appal_jack
appal_jack's JournalRoundup - a converging pattern of toxicity from farm to clinic to laboratory
Roundup - a converging pattern of toxicity from farm to clinic to laboratoryDr Eva Sirinathsinghji / ISIS
25th February 2015
Glyphosate, perhaps surprisingly for a chemical so ubiquitously associated with our food, was not first used as an agricultural chemical.
Instead it was first patented as a metal chelator in 1964 by Stauffer Chemical company (US 3160632 A) and used as an industrial pipe cleaner.
(snip)
Glyphosate is teratogenic - according to Monsanto's own data
Monsanto's own toxicology tests submitted to the EU commission showed evidence of teratogenicity (see EU Regulators and Monsanto Exposed for Hiding Glyphosate Toxicity, SiS51). The submitted test reports describe rats and rabbits with skeletal abnormalities including the development of a 13th rib in offspring, as well as cardiac abnormalities.
Scientific studies such as that of the late Professor Andrés Carrasco reporting neural tube birth defects in frog and chick embryos exposed to agricultural concentrations of glyphosate have validated both Monsanto's findings and clinical observations (see also Lab Study Establishes Glyphosate Link to Birth Defects, SiS48).
Probing into the mechanisms underlying the defects, Carrasco discovered that glyphosate disrupted retinoic acid activity, a well-known regulator of developmental processes.
Much, much more in the full article:
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2769439/roundup_a_converging_pattern_of_toxicity_from_farm_to_clinic_to_laboratory.html
The author's organization, ISIS (no, not the Islamist Terrorists... the 'Institute of Science In Society') is often considered controversial, but has also been mighty prescient at times on GMO issues, etc. Posted here for discussion.
My own take thus far is that Glyphosate appears to be considerably less toxic than many other herbicides (Atrazine, 2,4 D, etc.). However, we presently use so much more glyphosate than any other herbicide that caution and further investigations are warranted. I certainly won't use the stuff on my own property, but many of my neighbors do.
-app
Did the GOP Just Give Away $130 Billion of Public Property
Did the GOP Just Give Away $130 Billion of Public Property?A giant Anglo-Australian mining company is getting the rights to a huge copper reserve - and we don't know what US taxpayers are getting in return.
In December, two Republican senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, pushed Congress and the president into giving away what could amount to over $130 billion in public property.
That's enough to provide every single unemployed American a minimum-wage job for an entire year. That's enough to pay for a year of tuition at a public institution for every college student in the US.
And yet the GOP big-shots call themselves "fiscal conservatives"! "Fiscal conservatives," my you-know-what.
I'm talking about the huge giveaway to the mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton in the Defense Authorization Act. It was splayed across ten pages of the bill, pages 441 to 450 (out of 697).
Much more at link:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/29182-did-the-gop-just-give-away-130-billion-of-public-property
Infuriating! The public comment period of the EIS seems like the main way to exert pressure on this, with letters to Obama & Vilsack also being worthwhile.
-app
Fraudulent labeling is already a crime.
The Hatch Act / DSHEA actually opened up a lot of opportunity to small-scale growers and herbalists. Between 2002 and 2010, I grew a number of different herbs and bottled and sold some tinctures locally, at a moderate profit. In my case, I marketed the tonifying herbs Ashwaghanda & Jiagulon, the mild sedative Valerian, some immune system boosters including Elder Flower and Boneset, and an expectorant / cough / lung remedy Elecamapagne. I had confidence in my tinctures, since I performed every step of the process: from growing, harvesting, and washing the herbs, to the alcohol and/or water extractions, to the bottling and labeling. People really liked them, and business was picking up.
But then the FDA imposed "Good Manufacturing Processing" (GMP) requirements on herbal tinctures. To keep selling them, I would have to process the herbs in a certified commercial kitchen, and keep a pile of paperwork on each batch and product. This paperwork should help to avoid mix-ups at the scale of a business that buys bulk herbs and sells product, but they were ridiculous for me. I chose not to do that, and quit selling tinctures.
However, these companies in the OP surely did pretend to comply with FDA GMP regs. Fat lot of good it did their customers: the companies just lied on their paperwork.
The problem is not the freedom that DSHEA affords small-scale, honest entrepreneurs. The problem is those businesses, whether large or small, who have no scruples or honesty. If someone is buying a bottle that says 'ginseng,' they should damn well get ginseng. DSHEA has little to nothing to do with this problem.
-app
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