Hearings, page 162)
It was an unparalleled moment. The federal government was agreeing to produce and distribute, via the NCI, the most psychoactive compound in cannabis. With the tacit blessing of the Congressional Task Force on Therapeutic Uses of Marihuana and Schedule I Drugs, delta-9 THC would be released to hundreds of NCI pharmacies throughout the country. Oncologists would be notified, patients would have access, and the public pressure to “do something” about medical marijuana would be assuaged.
The government would herald this action as the release of “the pot pill” and the American public, not yet sophisticated with respect to cannabinoid knowledge, would breathe a sigh of relief that relatives would no longer be forced to the black market for their chemotherapy anti-nausea drug.
The Neal hearings paved the way for Marinol and, similarly, the Grassley/Feinstein hearings will pave the way for Epidiolex. The scenarios are slightly different, of course. The involvement of GW Pharmaceuticals from the very beginning has been far more pleasing to the FDA and other federal agencies. There is no “Group C” for pediatric epilepsy patients but it is reported that more than 400 patients are already receiving the drug via expanded access INDs.
The question that haunts this senior observer of the medical cannabis movement is: what will the federal government do once Epidiolex is on the market? Will there be a “crackdown” on the growing and enthusiastic CBD market that is flourishing online? (“Legal” CBD is produced from hemp and contains less the 0.03% delta-9 THC.) As Epidiolex is scheduled in the Controlled Substances Act will authorities tighten the control of natural CBD? Consider that Marinol, a synthetic version of the most psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, is Schedule III while the plant itself is Schedule I. Such inconsistency has, of course, been codified and is rather benignly referred to as “differential” scheduling. But, like so many things in the nation’s drug policy, it strikes many as a little crazy. The craziness of the federal policy with respect to marijuana should not be underestimated, nor should it be assumed that the growing tide of legal cannabis states will automatically signal a reform in federal law.
(((Look, I want to be very clear here. I don’t even use cannabis, because it IS illegal, and the seizure aspects are waaaay too high of a price to consider for something I would only rarely do if it were indeed legal….so I am not trying to get protections for my habit in position.)))
Over the course of the past few months I’ve been doing a fair amount of investigation on the issue of cannabis and various efforts to legalize the plant for the general benefit of humanity. Initially, I looked at the issue of legalizing cannabis as a simple matter of civil liberties with a massive pseudo criminal front propped up by drug court fees, seizure laws, probation and the expenses paid to the system in that, cheap prison labor and increased family court revenues due to foster care and custody issues…And yes, it also incidentally had benefits for people with serious medical issues.
Honestly, I have had a complete paradigm shift. Complete.
Not that the prison industry complex and costs to society associated with those issues are irrelevant, but there is a much larger, and much more evil truth about the control of cannabis that absolutely must become common knowledge. It’s particularly important that those who largely identify with conservative and Christian principles, or strong Constitutionalist ideologies become fully aware of the collusion between government and corporations to remove a beneficial plant from our access. Cannabis actually heals. And it restores life to people who are very ill. Hundreds of studies show this to be true, and also that cannabis is tremendously beneficial for our overall health.
The reason this has come to the forefront for many of us is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold to the idea that “Reefer Madness” has any basis in fact. It simply isn’t factual. Sometimes there are people that use cannabis that are just literally criminals and have no regard for their fellow man. These same criminals may also consume carrots, but the carrots are not the cause of their deficient characters. With or without cannabis, these people would be violent. Cannabis does not cause crime. Violent cartels exist because of cannabis being illegal. So in effect, the only violence that can truly be attributed to cannabis is state sanctioned violence through unjust laws. Simply put, the controls on this plant are the reason for violence associated with the plant or it’s distribution.
The tipping point on the truth around cannabis being put into the status of a Schedule One controlled substance (the Schedule One designation means it has NO medicinal value) has been achieved among the people. For those who have some qualms about whether or not this plant needs to be flatly legalized, please watch this video about Rick Simpson oil. This man has given people -as in freely given- cannabis oil, and they have been cured of all manners of disease including multiple types of cancer and terminal cancer. If you watch that video and still have any uncertainty left in you, watch this video, and forgive the one instance of yelling at the very beginning. The facts are that corporate interests paid to have cannabis categorized as a Schedule One controlled substance. Corporate interests, violent cartels, the prison industry and tyrannical seizure laws fattening the wallets of a few, have been the only beneficiaries of cannabis control.
Multitudes of people have died from being denied the best thing on earth to beat cancer. And the people in the corporations, the politicians that continue to be bought off from taking right action, and the pharmaceutical companies, are complicit in their deaths. Yes, I said complicit. The facts are in. Cannabis prohibition must end and will end very soon. Just look at this list of the plethora of studies that show the benefits of cannabis in treating human ailments. There are hundreds of studies on the effectiveness of cannabis, not just in treating symptoms of disease, but actually curing the disease in many instances. It can’t be covered up any longer. However, we do have some questions that we need to answer for ourselves as we move forward on cannabis.
The first question is whether or not we are happy with the current state of controlled and declining health and access to alternative/natural treatments? Currently, the FDA -who took 30 years to admit that vitamin C is helpful in thwarting the common cold- is in control of our food and our medicine. On average, FDA approved medications kill 100,000 people per year. Those are their own reports on the FDA’s website. The FDA has stated they are justified in exercising authority to control what we consume because the Almighty gave commands on dietary laws in Scripture. They think they have as much authority as the Creator of the Universe. Seriously. Check it out here. (page 26 of 30)The FDA also holds the position that “raw milk is inherently dangerous and should never be consumed by any one for any reason.” Never mind the fact that if that were a true statement, there would never have been a second generation of human beings.
Honestly, I could go on for a full-length book about the criminal behavior of the FDA in relation to our food and medicines, but I’ll restrain myself. Just watch network tv for one night, count up the recalls and suits being advertised along with all the new medications you should talk to your doctor about, then ask yourself if you think they are doing work that is truly beneficial for humanity. If you can truthfully say that you are pleased with the quality of our nutrition, not knowing whether or not you are consuming genetically modified organisms, and the health care system in this country, then you need do nothing. If you are not satisfied with the status quo of chronic pain, disease and debilitation, and lack of personal control, then it’s time to do things differently.
The next series of questions we must answer is what kind of business model “We the People” want to follow as we end prohibition on this plant? Do we want to stick with the controlled access, medical industrial cartel dialectic, where production, distribution, and access are licensed and heavily regulated, and keep fascism growing? Or do we want to seek free market enterprise and let everyone who is interested put their own money on the line and succeed or fail on their own merits? Have layers of bureaucrats proven themselves to be beneficial to our literal wellbeing? Do we think we personally should have the ability and choice to make decisions about what we consume? Or do we believe the bureaucrats, paper pushers and corporations have proven themselves to have a legitimate and beneficial hand in securing our health?
Once we’ve answered these questions to our satisfaction, then we must decide how we move forward on the issue of cannabis legalization and access. In Missouri, we will have two very different initiatives on the ballot in 2016 for a proposed Constitutional amendment.
Since I’m from the Show Me state, and these two initiatives are responsible for bringing me to the paradigm shift I mentioned above, I bring you “The Tale of Two Initiatives”. One is very short and flatly legalizes it. The other is 4 pages of small print and proposes to regulate cannabis within the Constitution of the state.
From that short overview, it is very likely that those who know me have already determined which initiative has won my support. But it’s necessary for everyone to make up their own minds about this, so the remainder of this rather lengthy article is going to focus on the nuts and bolts of these two initiatives. Other states have similar proposals in position.
Let’s deal with the short one first. This initiative, identified as 2016-013, was written by Mark Pedersen formerly of the Kansas City NORML group. Even many major proponents of legalizing cannabis have said it was too radical. Notably, the national level of the KC group that worked with Pedersen, NORML (the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws) is reported to be the biggest opponent of this initiative. We’ll have to deal with the reasons behind NORML opposing this amendment in a subsequent article. For now, we’ll just look at the “radical” amendment first and talk about possible pros and cons related to it.
2016-013 is currently being circulated for the collection of signatures to get onto the 2016 November ballot. It proposes to remove cannabis from the controlled substances list. It doesn’t place limits on the amount one person may possess or grow. It also doesn’t have any age limits set within the confines of the proposed amendment to the Constitution. It secures the right of people to grow enough for their personal use and prevents extra regulatory controls on farmers and processors of all cannabis products, including all strains, cannabis sativa, cannabis indica, cannabis ruderalis, and crosses of these cannabis strains. It prohibits the mere presence of cannabis and cannabis products from serving as cause to charge with impaired driving. And I do admit that it does indeed seem radical on its face. But let’s examine the issues so we can make determinations with solid information.
First up, let’s look at the “radical” idea of not limiting the amount that an individual may grow. This is terrifically important. If you watched the Rick Simpson “Run From the Cure” video I linked earlier, you are aware that a single full treatment for cancer or serious health issues requires a pound of cannabis. The oil from the plant is extracted and a pound will render about 2 ounces of oil. It’s a lot of cannabis. What’s more, if a person has received chemo or radiation, they will need at least 2 full protocols of the cannabis oil to fully heal. It can take a lot of plants to get those amounts of cannabis. The street value of a single treatment amount bought by the ounce is about $4800.00 right now. If you can get the entire pound and buy it all at once you might be able to get a discount and get it as low as $3400. Is that too high of a price to cure cancer? Certainly not, but what if you don’t have $3400 to $4800? Does your ability to pay for a treatment make you worthy of having it? Conversely, does the inability to pay make you a less valuable human being? If there aren’t limits placed on the number of plants one may have, it opens the door for people to be better able to heal themselves and to take personal responsibility for their own well being.
Next let’s look at the thing that really struck me personally about the 2016-013 initiative. There is no age limit set forth for possessing or using cannabis. I thought that was pretty over the top, and I told the people who contacted me about the initiative that it was my opinion that it needed an age limit. They made some pretty good arguments against it. One of those arguments was very basic from a freedom advocate’s point of view. The age of majority isn’t stipulated in the Bill of Rights. Also, it isn’t a static thing. It is 21 for some things and 18 for other things and it isn’t something that should be ensconced in our Constitution to secure a right. Even more importantly, in light of the healing potential of cannabis oil, would anyone with any compassion in them want to prohibit a parent faced with a seriously ill child from being able to help that child? I wouldn’t. It would be unconscionable to put anyone in that position, and instead run them through a bureaucratic and medical industrial complex maze to do what every parent must do to be right in the eyes of their Creator and provide for the child help in a time of trouble. Also, it is emphatically evident that parents have a duty to protect their children from ingesting things that they shouldn’t be ingesting. If you are going to have cannabis in the house, you have to be responsible and not allow your children to use it on their own. In other words, BE A PARENT!
Next let’s take an actual look at the issue of THC in the system and driving under the influence. THC being present in the system is simply not at all equal to impairment. Yes, THC is the psychoactive chemical in cannabis, but its presence within a person’s system doesn’t mean that the person is impaired. It isn’t like blood alcohol content, in that a person could have high levels of THC in their system, but still not be impaired. If someone is using cannabis to treat themselves for health reasons, THC will be high, but they are not likely to be impaired if they have been following a protocol for any length of time at all. There is a lot of science behind this fact, and it is important to look at the science and make logical decisions about THC as opposed to emotional decisions predicated on a faulty basis. In no way shape or form am I saying that you cannot be impaired by cannabis consumption. You certainly can be impaired. That impairment would be evident in a motor skills test that was video taped and witnessed by at least two witnesses. Whether people like it or not, that would be evidence of impairment, but THC levels are not a credible assessment of impairment.
A study using coordination testing showed inevitable failure on field sobriety testing if blood THC levels were 25 to 30 ng/ml. But, many failed testing at 90 and 150 minutes after smoking even though plasma concentrations were rather low. The researchers had the foresight to conclude that “establishing a clear relation between THC plasma concentrations and clinical impairment will be much more difficult than for alcohol”. This is because alcohol and THC are chemically different and are metabolized differently inside the body.
Now we are ready to take a look at the “Show Me Cannabis” (aka Mo NORML) initiative proposition.
First off, this initiative, 2016-009, isn’t being circulated for signatures yet because the proponents of the initiative have reportedly “gone back to the drawing board”. However, it is available from the Missouri Secretary of State’s office at this link. I have put in a couple of emails asking for a conversation with the gentleman heading up this initiative and have received no replies, so I cannot relate any responses to questions I have regarding this initiative.
In the first sentence, this initiative is providing for regulatory control of cannabis to Missourians over the age of 21. It stipulates that regulations are to be promulgated for many purposes. Here are a few of those. Promulgate regulations to allow for state licensed producers, retailers, and distributors of cannabis. It states that revenue generated by cannabis will be used to fund police and firefighter pensions and retirement plans as well as elementary and secondary schools. That the revenue will be used to prevent: the establishment of cartels, under age 21 use, and to prevent advertising cannabis to those under the age of 21. It allows for households to grow up to six plants, have up to 16 ounces of dried cannabis, or 20 ounces of liquid cannabis. It proposes to expunge nonviolent cannabis convictions. Also to require a person to get a license to purchase, sell, manufacture, deliver or process cannabis. It requires the labeling of the THC content on all cannabis products, and provides for limitation on the level of THC allowed in cannabis that may be sold. It provides for a 25% excise tax on the first “fair market sale” of all marijuana….And more. Lots more, actually.
Let’s start with the 25% excise tax on the first “fair market sale” of any cannabis. Well, right there we have a problem. “Fair market sale” is defined in this proposed amendment as “means with respect to the sale of a product, a sale in which the purchase price of the product is not less than the price that a willing seller would accept and a willing buyer would pay in the open market and in competition with other similar products.” Hmmm.
If this is absolutely constrained to the FINAL sale of the product to the consumer of the product, that means that if you are buying from a “licensed retail establishment” that you will be paying approximately 33% in taxes to the State. (The 25% excise and the 8% sales tax) It doesn’t state that it is on the final sale though. It says it is on the “first sale in an open market”. So…does that mean when the grower sells to someone for either distribution or manufacturing that the grower has to collect the 25% for the state? Here is the definition of an excise tax. (It’s rather complex, and this article is already very long, so please read the link) It certainly sounds to me as though the tax is something that is supposed to be collected on the sale by the grower after he pays the license fee to be able to sell the product at all.
He must then increase the down line cost of the product by adding an additional 25% cost to the next in line. Then when you get to the retail portion, the cost of goods is further increased by the state sales tax. So, let’s say the licensed grower sells an ounce for $100 for his labor and upkeep, and has to collect $125 from the licensed wholesaler/distributor or manufacturer to whom he sells. The distributor or wholesaler then has to mark up the product by whatever percentage will allow him to pay his license fee and make a living wage to the retailer, who then must again mark up what he sells the product for in order to cover his own living wage. Presume you do typical mark up of 30% for the distributor/wholesaler (more for the manufacturer as there are additional processes involved) as the distributor/wholesaler is supposed to be moving volumes. Now you’re looking at $125 + $37.50= $162.50. Then the retailer usually has to double as they have more insurance liability by having people come in and out of their location, and they have to deal with displays and such. Now you’re looking at $325 per ounce before the typical 8% sales tax ,which is another $26, so the cannabis consumer pays $351 per ounce and the state makes $51 plus licensing fees every step of the way. Mind you, $100 an ounce as a starting price is terrifically low. But is this really going to help out the average person a whole lot? I’m all for the State making money on the retail, but my rule of thumb is what did Yahweh ask for a tithe? Only 10%. Why does the State deserve more than 2 and half times what He requests? Maybe I’m the only one who thinks this way…I kind of doubt it though.
Someone will say, “But you can grow up to six plants, and that surely is enough for a household!” Well, let’s look at the six plant limit. Below you’ll find a little scenario that is not at all unreasonable. Just ask anyone who has ever gardened.
So you decide you like to garden and you’ll grow your own cannabis and therefore bring down the cost of making cannabis available for your household. You order seeds and spend $90 for ten seeds. Really. That’s a pretty good price, too. So you very carefully germinate your seeds and 9 out of ten germinate. Now you have to throw three down the toilet or you’ll be over your six plant limit. You carefully place these in small pots. They begin to put on leaves and now you have your six plants! You’re all legal and looking forward to excellent yields…Then you come home from work and two of your seedlings wilted on you. You mist them and hope they’ll recover. Well, they don’t. So now you have four plants and no more seeds to germinate. You figure that’s all fine because the advertisement said this was a high yielding variety and you can only have 16 ounces of dried product anyway. So whenthey get to be about 15 inches tall you put them outside into the best area of your backyard for good sun, but not too much, and you check on them daily. You patiently wait for September when you should be able to harvest. In the end of June, you and your family go away for the weekend and when you come home, one of your plants has simply disappeared. And the Japanese beetles picked that weekend to hatch out and eat your remaining plants up like crazy. So you set about making a protective enclosure for them and that involves shade cloth and posts and a gate and it takes you the rest of the week to get that done. You only have a couple of hours to work on it every night because this endeavor isn’t one that actually pays the bills. At this point you’re thinking it’s probably a lot easier to just buy the stuff, but you’re stubborn and keep after it until September. They’re looking okay, but the yields in the advertisement don’t look attainable…Harvest time comes and you get a total of three ounces from your three plants. Probably because the Japanese beetles hit right at flowering time…So you have three ounces after 6 months of tending and you’re scratching your head to figure out if it’s even worth trying again.
Imagine going through that when you are ever so hopeful that you will get a good yield on a strain that will help your child with epilepsy, or a parent with debilitating arthritis, diabetes, or cancer. Six plants? At what stage of maturity? And what happens if you are over that level and get caught by Code Enforcers or the police? Well, we can’t answer that other than to say the legislature will authorize fines and penalties for going over the “Household Exemption” level. It does limit it to up to $1000 or a year in jail. Does that sound good? Does it count toward the retirement funds and school funds prescribed in this amendment proposal? The proposed amendment says “revenue”. Do the enforcement fines and penalties count toward revenue?
Let’s consider the issue of using the amendment to aid law enforcement and firefighters pensions and retirements, and helping out the public school system with additional funds. While I am pro-education and pro-firefighter and all for peace officers, don’t we already spend a fair amount of tax money on these things? Are these funds being managed well? Isn’t this what various lottery proceeds are supposed to enhance as well? If we throw more money at them, do the actual students and the actual public servants ever really benefit? With the seizure laws that have been so onerously used, I have a really hard time thinking the public needs to give more money to police so that they can get more money by citing more people for regulatory violations as promoted in this proposed amendment.
There are some good things that are done in this proposed amendment. One is expunging of nonviolent cannabis offenses. But when you compare these two initiatives that, on their face, are supposed to legalize cannabis in Missouri, one flatly does so, and the other creates a plethora of bureaucracies and potential regulatory abuses along with continued legal system fines and penalties.
Let me be very clear here, while there is no part of me that wants to tolerate minors “getting stoned” or people driving while impaired, it is apparent that the ability to control those things still exist within our legal construct. Minors do NOT have the same rights as adults. Nor do they have the same responsibilities. People who drive while they are chemically/physically impaired by cannabis to the point that they cannot properly react to the hazards on the road are not being responsible, and should be charged with driving under the influence. Video evidence should be sufficient for the enforcement of driving while impaired.
Please check out all the links I posted in this incredibly long article. It’s very important that when we have amendments to consider on the ballot that we are wise in our decisions about them. We cannot be reactive and responsible at the same time. Study it out and be certain of your decisions.
I encourage you to read these amendments again, and if you have concerns, please feel free to voice them and let’s see if we the people can positively, and responsibly, disentangle ourselves from the corporately controlled nanny state on this issue.
Admittedly, I find it unbelievable that people can still defend Round Up or GMO’s in any way. The evidence that they are completely unsafe is overwhelming and to believe otherwise requires such a huge denial of reality it is akin to believing the earth is flat and the center of our galaxy.
If you know anyone who is still in that camp, please have them read the following article. Unless they are brain dead, it is compelling:
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup, is one of the most commonly used herbicides in the world.
An estimated one billion pounds a year is sprayed on our food crops,1,2 resulting in the average American eating several hundred pounds of glyphosate-contaminated food every year.
How might that affect your health? Dr. Anthony Samsel is an expert in this area, and in this interview, he reveals a number of glyphosate’s adverse effects.
Armed with this understanding, you’ll likely be far more motivated to eliminate this pernicious toxin from your diet—and to take action to get it out of our food supply so that everyone can be protected.
Dr. Samsel is a research scientist who is passionate about farming, gardening, and agriculture, making him particularly suitable for investigating glyphosate.
“I was with the ‘think tank,’ Arthur D. Little (ADL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts for many years working as a research scientist on many types of projects, from product development to environmental sciences to later switching to health sciences,” he says.
He’s also done contract work for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and as a hazardous materials expert, he’s worked for the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the United States Navy (USN), and the United States Coast Guard (USCG).
For example, Dr. Samsel was one of the authors of the Chemical Hazard Response Information System (CHRIS) manual for the US Coast Guard. He is also a valuable contributor to our article comments section (Vital Votes).
Besides his career in science, he also owned and operated several farms in New England, and it was this first-hand experience that led him to begin investigating the effects of glyphosate in the first place.
“I started using glyphosate myself commercially around the farm and my properties back in the late ’70s or early ’80s, when it first came on the market,” he says.
“I believed the hype like all the other farmers and people around the world do, that glyphosate is as safe as salt and that it broke down into harmless chemicals that did no harm. I believed all that stuff until I started studying the chemical.
Being a research scientist, a chemist, I knew what to look for. Having worked in public health, I was familiar with how chemicals had effects on the human body and on animals. So I started approaching it from that aspect.
As far as my own health, it started to suffer. That’s what put me on the road to take a look at this chemical because I was using it.”
Human Urine Turning into Herbicide…
One interesting experience that got him thinking was when he tried to deter deer from eating his crops. He’d run out of coyote urine, which is an effective deterrent, so he used his own urine.
Curiously, he noticed the weeds where he’d sprayed his urine were dying, despite the fact he’d not sprayed any Roundup there. He then realized his own urine was acting like an herbicide!
“I did some controlled experiments in the greenhouse with some plants and the same thing happened. Those plants died. Then, I started looking at my diet,” he says.
“The only organic food I was eating was out of my own garden and the stuff that I would can and preserve. But for everything else, I’d go to the supermarket and I ate boxed food and what-not. I started to put two and two together; that maybe this was the reason why I wasn’t feeling good.
Then I started looking into glyphosate because I was using it. That was my primary chemical exposure other than my food.
Then I realized they were using [glyphosate] on genetically engineered crops, and I started looking at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to see what food would have glyphosate or glufosinate in them.
[Glufosinate] is similar to glyphosate and used in genetically engineered crops. It’s not as widely used as glyphosate, but that’s still a problem to public health. All herbicides are ‘a’ problem to public health. There should be no herbicides in our food supply. None.”
90 Percent of Soybeans Found to Contain Glyphosate Residues
Unfortunately, testing for glyphosate and glufosinate is expensive and is the excuse the USDA uses for not testing for it, and no contamination data was available for Dr. Samsel to review.
Eventually, he convinced the USDA to release the results of a series of tests in 2011. In all, they tested 400 samples of soybeans, and they found more than 90 percent of the soybeans had glyphosate residues in them.
However, when the agency sent him a pre-publication copy of the report, he noticed they were only reporting on 300 out of the 400 samples.
“I started looking at the data. I noticed that the amount of aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), which is the metabolite of glyphosate, was greater than that of the glyphosate itself.
If you analyze the glyphosate, you’re going to get glyphosate if the residue is in the crop, but you’re also going to get the metabolite AMPA. But looking at the numbers, they just didn’t make sense. I believed they’ve cherry-picked the data so that the data didn’t exceed the EPA residue limits,” he says.
Unfortunately, when he tried to get an explanation for the discrepancy in the data, his USDA contact was no longer working there, and he hasn’t been able to find him since.
Advocacy Group Now Offers Testing for Glyphosate in US
While the USDA does not test food for glyphosate residues, this may soon change. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced US regulators may start testing for glyphosate residues in the near future3,4,5 due to rising consumer concerns about the health impact of this chemical.
Meanwhile, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) has joined forces with the Feed the World Project, launching the world’s first glyphosate testing for the general public.6,7,8,9As reported by the OCA:
“The project, with specific focus on women and children in the US, is offering the first-ever validated public LC/MS/MS glyphosate testing for urine, water and soon breast milk… The testing OCA, Feed the World and many other organizations will begin offering [on April 22] will allow everyone who wants to know whether or not, and to what extent, they personally have been exposed to glyphosate.
We expect that once the public learns how widespread the exposure has been—in the context of the recent report from the World Health Organization that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen—public pressure will eventually force governments worldwide to finally ban Roundup.”
The Importance of Bacteria for Optimal Health
Dr. Samsel understood that his gut problems were related to bacteria and that just as healthy soil needs beneficial microbes, so does your gut. This was something instilled in him by his grandfather, who taught him that healthy bacteria in the soil help grow healthy crops. Not surprisingly, when he cleaned up his diet, his gut dysbiosis cleared up, as did a number of neurological problems he’d started experiencing.
At that point, he began delving deeper into the science of the human microbiome. Many are unaware of the fact that glyphosate is patented as an antibiotic. It’s designed to kill bacteria, which is one of the primary ways it harms both soils and human health. Recent research has even concluded that Roundup (and other pesticides) promotes antibiotic resistance. Dr. Samsel was actually the person who dug up the patents showing glyphosate is a biocide and an antibiotic.
“Some of the pathogens, like Salmonella and Pseudomonas, are resistant to glyphosate. When we ingest residues of glyphosate, glyphosate in the acidic environment dissociates. The acid glyphosate then is able to do a number on the bacteria, the same as it does in plants. It kills plants and bacteria in our plants.
Our gut has a beautiful ‘lawn’ of upwards of a thousand various species. Each species of bacteria has a specific function. We might liken the bacteria of our microbiome to mining and manufacturing companies. You might visualize the bacteria with mining helmets and pick axes. They mine the minerals in your biology that your body needs as co-factors for various biochemical processes. Your bacteria also manufacture vitamins and other biomolecules that are essential.
Even some of your fatty acids, which serve as signaling molecules, are manufactured by your bacteria. Our bacteria manufacture most of our B vitamins – B6, B9, and B12, which is cobalamin – essential to our neurology. Bacteria also manufacture vitamin K and some of your vitamin C. We have a symbiotic relationship with these bacteria. We help them and they help us. They take the food and they don’t just break it down and obliterate it to unrecognizable things. They dismantle the food, and they utilize everything that’s in the food.”
Bacteria Also Produce Essential Amino Acids and More
Bacteria are also responsible for producing essential amino acids such as tryptophan, phenylalanine, and tyrosine. So in addition to chelating out various vitamins and other important elements, glyphosate also disrupts bacteria manufacturing aromatic amino acids. It also disrupts methionine, a sulfur amino acid crucial for detoxification, and glutamate. All of this can have a profound influence on your biology. For example, as Dr. Samsel explains:
“Glyphosate disrupts the aromatic amino acid tryptophan, and tryptophan is necessary for the production of serotonin. Of course, from serotonin, we make melatonin and from melatonin, we make melanin. There are several biomolecules that are very important to your health and biology. Serotonin regulates and controls blood sugar. It also regulates IGF-1, which is insulin-like growth factor. IGF-1 is necessary for neurogenesis, for your ability to produce new neurons throughout life, and also for regulation of your physiology. Serotonin also activates the enzyme endothelial-derived nitric oxide synthases (eNOS), which is responsible for insulin secretion.”
Serotonin also catalyzes nitric oxide (NO) production in the vasculature providing airway tone and smooth muscle relaxation, and 90 percent of your serotonin—which is known as a neurotransmitter—is actually produced in your gut by certain bacteria, not in your brain.
Today, millions of prescriptions are being written for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are designed to increase serotonin in your brain. Yet 90 percent of it is manufactured in our gut! Dr. Samsel gave another excellent interview with Zen Honeycutt10 in 2013, in which he describes the impact glyphosate has on your gut bacteria, so for more information, please listen to the following helpful interview as well.
Monsanto Has Known for Nearly 35 Years That GMOs Promote Cancer
Dr. Samsel eventually asked the EPA for Monsanto’s trade secret documentation, as most of the approval process for glyphosate was based on studies Monsanto had done by outside contractors. That process began in the late 1970s and concluded around 1983 with the registration of the chemical. Since then, it’s gone through a couple of re-reviews. But Dr. Samsel wanted access to those documents to investigate what the EPA and Monsanto really knew about glyphosate from the very beginning.
“I asked EPA, as a research scientist, to be able to access those documents in my research. I was denied by the Environmental Protection Agency, initially,” he says. “It finally took Senator Shaheen’s office, here in New Hampshire, to move the EPA… They sent [the documents] to me on a disc. I had to sign for them. I was also told that I could not share them with foreign nationals under a penalty of law…
However, I’ve been going through 12 to 14 of these documents in the file. They represent thousands and thousands of pages of data on studies that were done on laboratory animals. What amazed me was that Monsanto knew in 1981 that glyphosate caused adenomas and carcinomas in the rats that they’ve studied…The highest incidence of tumorigenic growth occurred in the pituitary gland… the second highest levels were in the breasts of the female rats, in the mammary glands… Thirdly, the next highest tumorigenic growth was found in the testicles of male rats..”
In essence, Monsanto’s research of glyphosate showed similar findings as Dr. Gilles-Éric Séralini, whose damning lifetime GMO feeding study11 was wrongfully retracted12,13,14,15largely due to Monsanto’s influence. (Séralini’s paper was later re-published with open access in the Springer Group journal Environmental Sciences Europe.16)
Monsanto’s own research also supports the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) determination that glyphosate is a Class 2 A “probable human carcinogen.”17,18,19 –a determination Monsanto is now trying to get retracted. What’s more, the research shows that lower doses of glyphosate tend to have a greater effect than higher doses, and the doses at which damage was found to occur are comparable to the glyphosate levels found in wheat, sugar, corn and soy in the American diet.
Monsanto Never Published These Negative Findings
So how did Monsanto and Biodynamics—the company doing the research—hide these inconvenient facts? According to Dr. Samsel, they cancelled out the controls and the damning findings by using historical control data from unrelated studies. It’s also worth noting that these negative findings were never published in the peer-reviewed literature or submitted to the EPA or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Cancer was clearly shown in their 26-month long feeding study, but the only studies Monsanto has published are studies done in less than three months, which hides the consequences of eating glyphosate and genetically engineered foods over the course of a lifetime.
“I’m looking at a Biodynamics report here as Project number 77-2062, ‘A Lifetime Feeding Study of Glyphosate in Rats,’ and every page of this document says, ‘Contains trade secret or otherwise confidential information of Monsanto Company.’ I have a letter here from Monsanto’s health and safety officer. He was the head guy at Monsanto at the time, back in 1981. In his letter, he asked the US EPA to seal the documents and to treat them as trade secret. I personally feel that this is a violation of the public review process…
Now that I’ve looked at Monsanto’s trade secret documents that the public doesn’t have access to, I’m in the process of writing the Environmental Protection Agency and I’m asking them to release those. They have no right to withhold that information from the public. Because what I’ve seen in those documents, it clearly shows that Monsanto knew in 1981 that glyphosate caused tumorigenic growth and carcinomas in multiple organs and tissues… At the rate we’re going, we’re going to kill billions of people,” Dr. Samsel says.
Removing Glyphosate Is Imperative to Protect Human Health and Future Generations
According to Dr. Samsel, we’re seeing the effects of glyphosate in human disease statistics now. His work with Dr. Stephanie Seneff and Dr. Nancy Swanson show that chronic disease rates are at an all-time high, including the specific tumors found in Monsanto’s 26-month feeding study, as well as the Séralini study and others—specifically pituitary, kidney, breast, testicular, thyroid tumors, and thymic hyperplasia.
“There was some work that was recently done where they looked at the CT scans of patients who had thyroid disease and also found that they had thymic hyperplasia. Well, guess what? In the rat study, they found high incidence of thymic hyperplasia as well as thyroid adenomas and carcinomas,” Dr. Samsel says. “If we don’t take this chemical out of the food supply, everybody will be affected. Everybody that is eating the Western diet. Everybody.
Now, for some diseases, the incidence rate among rats were slightly less than 50 percent—some were as high as 80 percent of the treated group. Obviously, we’re not seeing 80 percent of people in Western populations coming down with tumors. But we might eventually… Rats have an average lifespan of two to two and a half years, whereas the human lifespan is around 80. We’ve only been eating GMOs for about 15 years, but already disease statistics are clearly rising, and rising dramatically. Dr. Samsel believes there’s no doubt genetically engineered (GE) foods will shorten the human lifespan.
“In the 20th month, the rats had an 80 to 90 percent survival rate. But when we got to around 24 months, more than 50 percent of the rats had died. When we got to month 26, I think they only had 30 percent left.”
While correlation is not causation, were we to extrapolate, it would suggest that unless we stop eating glyphosate and genetically engineered foods, the vast majority of us will contract a life-threatening disease in our late senior years, and few will die from plain old age. Other non-life threatening diseases are also cropping up at a furious rate—neurological disorders such as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and a wide variety of behavioral problems.
When I began practicing medicine in the early ’80s, the autism rate was one in 10,000. Now it’s as low as one in 30, according to some estimates. According to Drs. Samsel and Seneff’s estimations, in the next decade, half of all people born will have some form of autism! “That’s correct, if we continue on the same trajectory, it will be one in two, which is frightening,” Dr. Samsel says.
Studies May Be Using Contaminated Controls…
On a side note, it’s important to realize that when studies are done, they do not test the control diet for the presence of glyphosate, which may dramatically skew results and effectively hide harmful effects. According to Dr. Samsel:
“They are continuing to do that. As I look deeper into the studies, they didn’t analyze the water. They did not analyze the feed for other contaminants. I contacted Purina and asked them for a comment about their animal chows and their laboratory feed. They do analyze for some of the basic pesticides and fungicides, like malathion, some of the other organophosphates, and some of the fungicides.
But they don’t analyze for glyphosate in those feeds. Going back to when they did these studies back in 1978 and 1980, they didn’t analyze the feed, but the most popular pesticides used at the time in growing corn and soy for those animal feeds, were the organophosphates. Some of the organophosphates were carbaryl and lannate.
What’s interesting is that I also turfed up many synergy patents. I’ve read all of Monsanto’s patents, plus patents from other companies that have also done work with glyphosate. Glyphosate is a synergist with other antibiotics, with fungicides, and with most of the chemicals that I’ve seen it used in combination.
I even wrote about it being synergistic with imidacloprid, the systemic pesticide that’s been implicated in harming the bees. The effects they saw in the Biodynamics studies in the controls, they were feeding contaminated feed to these animals…which are known to induce some of the tumorigenic growths. But the fact that the glyphosate-dosed animals had higher incidences…shows that there was a synergy with whatever was in that feed.”
Clearly, this is something the EPA and FDA must address. When laboratory tests with animals are done, they really need to look at the residue levels of glyphosate and other chemicals in the animal chow because it’s skewing all the laboratory results, and making the risks appear non-existent.
The Problem with Genetically Engineered Plants
According to Dr. Samsel, glyphosate is only one-half of a two-part problem. The other half is the genetically engineered plants. For the past two years, he’s been conducting field experiments and laboratory analysis of 33 varieties of genetically engineered corn. This year, he’s branching into soy. Not only are there Roundup-resistant GE crops, there are also Bt crops, which produce their own internal pesticide called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). But there are also glyphosate and glufosinate toxins involved, because in many GM crops, the genes are stacked.
“I’m looking at the untreated [genetically engineered corn], and then I’m spraying it with the herbicide [glyphosate]. I’m analyzing the fatty acids and the mineral content. I’m also looking at the isomers of the vitamins. What I’m finding is that there’s a difference between those treated with the herbicide and those that are not treated. Theherbicide influences the mineral content of even the genetically engineered resistant varieties, making them particularly more deficient in manganese, cobalt, and copper, but particularly manganese. I’m also finding that the fatty acids are being skewed slightly but also the vitamins, particularly the isomers of vitamin E, tocopherol.”
He’s found that GE varieties of soy, canola, and corn oil contain mostly gamma-tocopherol opposed to alpha-tocopherol (types of vitamin E). Alpha-tocopherol is really beneficial to our biology whereas gamma-tocopherol induces inflammation, particularly in your lungs. Hence Dr. Samsel believes these GE oils may influence rates of asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). On the whole, it seems clear that hundreds of millions of people could improve their health simply by avoiding glyphosate and genetically engineered foods.
The Good News: You Can Get Glyphosate Out of Your System Fairly Quickly
One important question many are likely to have is, once you decide to avoid glyphosate-contaminated foods, how do you detoxify? Here, there’s good news because glyphosate is fairly quickly eliminated via urine and feces—provided you’re not continuously putting more in. And if you need any more reasons to stop eating glyphosate contaminated food, consider this: one secret study Dr. Samsel reviewed found that glyphosate quickly went into the bone marrow, which is where the formation of blood cells takes place. The glyphosate remained stable in the bone marrow for at least 10 hours.
The white blood cells produced during that time go to the thymus and tonsils, where they mature. So glyphosate really works on the molecular level, affecting not only your bacteria, but also your blood cells. Importantly, glyphosate also both up and down regulates genes. For example, in E.coli bacteria, glyphosate up and down regulates about 1,040 genes, many of which are involved with cytochrome P450 enzymes, as well as glutathione S transferase, which is another first line of defense your cells employ to detoxify.
How to Reduce Your Family’s Exposure to Pesticides
Your toxic load is closely linked to your diet, as so many of the chemicals you’re exposed to on a daily basis are contaminants in foods and/or its packaging. Non-organic processed foods will expose you to the greatest amounts of chemicals and potential toxins, including pesticides and genetically engineered organisms (GMOs), but virtually all non-GMO whole foods will tend to be contaminated with pesticides to some degree as well. To reduce your family’s exposure to glyphosate and other toxic chemicals, please consider the following advice:
Buy organic fruits and vegetables. Non-organic fruits and vegetables most likely to be grown using pesticides include apples, peaches, celery, and potatoes. For a full list of the most and least contaminated produce, please see the Environmental Working Group’s shopper’s Guide to Pesticides.20
Add fermented foods to your diet. The lactic acid bacteria formed during the fermentation of kimchi may help your body break down pesticides, so including fermented foods can be a wise strategy to help your body’s natural detoxification processes. Also make sure you’re getting enough fiber in your diet, as it too plays an important role in detoxification.
Choose seafood wisely. Opt for low-mercury fish varieties, such as wild caught Alaskan salmon, anchovies, and sardines, and avoid farm-raised fish, which are often heavily contaminated with PCBs and mercury. To optimize your omega-3, you may also consider taking a krill oil supplement.
Filter your tap water.Municipal water supplies can be contaminated with any number of potential toxins, so filtering your water is always a wise idea. Be particularly mindful of avoiding fluoridated water when preparing infant formula.
Replace your non-stick pots and pans with ceramic or glass cookware.
Avoid plastic food containers, bottles, and mugs.Instead, opt for glass, ceramic, or stainless steel varieties.
Avoid using dangerous chemicals on your lawn. If you have a lawn care service, make sure they’re not using organophosphate pesticides.
Check your school’s/employer’s pest control policy. If they have not already done so, encourage your school district/employer to move to Integrated Pest Management, which uses less toxic alternatives.
Switch to organic personal care products,and avoid using artificial air fresheners, dryer sheets, fabric softeners, or other synthetic fragrances. Any product containing “fragrance” will typically contain high levels of endocrine-disrupting phthalates.
Dr. Samsel has also set up a Go Fund Me page to allow him to continue to fund his important research on glyphosate. Click on the button below to learn more and make a donation.
The OIE is basically the USDA on the animal side for all World Trade Agreements and therefore sets the harmonization and standardization for animal products and animal diseases within all WTO member states….Yes, I used the word states instead of nations, because we truly are now under global government. I could pontificate and illustrate for hours about just how this is now a fact, and the methods by which we have lost our nation, but I don’t have the hours to do so again. SO, if you desire to see how that happened in our food and livestock sector, just look for any article I have written on the Food Safety Modernization Act and GAP (Good Agricultural Practices). Maybe I’ll do it all again as a retrospective, but right now, I’m consumed with taking care of family and prepping for the imminent collapse. :Smiley Face: I hope you are as well!
The OIE is responsible for the foolish stamping out policies for diseases that must be controlled under trade standards. A quick illustration is the annihilation of all the poultry due to avian influenza here. Since it is classified as a “disease of concern” states must either be free of the disease, or have a “controlled” level of this disease. The “free” status is what brings about the stamp out or eradication policy. To maintain a free status, should a disease of concern present itself, all animals potentially exposed and potentially carriers must be killed to stop the disease. Biologic idiocy, but that’s “free trade”. If you kill all the animals exposed, it leaves no genetic pool that demonstrates resistance to draw from. So two birds out of 10,000 die and the whole barn must now be killed.
After that lovely little introduction to the OIE and the reason for such lack of reason, here is an article that people should know about. Please read between the lines and act accordingly:
PARIS (Reuters) – The World Health Organization, animal health and national defense officers called on Tuesday for wider international cooperation to avoid the spread of animal diseases that could be used as biological weapons.
Sixty percent of human diseases come from animal agents and 80 percent of the agents that could be used for bio terrorism are of animal origin, said Bernard Vallat, director general of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
“History has shown that animal diseases have often been used as weapons before. Advances in genetics can now make them even more harmful. So we are calling for further investment to be made at national level on bio security,” Vallat told reporters at a conference on biological threat reduction.
Diseases have spread from animals to humans for millennia, with latest examples including the bird flu virus that has killed hundreds of people around the globe.
The OIE and the WHO warned that animal disease agents could escape naturally, accidentally but also intentionally from laboratories, to be used as bio weapons.Earlier during the conference Kenneth Myers, Director of the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), part of the Department of Defense, stressed the need for international collaboration to avoid the loss of biological material.
“Terrorists have clearly shown they will use any weapons at their disposal,” Myers said, noting that disease agents are easy to transport and difficult to detect.
Security breaches involving animal diseases are not rare.
The Pentagon said in May and earlier this month the U.S. military had sent live samples of anthrax, which can be used as biological weapon, to five countries outside the United States and to dozens of U.S. labs.
The conference on biothreat reduction in Paris is the first to gather experts from the OIE, WHO, international police agency Interpol, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization FAO and representatives from the health, security or defense sectors from over 120 countries.
“The aim is to have the same voice on this subject,” Vallat said. “International solidarity is key because any country that does not implement standards can be a threat to the entire planet.”
(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
The stamping out policy due to “free” trade is already affecting poultry and poultry product pricing. We now have three different strains of bird flu active in the continental US. These are deemed highly pathogenic and the policy for handling this is foolish at best. Here’s the method, birds get sick with swollen combs, the runs and likely fever. They go off feed and off water. Many begin to die. So the entire house and/or facility has all the birds killed.
The issue that I take with the eradication policy is two fold. First, and arguably most importantly, when you have definitive avian influenza and you kill everything, you are destroying not only ill birds, but most likely destroying birds with genetically carried resistance to the virus. So there are no resistant genes that can be passed on to offspring if you kill the entire flock. Quarantine is definitely a positive method of disease control to employ, but eradication is foolhardy in a long term view. It is a recipe for shortages and economic implosion of that sector of agriculture. There is no way to quarantine the air, but this brings to light the importance of diverse and extremely diffuse production methods. Smaller farms in a myriad of locations is better for all living things. It’s better for economic prosperity, environmental health, hardiness of stock, and the literal security of the food supply.But that makes sense, so we can’t have that.
Now, the second reason I am so opposed to this eradication policy in any disease, is because it is purely in position for international trade. The OIE has “reportable” diseases that a country must demonstrate it does not have an active issue with in order to be able to continue in unabated free trade agreements. So, to comply with this trade requirement, the stamping out and eradication policies are employed.
We now have these three different strains in 16 states as of today. People are being put out of work and 32 million or more poultry have been killed. The carcasses are an environmental issue. The National Guard is bringing in water to help with the environmental concern…”Huh?” you say. Yep. Farms typically don’t have enough water available. Particularly factory run poultry farms. (In case you’re wondering, that is sarcasm.)
As for a solution, food grade hydrogen peroxide added to the water of your chickens will help them to resist the flu. Also, being outside and eating fresh stuff the way they were designed to by our Creator to do is going help them be more resistant to disease and generally happier as well.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Prices for eggs and turkey meat are rising as an outbreak of bird flu in the Midwest claims an increasing number of chickens and turkeys. Market experts say grocery stores and wholesalers are trying to stock up on eggs, but there’s no need to worry about having enough turkeys for Thanksgiving.
The cost of a carton of large eggs in the Midwest has jumped nearly 17 percent to $1.39 a dozen from $1.19 since mid-April when the virus began appearing in Iowa’s chicken flocks and farmers culled their flocks to contain any spread. Neighboring Nebraska reported its first case of bird flu Tuesday, affecting 1.7 million chickens at an egg farm in Dixon County.
A much bigger increase has emerged in the eggs used as ingredients in processed products such as cake mix and mayonnaise, which account for the majority of what Iowa produces. Those eggs have jumped 63 percent to $1.03 a dozen from 63 cents in the last three weeks, said Rick Brown, senior vice president of Urner Barry, a commodity market analysis firm.
Turkey prices, which had been expected to fall this year, are up slightly as the bird flu claimed about 5.6 million turkeys nationwide so far. About 238 million turkeys were raised in the U.S. last year.
The price of fresh boneless and skinless tom breast meat primarily used for deli meat has risen 10 percent since mid-April to $3.37 a pound, a USDA report said Friday. Frozen hens in the 8- to 16-pound range, those often used for home roasting, were up about 3 percent to $1.06 a pound.
Egg supplies are falling short of demand, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has indicated, and Brown said egg buyers such as grocery stores and wholesalers are trying to stock up for fear that another large farm with millions of chickens will be stricken – causing prices to spike higher.
“We’re starting to see a little bit of that demand increase, and the sellers are reluctant to give clients too much more than they normally have because they know what’s going on and they don’t want to be caught short either,” he said.
The number of Iowa chickens lost exceeds 26 million, the vast majority of which lay eggs for food use. That’s about 41 percent of the leading egg state’s layers and about 8 percent of the nation’s laying hens. That many chickens would lay more than 500 million table eggs a month. For comparison, Iowa chickens laid 1.4 billion table eggs in March, before the disease struck. U.S. egg production for March stood at 7.42 billion table eggs.
Some companies are beginning to notice the impact of fewer eggs. Cereal maker Post Holdings Inc., which bought egg products supplier Michael Foods last year, said in its May 7 quarterly earnings report that about 14 percent of its egg supply has been affected by the bird flu outbreak. Post estimated the impact at about $20 million through the end of September.
Michael Foods primarily supplies extended shelf-life liquid and precooked egg products and eggs used in food ingredients.
The poultry industry can replenish the supply of chickens more quickly than beef or pork industries can rebound, but it still takes time to rebuild a flock.
“They’re going to have to phase in replacing those flocks so they can get them get back into a laying schedule that results in a more even flow of eggs, and that’s going to take six to nine months,” said Tom Elam, an agricultural economist and poultry industry consultant.
It takes about four months for a hatched chick to be old enough to begin laying eggs, and it will typically be productive for about two years, Elam said. Many of the hens dying from the disease are younger and no pullets had been planned to replace them yet, Elam said. More than 350,000 pullets have been lost to bird flu – a very small portion of the 50 million egg-type chicks hatched in March, but it compounds the replenishment problem.
While new bird flu outbreaks are occurring in the turkey market – Minnesota, the nation’s leading turkey producer, has 4 million confirmed dead birds so far – Elam said cold storage stocks and the number of hens still on farms suggest turkeys will be available for Thanksgiving.
“Anybody who wants a Thanksgiving turkey is going to be able to get one,” he said. “They may have to pay a little more for it but we’re not going to have national stock-outs for Thanksgiving turkeys, yet.”
Truth Farmer 
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