Glyphosate references

There is a very powerful global effort to censure and restrict all efforts to expose problems with glyphosate. The effort comes from the industry and influences governments, media, and academia. The level fo witch hunt would put the days of Copernicus and Joan of Arc to shame.

Science has thus been degraded so much that it has lost its neutrality, its objectivity, its honesty and its relevance in determining safety of agrochemicals – pushing us back to worse times than the Russian block faced during the dark Soviet era of state controlled propaganda and suppression of dissent. Consequently, many citizens like me have developed extreme suspicion about anything that comes out of the government or the industry, and consider most of them are packs of lies.

When it comes to glyphosate, it is therefore the view of public that are aware, is that honest debate on glyphosate is an oxymoron. First, industry’s stronghold on science has to be removed, then independent research without influence of industry or politicians or government officials have to be encouraged. Documents and research papers have to be allowed to accumulate and add to the body of science without censure for twenty years. Let the chips fall where they may. After that, honest debate on the science of glyphosate may be possible. Right now, I am more interested to encourage the citizens to stand up against a government that is showing signs of extreme corruption and blindness an through out politicians that act as lap dogs of the industry rather than protector fo the people.

And yet, I do get called time to time from institutions including agricultural colleges, in India, to speak my mind. India has not yet gone completely over to the dark side like the western institutions. But India is on the way. Anyhow, they still have enough people including educated young, to not only understand and believe that the industry has spoiled science, has spoiled agriculture, food, healthcare and environment, and resistance is necessary.

Thus, I have this blog to list some references for people interested, to see what was said by the slim number of scientists that tried to alert us about glyphosate and about the GM technology.

Some universities requested that my presentation should provided reference material too, with regard to science behind glyphosate’s toxicity. The request might look justified, but it poses problems because what we have today in the name of science is a very far cry from what the western society promotes. Remember the days of the Soviet Union. We were told that they use propaganda for science and severely suppress dissent. Most of that is true. However, the wheel has not turned. There is no Soviet Union. But the west has taken up the tactic, and its corporate industry uses all its combined might to control governments, media and science. Nothing can be researched by scientific institutions without their permission. Nothing can be approved or disapproved by any Government without their say so. Nothing can be published anywhere without their consent.

Therefore, finding honest research that discovered toxicity of glyphosate in normal academic literature might be similar to the famed Bengali saying – সোনার পাথরবাটি – which means stone utensils made of gold – an oxymoron. If it is made of stone, it cannot be made of gold and vice versa. If science on glyphosate has been captured by the industry then there is not going to be research on adverse effects of glyphosate. Duh !

Nonetheless, it is not a homogenous world, and even the industry with all its financial clout, slips up. So there are increasing amounts of documents here and there, and the witch hunt that goes on to attack scientists that dare speak against glyphosate.

1) Anthony Samsel – Stephanie Seneff’s research work
I have already created a blog with all peer reviewed papers of Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff. These can be found here.

in my view, no other group of scientists have done as much research and unearthed as much detail on how many ways glyphosate hurts all living biology including humans. It is therefore not surprising that Samsel and Seneff faced attack as well as censure. Even publications such as GM watch would cover Seralini but not Samsel-Seneff. Monsanto and some governments tried to get the publisher of the Journal ENTROPY to pull their first paper on glyphosate interfering with cyp-450.  The publisher sent them a letter that it was going to be pulled, but the US editor of the Journal ENTROPY came to their defense and argued with the publisher. The publisher resolved the controversy and then posted a journal position that they would not be adversely  influenced by the opinions and demands of both GOVERNMENTS or corporations.  Thus the paper still stands.  The set of 6 glyphosate papers by Samsel and Seneff have had more than 60,000 reads and hundreds of Journal citations at Research Gate by academics in over 100 countries. When their first paper was published WIKIPEDIA added the Samsel and Seneff knowledge to the Glyphosate page.  Within a few days an argument ensued by reviewers and WIKIPEDIA took all of the information down.  I watched the arguments online at WKI.  We have never been referenced by WIKIPEDIA since.  It is suspected that Monsanto was responsible for removing Samsel and Seneff from the Wikipedia page on Glyphosate. One can assume with some justification that the industry is comfortable defending some of the others, but are alarmed at Samsel and Seneff, enough to get them be de-listed from Wikipedia.

2) Glyphosate disturbing honey bee microbiome

Glyphosate perturbs the gut microbiota of honey bees. The abstract says:

Glyphosate, the primary herbicide used globally for weed control, targets the 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS) enzyme in the shikimate pathway found in plants and some microorganisms. Thus, glyphosate may affect bacterial symbionts of animals living near agricultural sites, including pollinators such as bees. The honey bee gut microbiota is dominated by eight bacterial species that promote weight gain and reduce pathogen susceptibility. The gene encoding EPSPS is present in almost all sequenced genomes of bee gut bacteria, indicating that they are potentially susceptible to glyphosate. We demonstrated that the relative and absolute abundances of dominant gut microbiota species are decreased in bees exposed to glyphosate at concen- trations documented in the environment. Glyphosate exposure of young workers increased mortality of bees subsequently exposed to the opportunistic pathogen Serratia marcescens. Members of the bee gut microbiota varied in susceptibility to glyphosate, largely corresponding to whether they possessed an EPSPS of class I (sensitive to glyphosate) or class II (insensitive to glyphosate). This basis for differences in sensitivity was confirmed using in vitro experiments in which the EPSPS gene from bee gut bacte- ria was cloned into Escherichia coli. All strains of the core bee gut species, Snodgrassella alvi, encode a sensitive class I EPSPS, and reduction in S. alvi levels was a consistent experimental result. However, some S. alvi strains appear to possess an alternative mechanism of glyphosate resistance. Thus, exposure of bees to glyphosate can perturb their beneficial gut microbiota, potentially affecting bee health and their effectiveness as pollinators.

My point is – if it can hurt bee microbiome, it can hurt human microbiome too. But instead of arguing about it, I’d like folks to start testing on lab mammals.

3) Three papers from Channa Jayasumana (Sri Lanka)

a) Glyphosate, Hard Water and Nephrotoxic Metals: Are They the Culprits Behind the Epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology in Sri Lanka?
b) Simultaneous exposure to multiple heavy metals and glyphosate may contribute to Sri Lankan agricultural nephropathy.
c) Drinking well water and occupational exposure to Herbicides is associated with chronic kidney disease, in Padavi-Sripura, Sri Lanka.

4) Andres Carrasco
The story of the Pampas. This vast stretch of plains in Argentina used to be teaming with wildlife.
Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling.

5) Gilles-Eric Séralini
Republished study: long-term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerantgenetically modified maize
.

6) Árpád Pusztai
Pusztai’s case is a classic example of censuring of scientific research that questions products that harm the people but enhances corporate profit. He was commissioned by the British Government to check safety of genetically engineered potato. He found them to be potentially harmful. He got sacked. His findings published in journals on this topic, got retracted. Later, the medical journal “The Lancet” published it not as an article but as a letter. Pusztai, 36 years working in the UK, saw his career in UK ended because of objecting to GM crop of Monsanto. The most famous toxicologist in Europe got sacked for disagreeing that GM crops where safe.
Effect of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressingGalanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine
.

7) Emails between wildlife scientist Judy Hoy & Justin Gude of MDFWP.
Link file.

8) Dr. Mercola on Obama signing the “Monsanto Protection Act.

Continued …

Glyphosate, the endocrine killer

This is my second attempt at flyer or hand bill making, covering another aspect of glyphosate – as an endocrine disruptor. This one is not easy to explain in vernacular language. There are no local words for some of the terminology. Also the mechanism of endocrine system is a bit complex. But I have done the best I could.

To my engineer’s logic, endocrine system is a sort of remote control mechanism, not too unlike the TV remote we use to flip channels. Whereas the TV remote often works wirelessly with infra-red light, or some other band of the electromagnetic spectrum, the endocrine system inside our body works wirelessly through chemical signalling. One can think of it as a chemical messaging system, whereby certain glands in our body manages to control distant organs, without the use of “wires” or our nerves.

The glands that are often associated with releasing such chemical signals are pituitary, pineal, thyroid, adrenal, pancreas, ovary (females) and testes (males).

The liquid chemicals that carry such signals are often called hormones. These hormones can be proteins, but not always. There are generally four derivatives, from amino acids, proteins, fatty acids and cholesterol.

Apart from these, there are other glands/organs that too produce chemical substances, sometimes called peptides, which also perform functions in remote parts. In fact, the placenta for pregnant women, which nurture a fetus through gestation is also considered to be a kind of a gland which does release specific chemicals to induce specific growth related steps in the fetus. Unlike the rest, a placenta is for one time use and is discarded after childbirth. When and if the woman gets pregnant again, a new placenta is formed within which the new fetus is nurtured.

The problem with glyphosate is – it throws a spanner into the endocrine works. As a result, one can have hormones released at the wrong time, or in wrong quantity or in defective condition or of inferior quality so they do not perform as intended.

Unfortunately, the medical establishment as well as the state is often tight lipped about it, due to the power and influence of the Pharma and agro industry.

The job of resisting this menace therefore, rests largely on the citizens. Good news is – many provinces in India are now, one by one, legislating restrictions on use of glyphosate. Bad news is, it is not yet happening in West Bengal. Without rising public pressure, it is not going to happen soon. This is where the citizens need to get involved.

The story of glyphosate does not end here. This is to be gradually released.
Thank you.

Glyphosate for rural Bengal

As my days in India is slowly drawing to a close, I have become hard pressed to complete various writings, mainly focussed on glyphosate as an unwanted element in our food web, but also including problems relating to Government policy on agriculture from scientific standpoint as well as socio-economic issues where small holder farmers are perhaps to be forced out of farming by design, so agriculture can be captured by corporations and share holders, for profit, while food sovereignty, food safety as well as welfare of hundreds of millions of farmers and health concerns of over a billion citizens are up for grabs.

The issues here are complex. Most Indians I meet, know less than zero about almost any of it. Very very few people ever heard the name Codex Alimentarius, or glyphosate, or amino acid. Very few understand how our body actually processes food.

To write about these, for the average folks, and that too in vernacular language where many of the English technical terms do not have a suitable local word due to non-use, is not easy for someone like me.

Nonetheless, I understand that such literature is required, in English as well as in local languages. I also understand that, for various reasons, I might be among the best suited to compose such material.

Consequently, I wrote this one page flyer, or hand bill, which can not only be shared on social media which, at the end of the day, may not be the best way in my view in achieving direct measurable positive result on the ground, but also be printed and posted in rural areas where village folks could read the local language. If the text is simplified to the degree where it is comprehensible to the layman – all the better.

This is my first attempt, on the property of chelation by glyphosate and how that affects us. Since they say a picture is worth a thousand words, I included a picture of hemoglobin protein, which is mentioned in the text. I borrowed the image from the internet, since I did not have the time to draw it from scratch. I added a few Bengali words on it.

I shall perhaps repeat that in English too. While I can speak and read Hindi, unfortunately I am not good at writing it any more, although I could do that as a child. So I cannot do it in Hindi at this point of time.

Skyrocketing MRL by Codex

To : Dr. D. Kanungo, dkanungo@nic.in

Date : Friday, March 8, 2019

Subject : Codex Alimentarius – 38th Session of the Codex Committee on Pesticides, Fortaleza, Brazil, April 2006 – setting of safe MRL for glyphosate in food and feed.

Dr. Kanungo,

You were mentioned at the top of the Indian delegation that attended the above Codex meeting in Brazil in April 2006, when MRL levels of glyphosate in many food and feed items were agreed upon, as reproduced here. I have a few questions to you in this regard. 

Glyphosate MRL set for banana is 50 ppb (parts per billion) or 0.05 mg/kg, while the same for Maize is 5,000 ppb and that for unprocessed wheat bran is 20,000. Do you have actual proof that only 50 is safe for banana while much higher values for Maize and even higher for wheat bran are also safe? If you have seen these proofs I request you to make it available to me or to the people of India.

However, selected reports from scientists claiming they have checked and found glyphosate to be safe at this or that level – is not proof. Rather, these are third party opinions, which can always be selectively filtered to promote a false idea of safety. Actual proof of safety consists of raw data and supporting report of actual tests conducted, involving test animals, say rats. A group of such animals are subjected to a measured dose of glyphosate in their food, while an identical group of animal are also observed, living an identical lifestyle and eating identical food, but without any glyphosate. Health parameters of these two groups are recorded for their entire life span, say two years, and then onto the next generation’s lifetime, totalling perhaps three or four years. This comparison is usually the basis by which the testing team prepares their report on if that level of concentration of glyphosate in that kind of food does or does not increase health risks to the target animals. For example, if the clean eating rats show up a natural rate cancer or another specific disease in 5 percent of the population, and if the rate for the same disease in glyphosate exposed population turns out to be 10 percent, then the test team might conclude that glyphosate, at that specific dose in that kind of food, doubles the cancer risk to the test animal.

I suspect India does not conduct such tests, and has been getting documents under control of the very industry that benefits from sale of the biocide such as glyphosate, presenting a conflict of interest. I am also aware that even such suspected compromised proof of safety has been kept hidden by the Government of India.

This letter is to see if your group actually knew anything about the safety of glyphosate and might be wiling to share it with the public, or if the Indian delegation might have been pressured by the government or the industry or the lobby, to support the industry by perhaps overlooking public safety. I have noted from the Codex documentation, that the Indian group did not object to the MRL limits.

I have reason to suspect India is being mass poisoned by imported pulses and grains that contain extremely high levels of glyphosate, under the argument that such levels of glyphosate contamination is deemed safe by the Codex, one that your group accepted back in 2006. I suspect this mass poisoning is one of the root causes behind the runaway rise of multiple groups of diseases in the country, as well as forcing more Indian pule farmers into insolvency. Hence I write this letter in an effort to get to the truth of why India agreed to setting such arbitrary and unproven levels of MRL for glyphosate in food.

This letter is for the benefit of the people of India, and may be shared with  the public, along with any response received, or not received.

Hoping for a response,

Santanu Mitra

49/65 Prince Gulam Mohd Shah Road, Golf Gardens, Kolkata 700033

9831713068

Copied to:

1) Ram Vilas Paswan, Minister of Food – ramvilas.p@sansad.nic.in
2) Tapan Kanti Rudra IAS – FSSAI West Bengal – cfswb10@gmail.com
3) Ms. Ministhy S., FSSAI Uttar Pradesh – commissionerfda.up@gmail.com,
fdaupgov@gmail.com
4) Smt A Shanthi Kumar, FSSAI Telengana – prlsecy_hmfw@telangana.gov.in
telanganacfs@gmail.com
5) Sh. Vishal Chauhan, FSSAI Sikkim – healthsecyskm@yahoo.com
6) Sh. K.S. Pannu, FSSAI Punjab – md_phsc@yahoo.in
7) Dr. V. Candavelou, FSSAI Puducherry – secywel.pon@nic.in
8) Ms. Archana Patnaik, FSSAI Odisha – foodsafetyodisha@gmail.com
9) Dr Pallavi Darade, FSSAI Maharashtra – comm.fda-mah@nic.in
10) Dr. Rathan U Kelkar, FSSAI Kerala – foodsafetykerala@gmail.com
11) Smt. Poonam Markundaya, FSSAI Andhra Pradesh – peshichfw@gmail.com,
cfwhyd@yahoo.com

A glyphosate letter to FSSAI

To: Mr. Pawan Kumar Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI, ceo@fssai.gov.in

Copy to: Persons listed below

Date: Friday, November 16, 2018

Subject:  Glyphosate in seed crops imported from Canada, Australia

Mr. Agarwal,

I draw your attention to the report from Times of India, linked below, regarding FSSAI making a press release with assurance that pulses, beans and pea imported into India might be safe from glyphosate poisoning.

I would advise against arriving at such a hasty statement based on evidence that might deserve a lot more scrutiny.

Following items need clarification, from the newspaper report:

  1. Very few samples were found to contain glyphosate
  2. The level of glyphosate found were within limits
  3. Glyphosate may have been used by some countries to control weed.

I shall offer a counter point of view and suggestion on each of these points, as follows:
1) Very few samples contain glyphosate:

Countries such as Canada and Australia do not use glyphosate only for weed control. They use it to desiccate (kill and dry) crops just before harvesting. The process involves direct spraying of the crop at close distance with glyphosate, to force the crop to die and dry out, before the harvesting machine is used. This guarantees presence of and high concentration of glyphosate in harvested seeds. The level of contamination with glyphosate is usually an order of dimension higher than if the poison was used on the ground prior to planting the seeds, for weed control. That fact bears proof by CIFA’s own tests, the results of which have been published in “Poison Foods of North America”. Any crop that is desiccated with glyphosate prior harvesting cannot have no glyphosate. Therefore, if tests in India show no glyphosate in those crops, the quality of those tests are suspect.

I would also draw your attention to the fact that High pressure liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MSMS), the method usually used for high level of accuracy and repeatability for detecting glyphosate, is an exacting science and the attending lab technician needs to be highly skilled to identify the spectrogram of glyphosate among all the other signatures, separate it out and quantify it. Therefore, if the lab assistants are not sufficiently trained especially in this task, the results can be less than perfect. This method is not something where the sample is shoved inside a machine, and the lab attendant then watches his smart phone and awaits accurate results to be spewed out by the machine.

I would strongly suggest that the Government of India obtains a written guarantee from all exporting nations such as Canada and Australia, that they do not use glyphosate, or any other poison, for desiccation of the crops before harvest. I would suggest FSSAI investigates reliability of these tests and to explain how crops desiccated with glyphosate can have no presence detected. Further,  these results should be disclosed to the people so that they can stand public scrutiny.

I would also recommend that you arrange for tests of the seeds grown in Canada and earmarked for shipment to India, be independently tested in certified labs in Canada and results submitted to you prior shipment.

2) Level of glyphosate were within limits:

India has not set a safe limit for glyphosate. Further, India has not approved Glyphosate for use in agriculture at all. Therefore, no glyphosate can or should be considered as “within limit”. There is a possibility that FSSAI has been coaxed to accept limits set by Codex Alimentarius, which is very high and influenced by the toxic chemical lobby, to hoodwink innocent third world countries into importing toxic foods.

I had sent an earlier email to FSSAI officials warning about this, and am copying it here for your records.

India needs to reset limits set by external entities and set its own limit by conducting tests on lab animals subjected to measured doses of glyphosate. India is more than able to carry out honest tests and set its own safety limits than be coaxed by standards set under control of the same interests that make the profit in sale of such toxic foods. Allowing Codex Alimentarius’s limits for glyphosate in seed crops is like appointing a fox to guard the hen house.

3) Glyphosate is used by some countries to control weeds
This statement  is only partially true and not so relevant in this case. Glyphosate is used here as a killer poison to kill the crop itself, and not weeds, just prior to harvesting. Therefore, describing it as a weed killer is essentially passing misinformation. It is used as a crop killer, and not just weed killer.

I hope you shall pay attention to these facts and help India set very high, rather than very low, standards of food safety that is geared for keeping Indian citizens safe rather than keeping exporting nations make a profit at the expense of ill-health for people of India.

pastedGraphic.png

Thank you

Santanu Mitra

49/65 Prince Gulam Mohd Shah Road, Kolkata 700033, India
+91-98317 13068, tony.mitra@gmail.com

Link to TOI news article: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/pulses-beans-imported-into-india-safe-for-consumption-fssai/articleshow/66640252.cms

Copy to:
 Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, Minister, food & public distribution, min-food@nic.in, ramvilas.p@sansad.nic.in

Mr Sanjeev Hans, PS to Minister, psfoodmin@nic.in

Mr Ashish Bahuguna, Chairperson, FSSAI, chairperson@fssai.gov.in

Ms Machavi Das, CMCO, madhavi.das@nic.in

Mr Kumar Anil, Advisor, advisor@fssai.gov.in
 Ms Rubeena Shaheen, Director, rubeena@fssai.gov.in

Mr Sunil Bakshi, Advisor, sbakshi@fssai.gov.in

Mr Bhaskar N, Advisor, advisor.qa@fssai.gov.in

Ms Suneeti Tateja, Director, suneeti@fssai.gov.in

Mr Raj Singh, Head, r.singh@nic.in

Mr. Prof. Ram Gopal Yadav, Rajya Sabha, Govt of India., Chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare, ramgopal.yadav@sansad.nic.in

 +++

Village Panchal – microcosm of a vanishing India?

A world without bee eaters?

The golden age of Bengal is behind us. What is ahead of us – for Bengal, India and in fact the rest of the world – is uncertain bordering on gloomy. We are, without a doubt in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. Over 90 percent of living flora and fauna are on the way to extinction – thanks to human civilization and DGP growth.

I do not see hope in a horizon dominated by sky scrapers, our paths dominated by automobiles and our society sprinkled with politicians that betray their constituents and advanced nations ruled by warlords.

And yet, man learns to hope.

In the small periscope of my personal viewpoint as I tiptoe past edges of this planet, leaving near invisible tracks on the quicksands of time, I feel telltale sighs of man’s struggle against himself, trying to resist an ecological tsunami brought about by his own kind, couched as progress and development.

My story of addressing glyphosate at a personal level merges with groups of people very different from me and yet identical to me, across the world, each trying their best to push back against this civilizational catastrophe whose root cause might be man’s own destructive genes. Perhaps it is in the formula of evolutionary success.

Perhaps it is in the mitochondrial DNA that we might have inherited from the microbial world and could not genetically digest properly. Perhaps this is what the old sages meant – about creation being the flip side of destruction and that the universe is forever is a duel dance of creation and destruction.

I came to India, my birth place, to sell a property. As luck would have it, this took a lot of time. One thing led to another, and I ended up talking to people about my story about Glyphosate. This is a story of my consciousness about the ravages of human civilization. This realization was honed and focussed through help from a handful of North American scientists, and then partially fulfilled through my single handed efforts against almost a thousand elected politicians of Canada.

I had already turned a non-believer of raising awareness. I had lost faith in speaking with people. I had come to believe that – should there is a need to do something to help the society, one should try to do what one can by one’s own self, without ever expecting anybody to help. There is no value in trying to muster public support, or raising awareness. People thus made aware simply take selfie pictures with you, clap hands, and go back to sleep. Therefore, if I am driven by wanting to do something, I either do it myself, or it wont get done.

I was through talking to people and raising awareness. Been there, done that.

But then, I came to India – a world very different from Canada where I live, or USA where I used to live. This is a world where nature is still nature here and there. Where man is busy destroying gaia and gaisa is trying to wrench it back from man.

Earth walled farm house of Bhairab Saini

It is a world where, in pockets of rural India, cattle egrets still follow cattle. Grasshoppers still jump out of the ground, and the morning mist is not carrying particles of neonicotinoid insecticide. Sweet smell of death is not in the air.

A world where bee are still around, and one can still find a bee eater on a twig.

I have seen bee eaters often enough, but this may be the first time I am contemplating the possibility of a world without bee eaters – for the matter a world without tigers, rhinoceros, lions, giraffe, cheetah, gorilla, hyena, and yes – a world without man, the most catalytic biological weapon of mass destruction ever evolved out of this planet.

Cattle egret following cattle

I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I might one day write a book, let alone a reference book on glyphosate in food. I also never imagined I might write another in plain text, in a language that is not my mother-tongue, a tale of a lonely activist.

But here I am – part of small pockets of people, being washed away by the human civilizational tsunami, and yet pretending to dream of building a seawall to stop this ecological juggernaut whose root may be in my very genes.

I have decided to add a chapter in my book about this glimpse of rural India. I may use the title – Village Panchal, for this chapter. It should have room for the jewels of folk rice conservation – from Anupam Paul to Bhairab Saini and others that I came to know of and appreciate.

But it would also have room for the scaly breasted munia that landed on a piece of dried cow dung not far from me to allow me a few seconds to take a close up portrait. It would have room not only for the bee-eater in the forest, but also the white mushroom that the termites harvest in their termite hills, the civet cats that roam the land at night, and where domestic chicken range free all through the day, pecking at insects that have not gone extinct yet. There are some miniature chickens that move day and night around the ground, and at nightfall, they need not always return to their pen. They just go to the nearest bush and hunker down. They are often taken there by foxes, but that is there style. I saw a few moving around both in day time and at night under an electric light. I should be writing about all this – not just from this village, but also of other villages I visited, other efforts I saw, in other districts of Bengal.

Free range rooster – GMO free, antibiotic free an chemical free

I saw quite a few majestic looking roosters walking all over the place. Not a single one of them are fed industrial GMO feed, not a single capsule of injection of any antibiotic.

Bengal is not dead. Not yet at least. In fact, Bengal might be leading the nation in some ways relating to propagation organic of folk rice. This too might be a story that has not yet been told.

Home of a cow-owner and milk supplier. He has never heard of either bovine growth hormone, or synthetic milk to add and contaminate his milk. The cows, just like the chicken and goats, eat local foliage. Things are not 100% organic because some herbicides and pesticides are used by those that are not growing organic rice or organic vegetable. Effort is on – to change that.

I would mention the topic of farmers that are trying to bring back cultivation of heirloom folk rice varieties, grown without an ounce of industrial chemical of any kind, but are still not all saving their seeds nor exchanging them. I am increasingly conscious that seed corporations sell or pass around seed packages where neonicotinoids are used.

I have first hand information from fringe villages of tribal people that have not been taught to save their seeds and each starving family still spends several thousand Rupee every year to buy fresh rice seeds in paddy season.

All that brings me back to this bee-eater. Are we heading for a world without bee-eaters?

Villagers offer me an earthen cup of tea, welcoming me to Panchal, and refused to take money.

I saw in Panchal what I had been told by many, about conservation work in maintaining unique characters of various indigenous rice strains, without allowing the diversity from dilution through cross pollination. Rice flowers are air pollinated. What this means is, if one is trying to grow ten kinds of rice in a congested piece of land, then there is always the chance that one pollen from one kind of rice will pollinate another kind growing very near it, thus crossbreeding and losing the originality of the second kind. In order to prevent that, farmer use various techniques. Here we see one technique, where groups of plants flower at different times, so that when one is pollinating, nearby rice strains are not. Some farmers even wrap up some of the plants with some kind of shield so that the clusters self pollinate themselves but do not affect nearby varieties.

Examples of timed pollination, where one kind of producing getting ready to flower while nearby varieties are not yet ready.

Either way – I am likely to add a chapter – titled Village Panchal, in my book, and include the story not just of Panchal, but also of Northern Dinajpur and Purulia, covering the efforts and aspirations of small pockets of people trying to push back as this toxic juggernaut in a death-struggle with gaia, the living planet, like a serpent and a mongoose grabbing and tearing each other to pieces in a fight to the finish that ensure mutual destruction. The living planet will be finished. So will man.

The story of the Dhoincha plant.


There are many stories within stories here. One such has to do with complimentary plants, recycling of soil nutrients, nitrogen fixing and the role of the “Dhoincha” (ধইঞ্চা or ধঞ্চে) plant, a member of the Sesbania family. I believe this family, or at least some species of this family, are considered to me leguminous and are able to “fix nitrogen” in the soil. They are also considered kind of complimentary to paddy. One neutralizes the effect of the other, and tries to leave the soil as close to original with regard to nutrient content and soil health, as possible.

Farmer Bhairab Saini, his kid son and his grown up nephew are keeping track of the folk rice, standing right next to a Dhoincha plant in the middle of his folk rice conservation field.

Debal Deb tells us the correct scientific name for the Doincha plant to be Sesbania cannabina. Some mere mortals believed its name could have been Sesbania aculeata. I personally don’t care if it is renamed Sesbania Dhutterika (শেষ বানিয়া ধুত্তেরিকা). What is interesting is that farmers that may not know of the existence of latin as a language, or the world’s decision to use latin words to describe every living thing on a scientific platform, might nonetheless have figured out by themselves that Dhoincha is a good complimentary plant to have with paddy. Some useful nutrients that rice pulls out of the ground –  are recycled back in the soil, by this Dhoincha. Its root systems, for some bio-molecular mystery I am personally not educated enough to explain, encourages symbiosis with groups of microbes that form tiny nodule-colonies along its roots, and helps do the nitrogen-fixing.

Sunrise – Panchal, Bankura. Myself with my laptop. Picture clicked by Rajib Mukherjee

What is nitrogen fixing anyway ? Well well. Nitrogen is plentiful and inert, in our atmosphere. A compound of nitrogen is ammonia. Ammonia and other compounds like these are the sources for construction of more important organic molecules that from the basic building blocks of all proteins, or all life forms on earth. Therefore, ammonia can be considered a key chemical element that needs to be in the correct form, in the soil, for plants to pick up. And once plants pick them up, presence of that form of nitrogen compound reduces in the soil. This also applies for all other nutrients that a plant picks up.

Checking rice conservation and identification details – Rajiv Mukherjee, Bhairab Saini, Arun Ram and Bhairab’s nephew.

Nitrogen-fixing means putting those compounds of nitrogen back into the soil after a particular agricultural crop has picked most of it up through its harvest. This nitrogen-fixing recycles the depleted nutrient back in the soil and prepares the ground for replanting of the same crop, again and again. If recycling of nutrient cannot be done naturally, then the soil becomes infertile. Industrial agriculture model then tries to sell synthetic fertilizer to pump select nutrients back in the soil, keeping the soil alive through life support, for a longer period.

Speaking before Panchal villagers about dangers of using glyphosate.

Dhoincha, through the microbial symbiosis, helps in nitrogen-fixing and by allowing it to rot back into the soil replaces some carbonaceous matter back as well.

By the Shiva Temple, villagers sit down to hear about glyphosate

The plant has other interesting features too. During the early phase of growing folk rice without pesticides or herbicides, the fields may get infested with insects wanting to eat some of the growing rice seedlings. These days, when killer chemicals are so readily used everywhere, the insect kingdom has a shrinking field where they can still exist. They too are parts of the great symbiosis of this living planet. So they naturally congregate towards those pockets, where killer chemicals are still absent. There may, as a result, be an overcrowding of rice seed eating insects.

Dhoincha plant provides convenient perch for insect eating birds like the drongo. This is a good way for balancing things out while supporting the biodiversity of the land. This is what the Dhoincha plant also does. However, there is.a down side to it too – as Abha Chakraborti informed me. Once the rice seeds begin to mature, serious seed eating finches such as the Baya or weaver bird might congregate and gorge themselves on rice. Providing them a perch from the Dhoincha plant might turn counter productive. Therefore, when the seeds start maturing, the right thing to do for the farmers is to uproot the Dhoincha, and lay it on the ground right in the middle of the paddy field, and let nature do its work. Next season, another Dhoincha is planted again. There is a way healthy clean food such as rice can be grown without killing everything off, and without poisoning us. These Bengal farmers are showing me how it is done.

Sunset at Panchal, Bankura, West Bengal, India.

Folk rice conserving jewels of bengal


There has to be a story inside a story inside a story – like the Mahabharata – epic of Indian mythology.

I have posted a version of this picture before – but believe it deserves some description.

At left is – Rajib Mukherjee. He travelled far, from Asansol. He planned to come all this way on his motorcycle, but it broke down I front of his home. Nonetheless, he came by changing buses. He said he was coming to see me, but I suspect he came to meet all of us, especially the organic folk rice growing legends. Rajib has a few distinctions. He reads a lot of interesting non-fiction. He had already read James Lovelock’s Revenge of Gaia. Then, while listening to me, he ordered 1) Poison Spring, by EG Vallianatos (about extreme corruption of US-EPA) and 2) Value of Nothing, by Raj Patel (about cost of environmental damage incurred by production of common industrially mass produced items like a hamburger). Clearly, he reads serious books, and that sets him apart from 99.9999% of the rest of humanity. There is another distinction for him. He also draws cartoons. I was wondering if he was going to draw this particular nava-ratna (nine jewels). Instead, he drew a cartoon involving me.

Glyphosate packets are complaining about me to their boss Mr. Monsanto, and imploring him to see to it that my property is sold pronto so that I can return to Canada and leave them (glyphosate packages) alone.

The story of the cartoon goes like this – I originally came to India to sell a property – which is taking time. As a result, I am using that time to talk about glyphosate. With that background, this cartoon is make, where a few characters called Glyphosate are calling their boss, a character called Monsanto, over the phone, and imploring the boss to personally see to it that Tony Mitra manages to sell the property soon – and leaves India. If needed, the boss should buy the damned property himself, to ensure Tony Mitra is gone. Else, life is going to get increasingly tough for glyphosate.

Pair of Indian silver bills

Next – Mr. Arun Ram.
He too has an unique distinction. He came upon the idea of using masks with large eyes, fixed at the back of the head, for those travelling inside tiger infested jungles, like the Sundarbans. Hunting animals such as a tiger instinctively attacks prey, including humans, from the back. So, when it sees a human and recognizes its front by his face and eyes, he will slink and skirt around behind the person before springing. But if the person has a human mask with large eyes at the back of the head – that throws the tiger off, confuses him, and makes him re-think the angle of attack, and often discourages him enough to let the guy go. Mr. Arun Ram claims to have come up with the idea first and tried out, successfully. But today, his idea is copied by commercial tourist organizations, and he is contemplating ways to either patent or register his idea so as to get some credit and financial compensation. Very interesting person. His knowledge of wildlife, I found, was exceptional. HE was describing various kinds of poisonous snakes and the kind of poison they make etc. Even he came here to meet with the rest of the nine-jewels and take part in discussing folk rice conservation and promotion.

Next- Rabin Banerjee. He is a non-farmer that is committed to spread organic rice farming and has roped in over a hundred farmers of Purulia , many of them women, to reject toxic cultivation and try out organic folk rice variety. He actually changed his regular job, downgrading it to a sort of part time job that paid less, but enough to support his family, so that he could devote more time with the farmers of Purulia. I consider people like Mr. Bannerjee to be rare blessings for India. Thank heavens there are people like these around.

I am tempted to say – someone needs to write about people like Rabin Banerjee – and his unique near single-handed effort to convert more than a hundred farmers of Purulia, many of whom are marginal, female and Rajwangshi (lower caste), into cultivation of organic folk rice. Who needs Bollywood characters when India has so many real life heroes?

But I know, nobody will be writing it and I need to do it myself. So I shall.

Rabin Banerjee and myself at Bhairab Saini’s vegetable patch.

Next – myself – a storyteller. I am doing my job here.

Next to me – Anupam Paul. He is another giant in the field of promoting organic folk rice cultivation in India. He is an agrologist, having done his PhD on the subject. He is employed by the Government of West Bengal, and runs one of the seven Agricultural Training Centre (ATC) in the state. What is unique about him is that six out of seven such ATC promote industrial, chemical dependent agriculture and influence/train local farmers accordingly, following the state policy on Agriculture. But Mr. Paul has the seventh ATC running in the opposite direction. He is involved in conserving over four hundred strains of heirloom folk rice, practices growing them organically without any chemical, and then trains as well as influences a growing number of local farmers, spread across 14 districts (counties) of West Bengal, in support of organic folk rice. He has enough data to prove that indigenous heirloom folk rice, grown completely organically, can match of beat hybrid varieties cultivated with recommended industrial fertilizer. In other words, the benefit of modern agriculture is more a myth than a fact. He is, in my view, another heaven-sent and one of the shiniest of the jewels in this group.

Then comes Shomik Bannerjee. He is a private consultant whose specialization is in Forest ecology and indigenous tribes. He is employed by others to visit various pockets of India, usually involved in people living in marginal conditions, to study and prepare report about them – for clients. He is a very keen observer of various plant species as well as other creatures that make up the biodiversity of our forest ecology. Extremely knowledgable and extremely humble – a very rare combination. From my point of view he has an added distinction – he bought my book – POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA – even before he met me. That makes him not only a rare breed – but perhaps an endangered species. He has also been involved in telling various people around the country – that they they need to consider listening to my story of glyphosate.

Those that need more details of Shouik Bannerjee – he did his graduation in chemistry, and double post graduations in Biotechnology and Forest Management. He has been a free lance researcher for 9 years, with special interest in indigenous seed conservation – in paddy, wheat, barley, oats, millets, maize cotton, Mustard-Rapeseed, flaxseed in Eastern India. As if that is not enough already, he also researches on uncultivated wild foods and forest ecosystems, and to round it off you may add agroecolgy and sustainable farming.
Yes I know. He is one of those.

He and Anupam Paul have been the primary forces behind the scene, to get me to far corners of India and alert people about glyphosate.

Next – Bhairab Saini – the host. He is a farmer from Bankura. We are standing in front of an earth walled farm house of his. Years ago, he was influenced by the rice conservation works of Debal Deb when Debal was working in Bankura. After Debal left for Odisha, Bhairab continued to a) conserve many strains of folk rice, d) encourage more farmers of his family and friends to join up in growing chemical free folk rice, and same time take up some organizational activity in promotion of folk rice in Bengal. He has received help and assistance from the rest, primarily from people like Anupam Paul. He is the one that organized the event in his village for me to speak about glyphosate. He invited me to stay at his farm house. He also helped get the rest of the jewels to congregate.

Black rice being bagged for shipment and sale in Delhi

He has one more distinction, in my mind. Slowly, he is managing to find a market for organic folk rice grown in his village, for sale in urban outlets at various far flung corners of India. He has already sold all the folk “Govindabhog” rice his group cultivated this year, but still has lots of Black Rice as well as Govindabhog derivatives such as rice flakes etc. So he has been busy bagging them. A group including his family and some friends are scheduled to haul nearly two tons of the stuff to Delhi, to join a village fair organized by the Ministry of Women’s affair, headed by Minister Ms Maneka Gandhi, where Bhairab will advertise his wares, hope to sell the rice and firm up more business for the future. If efforts like this catch on, it might influence more conventional farmers of his village to come over to organic cultivation of folk rice. If affluent India recognizes the need for healthy food and start supporting these grassroots efforts, then more and more farmers, of his village and others, are expected to follow the trend. I wish Bhairab’s efforts all success. He is not the only one in this effort, but he is so far the only one I have personally seen, who is engaged in both growing, and trying to bypass the middle man to directly sell organic rice in India to the consumer.

Next to Bhairab are Pradeep Nayak and Shakti Roy, both from Village Panchal, both friends of Bhairab, and both believers of organic rice cultivation. I think both of them will be going to Delhi with Bhairab trying to sell black rice and drum up more business. And we ate lots of organic banana that were ripened on the tree in Pradeep Nayak’s garden. Both of them also did the cooking for us. Mr. Nayak also offered a few rooms of his own home for some of us to stay, since Bhairab’s farm house had only two rooms besides the kitchen, and could not accommodate all of us.

Village girls returning from school

There is one more jewel that was supposed to come but could not due to personal issues – Abhra Chakrabarti.

Edible mushrooms in the forests of Bankura


Edible mushrooms collected from the forest by villagers of Panchal area, Bankura. The spores of these mushroom fungus are collected, stored,, cultivated and harvested by white ants (termites). These are kept inside their anthills in off-season. The on-season starts now, and these spores sprout, grow on stalks with white mushroom heads sticking out. Knowledgeable villagers go looking for them at the right time – around now, cut the stalks and bring them home.

These are usually cooked by light pan-frying in oil and then boiled and turned into some kind of curry with spices, and consumed with rice.

One couple that went looking for them at the beginning of the annual mushroom season found these. Other groups I met, returned empty handed. However, the month long season just started. The mushrooms grow only in certain patches of the forests. Some villagers have the keen eye to find them. Others do not.

You may ask – what does this mushroom have to do either with conservation of folk rice, or with the vanishing face of sustainable India. But, I guess you already know the answer.

Folate-glyphosate-liver conundrum

The story started with the possible link between spina-bifida and glyphosate from the point of view of India.

I am visiting India right now. I have also been invited to speak at different venues about dangers of using glyphosate. There are pockets of India with high use of glyphosate, and there are reports of high occurrence of certain disease and birth defects. I have not gotten access to much reports and statistics and I get the impression that there is much room for data collection and analysis on this front.

However, I did come across the issue of spina-bifida, the broken-spine birth defect and its effects in Missions province of Argentina and also in India. In Argentina, they are using roundup ready tobacco. Women that were spraying glyphosate on those tobacco plants, were giving birth to many of the seriously deformed babies with damaged spinal column or damaged brain etc. Glyphosate was suspected to be the cause. Following that, and getting further information from scientists like Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff, and also from the internet, I learned that deficiency of folate/ folic acid has links to this birth defect. Also, India apparently has the worlds highest rate (per thousand births) of spina bifida in the world, and four times higher than the world average.

There seemed to be a number of birth defects related to pregnant women being exposed to various toxins, of which glyphosate is one. The defects ranged from babies without a brain or having a deformed brain, to man-formed or broken spine. Some of these defects were identified under an umbrella term – Neural Tube Defect, or NTD. India had a high prevalence of that.

I was further advised by grassroots workers that the farming community needed to see these images of deformed babies, to fully grasp the potential harm that newborns can have, if adult women of childbearing age are engaged in handling toxic material. This is one way to make folks realise the overall dangers involved with agro-toxins.

Folate deficiency is reported to be at the root of some of these birth defects, such as spina-bifida or broken-spine disease. The story of folate itself appears to hide as much truth as it tells. The 1990s is when glyphosate started seriously entering human food through GMO. Later its presence increased through non-GMO desiccated seed crops. Along with the presence of glyphosate, birth defects such as spina-bifida started rising. scientists discovered a possible link between folate deficiency, especially during the first month of pregnancy, and spina-bifida. There is virtually no cure for this defect.

Fortification of seed crops with folic acid (a folate substitute) was made mandatory for suppliers of main cereals in the US back in the 1990s, the same time when glyphosate started entering human food in every increasing amount. Apparently, folic acid (vitamin B9) is not exactly the same thing as folate.

Stephanie Seneff told me that, when she was researching folate for her lecture, she noted that the gut microbes processed dietary folate into methyl tetrahydrofolate, but the same microbiome did not know what to do with the folic acid that was being added as fortification of wheat.

However, according to some scientists that perhaps influenced the US Government into proposing folic acid fortification, noted a reduction in spina-bifida birth defects with folic acid fortification of food. It is believed that liver gets over-taxed by demands to convert folic acid into methyl tetrahydrofolate, because our gut bacteria are unable to handle folic acid. Therefore, although some methyl tetrahydrofolate was eventually being produced by the body, which in turn reduced the rate of spina-bifida, our liver got overworked, and as a direct result of that our liver was then unable to engage in both methylation capacity and antioxidant capacity. In other words, folic acid helped solve one problem but created a few more in turn.

The lesson here is – removing glyphosate would have been the best solution, allowing our gut bacteria to do their job, than fortification of food with man made alternatives. Having said that, I am advised by Stephanie Seneff that, should one be incapable to reducing glyphosate from food, and must take supplements, methyl folate was better than folic acid.

There is another way glyphosate puts a spanner into the wheels. Its presence in folate producing plants that we eat, in itself interferes with the plant’s ability to do its work properly. This in turn reduces the plant’s production folate. As a result, glyphosate-laced plants ends up with more of the potential natural folate being bio-unavailable for us.

It is my opinion that the only thing good about glyphosate is that it makes money for some toxic corporations. It has no other positive. It should not be present on planet earth. Let them make a profit by supplying it to Jupiter.

To meet with a demand to have some of this material in local languages and not just English, I translated a few. Here is an example.

This will be another chapter in my book – Lonely Road.

Incidentally, I found methyl tetrahydrofolate is available in India, in 800 microgram tablets, about $8 (₹ 500) for 180 tablets. I am thinking of trying them out, but am waiting feedback from experts. The thing is – I am neither female, nor pregnant, nor in childbearing age. So, how much folate am I usually in need of ?

Glyphosate & Paraquat on paddy fields of India

I was reading through and tinkering with pieces of information coming my way that related to biocides in general, and herbicide epidemic in India in particular.

Soumik Banerjee, a freelance agro-sociology consultant has been an important source of information from the ground in eastern India. Promotion of sustainable organic agriculture is part of his field of work. He is also one of the rare persons in India that actually bought my book – POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA, and read it through.

Anyhow, I was playing with some still images and video clips received from him, mostly about the use of glyphosate and other substances such as paraquat in the province of Odisha, India, on the bund around paddy fields. A bund is a raised wall that surrounds small paddy plots. The land is usually made flat so water could stand evenly across the plot. The bund ensures that the water stays and does not flow off. Rice often grows on standing water. This system works in lands with high rainfall and high ground water level during the rainy season in he flood plains. In other words, it suits a monsoon fed India, particularly along the Ganga-Brahmaputra river system of Eastern India.

Before India adopted modern agro-technology, the land was tilled by domestic cattle – cows or buffalo. They ate the grass that grew on the bund, as well as in the paddy fields off season. The cows left their droppings on the fields. The left over grass, cow dung and other organic matter, rainwater and heat, all did their thing. Worms and micro organisms did mulched and composted the biomass. Nutrients got recycled. Rice was usually grown once only in a year, taking say four months during monsoon. Another crop, a kind of pulse, called Khesari daal, was grown after the rice was harvested. The left over moisture in the soil was enough for this pulse crop. It fixed nitrogen and helped balance the soil nutrient load. Then for the last four months, the land was left to grass, weeds, worms, birds, goats, rats, snakes and nature.

And that was how rice was grown, without any chemical input nor any pumped water, for eons. That was before modernism came into agriculture like an invading army of pillagers. India got agro-modern, agro-civilized and agro-mechanized.

Cattle were ancient and costly to maintain, even if they were ecologically more sustainable than chemicals and fossil fuel dependent machinery. Out went the cows, along with their dung and appetite for grass. In came fossil fuel dependent tractors that spilled industrial lubricants on the soil, left exhaust in the air, and had no use for grass. Since farmers did not usually have money to own such machines, they were rented. Poor farmers had to dole out money to rent these gas guzzlers to till their land.

That was not all. The idea of crop rotation with Khesari Daal was not good for the GDP of the agro-chemical industry. So, that brand of pulse that was hardy enough to grow without extra work and using the left over moisture of the paddy fields, had to go. So another campaign of misinformation was initiated – Khesari daal, used for generations, was suddenly touted as bad for health. So, the traditional companion of the rice field, Khesari pulse, was banished. In its place came the need for two crops of rice being grown every year out of the same field. People must eat more rice and less varied seeds like pulses.

Also, one needed high yield, this-tolerant, that-intolerant thingamajig kinds of special rice that “unscientific” farmers did not have and could not produce, but scientific institutions could. So these so called hybrid rice was now be used on the field. But these seeds did not come from farmers who would pass successful seeds around for others free of charge. Instead, these magic seeds were the result of hard work of the agro-scientists who worked for firms that were in agriculture business to create a stable market for its products and to make a profit. So the seeds had to be bought.

And since these seeds were hybrid and not stable, nor designed to be stable, they could not be saved by farmers for continuous use. They had to be bought afresh every year. Why make a product that needs to be purchased only once, if you can make the customer buy it again and again and again ?

And since the off season rice did not have the benefit of the monsoon, and since the hybrid rice did not grow out of love and fresh air, but had an unbelievable thirst for water – there were needs for drilling millions of tube wells to pull the water out of the ground. All this activity was financed by bank loans which on paper looked like hectic economic activity and a sign of progress. GDP was rising, India was going to be feeding itself with great food. All was great. Or so the slogan went.

And with the absence of crop rotation, and disappearance of Khesari pulse, the soil of course would not support two successive crops of rice without nutrient supplement. Smart scientists figured out that plants got carbon, hydrogen and oxygen from air and water. The next three nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, gets depleted by the crop. If most of the leftover stuff is lot allowed to recycle into the soil then the soil needs to be replenished. Thus, the term NPK as combination fertilizer that was to be industrially produced, became a catch word of modern agriculture. This also boosted on paper economic activity, since industry had to cater to this new kind of chemical fertilizer that was not used before.

Somewhere along with it came the need for poisons to kill of pests that usually attacked these hybrid crops that were not naturally hardy to withstand pest attack like the original folk rice varieties did. So, the land had to be inundated with herbicide, pesticide, fungicide, insecticide, etc. All these poisons, grouped together as biocides, are poisons that kill. And if one herbicide did not do the job, why not use two?

Nobody actually did any work on testing if these killer chemicals had any adverse effect on the biomass, on the ecology, and on people.

In came chemical agents. They informed the farmers that the grass on the paddy field as well as on the bund were nasty stuff. Since the cows were not around any more to eat them, they needed to be destroyed, because they host all sorts of dangerous pests. And then they sold glyphosate, along with some more of the toxins that were available. These were not called poison. They were called medicine. They were called vitamin for the soil.

If glyphosate alone was not doing all the job, then another item was added to it – such as paraquat.

Soumik sent me a number of pictures, such as this one from Odisha, where the partition wall between two adjacent fields of paddy, called bund, was twice sprayed by glyphosate and paraquat, to kill all vegetation. That concoction flows into the paddy fields because of the rain, and the water collects and stands in the paddy fields. What this is doing to the soil biology – is not investigated nor told to the farmers. This is how “soil medicine” gets into our food web.

Meanwhile, I was conversing with some US scientists and asking about a questionnaire for the women who gave birth to deformed babies. This was to build up statistics on possible exposure of pregnant women to toxins that might have resulted in the stated birth defects.

Stephanie Seneff of MIT believed there is cause to believe synergistic damage done to kidneys of farm workers exposed to the glyphosate-paraquat concoction.

Apparently, the human protein called MATE1 is responsible for detoxification of items such as the nasty poison paraquat, most of which might normally be captured by MATE1 that works with our kidneys and allowed to be expelled from the body through urine.

But, we already know that all proteins are constructed from the basic building blocks of 20 amino acids, and the most used of those twenty are glycine. We also know that glyphosate is a biological mimic of glycine and our body does not know how to distinguish one from the other. Therefore when new proteins are being constructed, which is all the time for adults, and at a furious pace for growing children, glyphosate gets to be disincorporated into proteins, if it (glyphosate) is present in our food.

As Dr. Seneff pointed out to me through an email, MATE1 has “tons” of glycine in key positions of that protein, making it very susceptible to being subverted by glyphosate substituting itself in place of some of some glycine in key positions of that protein, thereby rendering MATE1 useless in detoxification work. This, apart from allowing a person being seriously harmed by paraquat itself, also has the ability to permanently damage the kidney – leading to kidney failure that may be linked to the Sri Lanka farm workers as well as the Mesoamerican nephropathy.

This disease, Mesoamerican nephropathy, was earlier called kidney disease of unknown cause (CKDu), first noticed among young, agricultural workers primarily in Central American nations such as El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.

Then there was this other picture, also received from Soumik Bannerjee. It shows a cauliflower patch with brown grass around it, killed by glyphosate. This, when shown to a few scientists, generated instant and spirited response. Comments from Anthony Samsel and Don Huber was included with the picture. There were so many things wrong with this picture. The glyphosate would drift onto the vegetable patch and be picked up by the roots of the Cauliflower. Testing of the vegetable should show presence of glyphosate in it which would poison everything and everyone that eats it. In other words, the cauliflower is sick.

Then there is the issue of aerosol particles of glyphosate drifting and falling on the cauliflower. Its antibiotic activity kicks and inhibits the natural disease suppressors for E. coli and other animal/human pathogens. This phenomenon, when our vegetable begin to make us sick, is an unwanted development that is rising in epidemic proportions across India and elsewhere. As Don aptly said – the entire ecology is turned upside down, all because a handful of dishonest business people manage to hoodwink the entire world, and because folks in India refuse to test, investigate and find out for themselves the truth, and would rather depend on the same entities that sell the poison, to educate us on food nutrition.

India is not known to keep detailed statistics of health conditions of its citizens, particularly the rural low income class. However, India is supposed to be developing. It is among the fastest rising large emerging nations.

It is time, that India sheds its colonial trappings of the past and begins to take interest in its own affairs. It is time for India to investigate effect of its modern agriculture on the flora, fauna, nature, food, ecology and health of its inhabitants.

It does not take rocket science to allow funding to hospitals and research facilities to start collecting data on one hand, and also testing the effect of these chemicals, single and in synergy, on lab animals, and release the findings for the public.

Glyphosate has not been approved for use in agriculture in India. And yet, it is ubiquitous. It is everywhere in the farm sector. It is not even being called a poison. It is termed as “medicine”. There is a massive campaign of misinformation being conducted by corrupt people with vested interest in pushing these chemicals illegally in agriculture.

The Government and its regulatory authority is apparently not able to keep track of the runaway use of these substances. A few provinces, as it happens appear to be waking up to this menace and contemplating withdrawing license to store or sell glyphosate in areas where there are no tea gardens. The issue is also related to illegal planting of smuggled seeds of GM herbicide tolerant cotton.

There seem to be small signs that some sections of the population is waking up to the danger posed by agro-toxins in general and glyphosate in particular, especially after I came to India and was invited to speak about it in a few towns, an exercise that was supported by a few well meaning NGO and groups.

The task at hand to both record the facts, analyze the statistics, investigate the effects and correct the situation is humongous. But, like all endeavours, it starts with a first few tentative steps.

This article is to be part of my running journal – “Lonely Road”. It is also likely to be shared and circulated as a pdf file. Lastly, it should be also in my blog tonu.org.

And when I speak with farming communities across various rural regions in Bengal – I am likely to mention this. In fact, I did create a slide just for this.

I have not had much time proof reading these pages. All that would be done later. So, reader is requested to pardon any strange grammar or spelling that might pop up as odd in these pages.

Derecognition of good scientists

Dark ages of Glyphosate resistance

While on the subject of the planet being poisoned by glyphosate, other toxins, micro plastics, Chemtrail and a myriad of other things, all in the name of development, there is something else that gets missing in the noise.

There is a need for us to step back a bit, and look at it from afar, and reflect with a wider viewpoint an look for root causes that go deeper than scratching at the surface.

And that is how I end up writing chapters like this one for my book in the making – Lonely Road, footprints of a food security activist.

West took a leading role in many issues of global significance. This involved development of a functional democratic system represented by one-man-one-vote in a modern sense. This also meant developing a culture that separated the church from the state, and encourage secularism and rule of law, where everybody was equal in the eyes of the law, where universal education was a birthright, along with basic healthcare and social security.

It was the west that lead the world in scientific research in many fields and proved to be catalytic in development of a wide swatch of modern scientific research.

It created the League of Nations and later the United Nations, so that a single powerful nation cannot wage war on another on personal opinion, but where there was need for international mediation and effort to use peaceful means to conflict resolution first, a system where might did not equate right. 

There is perhaps no need for me to elaborate on this. West produced people like Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Karl Marx and Adam Smith. The west had the most advanced nations on earth, with the highest standard of living. People from the rest of the world aspired to migrate to the west in order to have a better life.

All this is fact and undisputed.

However, like the great eastern philosopher Confucius of the past had stated – change is the only unchanging fact of life. Everything must and will change.

So, too, is the case with what the famed “west” represented. So, to go back to issues – while the west still dominates in scientific research, it is more often than not conducted by people working for western institutions but themselves originating from outside. Theory of Charles Darwin is most challenged today in the western school system, rather than in any other place. United Nation has been castrated and rendered into a hapless eunuch by none other than the United States. United States makes unilateral decision to wage war on whoever it likes, whenever it likes and wherever it likes. Standard of living in the rest of the world is catching up fast with the west. China arguably already has more millionaires than the US does. On GDP based on purchasing power parity, there are more non-western nations in the top ten than western nations. Everything people feared about communism, is coming true under capitalism.

Democracy has been hijacked in almost all the western nations, replaced with a form of fascist crony capitalism where out of state shadow commercial actors decide how the state will function, while the public only decide who the symbolic but otherwise useless face of the Government will be such as a prime minister or president. Biotech science has never been more biased, tilted, controlled and abused, without neutrality, objectivity and honesty in the west, than ever before. It can hardly be called science. West does not have free press any more. In fact, the whole world is fast losing all free press. Human rights is an illusion, everywhere, but especially noticeable in the west.  Corporations have more rights than citizens with votes. Medical system is geared to keep unhealthy people sick, and to make healthy people unhealthy.

The legal system does not provide justice. Instead it provides revenue through catering to whoever can pay more. Education system is degenerating to the dark ages. School children in the west comparatively get the stupidest scores on an international scale. The western education system is busy dumbing down everybody.

And in the midst of it all, we have an ocean of toxicity into our food system, in residential lots, public parks, meadows, marshes, forests, rivers lakes and oceans – all in the name of progress.

I could go on and on ..

But, when it comes to the specific ravages of Glyphosate, let it be said that this planet destroying technology not only originated in the west, but gets most of its driving force from the west.

Citizens of the west have lost the art of resisting evil. They have long capitulated.

I do not see leadership emerging out of the west on this area at all – no matter how long and how hard I peer into the topic.

This is not to say that leadership is emerging out of the east or south or some other direction. But the rest of the world does not appear to have totally capitulated like the west has. There is a raging battle in big and small nations outside fo the west. This is my view and I am increasingly comfortable with this view.

The west has capitulated. No leadership may be expected out of the west to lead us out through this toxic wilderness. The west is going to take the planet and flush it down the toilet.

Along with this abject capitulation, comes a large swatch of disgruntled people from the west that are increasingly aware of the destruction of their belief and value system but unable find a way out. Like mindless groupies they flock around an increasing number of instant “guru” that are mushrooming out of this toxic landscape like maggots on a carcass.

And in the middle of this depressing scenario, there is a concerted effort to assassinate character of a handful of honest scientists that are still trying to shine a light. These good guys are now the target not only of the corporate controlled system but also of the army of mindless zombies that came out of the disgruntled and disenfranchised citizenry looking for something to do.

Victimisation of the good guys is an established policy

I need to say it clearly here. There is a concerted effort to downgrade and trivialise scientists that speak an unpleasant truth. This effort to trivialise select scientists, and deny them access to reputed journals and mainstream coverage, is a well established tactic used by the biotech and big Pharma industry and the political and media system that are often in cahoots with them.

It is the west that, in modern times, hounded and destroyed people like Árpád Pusztai, Andrés Carrasco, Andrew Wakefield, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange. And the so called civil society of the west, went along and did nothing to stop it.

This so called civil society also includes lots of media savvy gurus that appear to be among the “good guys”. To me, they are a new breed of phoney, hypocritical people masquerading as good guys in order to milk a system.

This new breed of instant guru class will be taking donations from folks in order to fight the Monsanto dragon. But, behind the scene they appear to be in cahoots with the industry doctrine of denying recognition of scientists that did pioneering work to expose, for example, glyphosate. They will not be averse to take whatever information they can gather from these scientists, and then pass them off as their own information, or keep the source muddied. Either way, the victimisation of the handful of scientists still left to do work in exposing glyphosate will be kept under the carpet and out of sight by these media savvy false gurus and talking heads.

They victimise the last of the remaining honest, hard working, fearless scientists that are still somehow able to scrounge around for funds and are able to do some research on the bad effects of glyphosate, and often come out with ground braking information to this end.

Non-recognition of Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff

Scientists that are victims of such selective tarnishing by the “phoney” good guys are, for example, Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff

I have a very strong distaste for such false gurus, and need to make my view public.

Unlike these phoney characters making a career out of milking this toxic problem of glyphosate and GMO, I do not collect donations from people. I do not run an NGO and do not wait for public support me. I do not need anybody’s help. I do have a book, but it is a reference book and I do not ask folks to even buy it. Most folks are incapable of handling a 400 page book of reference data on glyphosate. In short, I do not need anybody. Consequently, I do not need to sacrifice my freedom of thought, expression and speech on this issue. And damned if I am going to sacrifice it just to be popular.

I dislike proverbial good guys like Jeffrey Smith, Michel Antoniou, Vandana Shiva, Robin Mesnage, Carey Gillam and the rest because of what I consider their dishonesty in projecting only half truths and either selectively denying recognition of people like Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff or working overtime to convince me why I should not take Samsel/Seneff seriously. I am done considering such blabbermouths as anything other than thugs pretending to be something else.

Many of them make a career out of milking the system rather than trying to solve it. They appear to be in cahoots with the same industry they badmouth and follow their doctrine of denying acknowledgement of select scientists and their contribution, because what these scientists say is uncomfortable. But it is alright to steal their words and make hay with knowledge and information gained from them.

These are the kind of scum that we find masquerading as the spearhead of a dysfunctional resistance system in a region that is speeding towards a toxic doomsday, California court case of Johnson versus Monsanto notwithstanding.

The picture at left is of Anthony Samsel, in San Francisco with Michael Baum last year when Samsel testified before the CA EPA and gave them the Lymphoma cancer data and the malignant Hemagioendothelioma cancer data he extracted from Monsanto’s raw data files.  Monsanto hid the data from the report summary to the EPA.  He gave the extra data he found to Michael Baum  which their consultant Chris Porter had missed – information received from Anthony Samsel.

I don’t need a fan club

I have said it before and I shall say it here again – I know that many of these hypocritical false guru characters have a large fan club. I know some of this fan club members are also my  friends or follow me on social media. I know I am likely to annoy many of them by criticising these undesirables that they idolize. And I know I might alienate such people.

Well, thats OK with me. Unlike Smith, Shiva and the rest of the gang, I do not need public support. Whatever I do, I do by myself, and within my means. So, I for one do not mind at all if ardent admirers of Vandana Shiva, or Jeffrey Smith etc leave my circle of acquaintance. It was nice knowing you, and good bye.

Injustice to Samsel and Seneff is a symptom of a degenerative west

But I shall be damned if I do not speak truth as I see it, with regard to the injustice done to scientists like Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff by what I judge as phoney and hypocritical group leaders that feed on human misery while pretending to be against glyphosate.

Damned if I am going to support lies and liars just to be popular. I am through with that crap.

This article will, after adding to it and polishing it off, go into a chapter or a section of my next book – Lonely Road.

Glyphosate causing birth defect in domestic cattle

 

Prominent underbite in a calf

There is an unending series of bad news and devastation across the landscape, triggered by suspected harmful effects of man made toxins in our midst. This blog is to do with glyphosate in the food and feed of domestic cattle. The material for this blog is provided by Montana used wildlife scientist Judy Hoy.

I had received a lot of information over the years from Judy. She is listed as one of the four scientists I have most learned from regarding the ravages causes globally by glyphosate. Her name and picture, along with those of Anthony Samsel, Stephanie Seneff and Don Huber, occupy one slide of my presentation on glyphosate when I am asked to speak, in India.

Deer from New Brunswick, Canada

I had contacted her when folks from New Brunswick, Canada, contacted me asking about the weird phenomenon being noticed among hunted deer, which showed mismatched jaws. She confirmed this is merely an extreme case of a common birth defect where a fetus in a mothers womb is poisoned by specific toxins such as glyphosate. The reason for this damage is complex, but has to do with disruption of some of the growth programs in the fetus, due to damage to hormones, enzymes and other proteins that are critical, and also from severe deficiency of specific mineral nutrients during that phase of foetal development. Both these conditions will happen if glyphosate is in the food and foliage that the pregnant mother forages and eats. Glyphosate will get itself mis-incorporated into proteins by being an analog of glycine. Glyphosate will also steal minerals from food by being a chelator.

There has been a lot of feedback from Judy over the years about degeneration in North American wildlife and the very real possibility that its very survivability is now questioned. Wildlife in North America, in other words, faces a serious existential threat and likely will go under due to birth defects not just in jaws but in many organs including reproductive organs. Percentage of bison, and all kinds of deer wild goats and sheep, as well as other carnivores and herbivores, that have visible birth defects including malformed reproductive organs, as observed by naked eyes and available from photographs and video, are approaching 100%. Many of them will not be producing viable off springs to propagate survival of the species. We have brought nature and wildlife to the brink through man made toxins.

But what about domestic cattle?

I wondered what was happening to domestic cattle, which should be far more affected by glyphosate through greater human contribution in their food and feed. Well, here is what Judy had to say about it, along with a few pictures of calves from Mexico.

Hi Tony,

Cattle in the United States, Mexico and of course Canada are born with an underbite, just like the wild grazing animals. Here in our area, some of the larger ranchers were loosing up 30 or 35 calves each spring in the late 1990s, through 2001. I put letters to the editor in our local papers saying that the symptoms on the calves were consistent with thyroid hormone disruption as a result of mineral deficiencies. I also told local veterinarians. I suddenly stopped hearing about birth defects on calves here in our area and called a rancher friend to ask him if the ranchers were doing something different. He said they were having their cows tested to determine what minerals they were deficient in and then giving their herd the specific minerals they needed. That apparently mitigated the birth defects significantly, suggesting that chelation of the minerals the livestock obtained in grass and hay by exposure to the Roundup on the grass or hay was the likely culprit. As far as I know, their grass and hay was never tested for glyphosate, because the ranchers wouldn’t believe that Roundup was responsible. Many spray their Roundup Ready alfalfa fields and didn’t want to admit that they were poisoning their own animals. Funny how that works.

Mexican Brahman calf with underbite

Most of the ranchers here in our area that I asked never actually admitted that their calves had a high rate of underbite, except for one rancher’s wife, who told me in 2003 that about 1/3 of their calves were born with underbite. In addition to calves, domestic goats, sheep and camelids here in the United States are also born with underbite. I was told that in 2001, over 50 horse foals born that spring in our county were shot because they were born with an underbite. Livestock owners don’t want anyone to know that their livestock have birth defects. They will kill a newborn rather than admit it, because they are all told that it is bad genes of the parent animals. Livestock owners are afraid no one will buy their animals if people know that there is a fairly high prevalence of birth defects in their herd. Apparently, giving lots of minerals while the cow, sheep, goat, mare, etc. are pregnant, keeps the prevalence of birth defects down. Also, most livestock owners, except for horse breeders don’t even look at the mouth of their newborn livestock, so don’t know the prevalence.

If you type in (an animal species, like beef calves underbite images) on Google, lots of photos will come up that were posted by people of calves with underbite from throughout the United States. The same happens if you type domestic goat, sheep, llama, horse foal, etc. – lots of photos that have been posted from throughout the U.S.

Wildlife scientist Judy Hoy of Montana

I have been communicating for some time with a veterinarian in Mexico. I have attached two photos of the same Brahman calf born with underbite that he sent me. They have sprayed fields there in Mexico that are close to where the cattle graze in their pastures. They are very careful about breeding, so there is no way that their prized show Brahman calves are inbred.

I think that the Brahman cattle in India have a fairly high prevalence of underbite, but I have no way to tell for certain. I have seen photos on the internet of Brahman cattle with underbite taken in India and a lot of domestic goats there with underbite.

Underbite in a Mexican Brahman calf

Just like the Fish and Game departments are hiding the birth defects on the wild grazing animals to protect their ability to sell hunting licenses, the livestock owners hide the birth defects on their livestock so people will keep buying their animals. That makes it really difficult to get anyone to do something to stop the cruel, inhumane poisoning of the newborns. It has been much easier to just say that the few researchers who have worked on the issue are wrong, lying or don’t know what they are talking about. I get that a LOT here in Montana.
We included small samples of beef calves and domestic goat kids in our 2011 study which I attached so you can see the prevalence. Of 20 goat kids that I examined from several small herds for that study, every kid had a fairly severe underbite, making prevalence 100% in 2009 in the small sample. You can share this information with whomever you want.

I will send the study by Wetransfer.

I hope this helps.

All the best,
Judy


What about India ?

Question that remains to be answered is, what about India? Glyphosate has penetrated into the Indian landscape, legally or illegally, through a combination of corruption among chemical pushing agents and government officials in pushing it where it should not be used, along with ignorance of unaware farmers, abject lack of control or supervision by the Government of India, and possible tacit collusion by the pesticide industry.

However, we shall not know the extent of the damage unless one starts vigorous investigation and record keeping of the conditions of newborn domestic cattle.

This will be an added item to alert Indians about, including elected officials. India needs its own Judy Hoys, just as Canada and every other nation does.

Another thing, please take pictures of calves with an underbite in India and send me, with date, location and any other relevant detail you can find. This will be important to track how much glyphosate and other toxins have already entered the food and feed of the pregnant cattle in India.

Tony Mitra