Glyphosate in the rest of the world.

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.