Let’s talk about glyphosate

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If you think you’ve seen and heard the word “glyphosate” used in the news a lot lately, you’re not wrong. Prepare to hear a lot more about this synthetic chemical compound — the world’s most widely used weed killer.

Glyphosate (pronounced gly-foss-ate) has been around for a long time. It was first patented in the U.S. by the Stauffer Chemical Company as an industrial descaling and chelating agent. It was patented again in 1974 by Monsanto, who discovered its weed-killing properties and brought the product to market under the brand name Roundup.

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Glyphosate made international headlines in August 2018, when an American jury found Monsanto’s weed killer, Roundup, and more specifically the active ingredient, glyphosate, of causing 46-year-old former school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson’s cancer. Johnson was initially awarded US$289 million in damages.

Judge Curtis Karnow, who presided over the case, cleared the way for the jury to consider allegations that Monsanto had long been aware that glyphosate-based herbicides might be carcinogenic but that they had sought to suppress the evidence and influence the scientific literature in order to prevent liability, just as the tobacco industry had once done to suppress evidence that cigarette smoking caused cancer.

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Monsanto immediately appealed the verdict, saying it was based on junk science.

Following their appeal, Bayer (the new German-based owner of American company Monsanto) was ordered to pay US$78.5 million to Johnson. Since the landmark verdict, more than 9,000 similar lawsuits have been launched. This is expected to be merely the tip of the iceberg. In all, the bill for compensation is expected to be well into the tens of billions of dollars.

Glyphosate is not just used as a weed killer, it is also the most widely used agricultural “herbicide” in the world and used to drench crops prior to harvest – to promote drying and increase crop yield. It’s also used extensively on most genetically modified plants, which are bred to be “Roundup ready.”

You might wonder why weed killer matters in a food column. The simple answer is that glyphosate is showing up virtually everywhere in the food chain. It’s in crops, including oats, wheat, barley, corn, soy, sugar, canola and legumes; in fish, animals and bees; and in fruits and vegetables. It’s in our breakfast cereals, our baby food, in our drinking water, and even in human breast milk.

In the majority of cases, the levels of glyphosate residues found in food were deemed to be within currently accepted safe levels. The fact remains, though, that we don’t actually know what constitutes a safe level of human glyphosate consumption. This is especially concerning given a recent Danish study that suggests the possibility of bioaccumulation of glyphosate in internal organs.

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And as if all this weren’t bad enough, recent research from around the world adds glyphosate to the list of threats to the global bee population.

Monsanto initially declared glyphosate to be safer than salt. But in December 2013, a paper in the journal of International Toxicology proposed a link between glyphosate and celiac disease and gluten intolerance. In 2015, theWorld Health Organization declared glyphosate a probable carcinogen. And a plethora of research papers in international journals suggest links between glyphosate (or the chemical soup that it is part of) and cancer — particularly non-Hodgkin lymphoma but also other types of cancer, as well as conditions including autism, obesity, allergies, gastrointestinal diseases (including IBS, IBD, colitis and Crohn’s disease), Parkinson’s disease, cardiovascular disease, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, and multiple sclerosis.

So what can you do if you want to avoid eating glyphosate?

1. Eat organics wherever possible.

2. Avoid genetically modified foods.

3. Wash all produce thoroughly and remove peel if possible.

4. Grow your own food or buy from local vendors at farmers markets.

5. Discard the skin from meat such as chicken, and trim and discard fat from all meat.

6. Eat a more varied diet.

7. Eat more sulfur-containing foods (including eggs, organic cheese, garlic and onions) because glyphosate depletes your body of sulfur. Sulfur aids in detoxification.

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8. Eat natural probiotics, including fermented foods – sauerkraut, kimci, kombucha, yogurt and apple cider vinegar.

9. Take manganese supplements – Roundup is proven to deplete manganese levels in plants and animals and low manganese levels can cause gut issues and cognitive decline, among other things.

10. Write to your local member of Parliament to ask for the labelling of products known to contain glyphosate. This is already happening elsewhere in the world.

Lindy Mechefske is the award-winning author of Out of Old Ontario Kitchens and Sir John’s Table. Contact her at lindymechefske.com.