Pro PHC

It has been brought to our attention that in the article “A World At War: GMOs Infiltrate ‘Natural’ Foods”, we briefly mentioned that “most conventional crops grown on US soil have weed and bug killers genetically thriving inside of them and then get sprayed with even more harmful chemicals like Roundup on top of this” but we didn’t explain how this is possible.  Some readers have pointed out that Roundup is a broad-spectrum weed killer and generally kills everything it touches, and questioned how could it possibly be sprayed onto crops.  In this article we attempt to shed some light on Roundup, Monsanto, the company that produces it, and how this dangerous chemical can be sprayed onto your food crops.

Roundup is indeed a broad-spectrum herbicide, which is produced by US company Monsanto.  As our readers alluded to, Roundup is designed to kill a wide variety of weeds (in reality it kills most living things).  First introduced into market in 1976, Roundup has been the leading herbicide in the US since at least 1980.  The active ingredients in Roundup are a chemical called glyphosate, which is a herbicide Monsanto developed and patented in the 1970s and has become the most widely used herbicide in the US, and a surfactant called polyethoxylated tallow amine (POEA), which is under fire for its toxicity to wildlife.  What POEA actually does is increases the herbicide’s penetration into the plant’s cells; unfortunately it doesn’t stop there and has been shown to also increase the chemical’s penetration into animal cells, damaging any wildlife that may be subject to the chemical as well.

“How can a broad-spectrum weed killer like Roundup be strayed on food crops and not kill them?” we were asked; Well, herbicide is not the only product Monsanto produces under the Roundup name.  Since 1996, Monsanto has steadily been developing and producing their own line of “Roundup Ready Crops”.  These Roundup Ready crops, which now include soy, corn, canola, sugar beet, cotton, and alfalfa, have been genetically modified to resist Roundup and glyphosate’s fatal effect.  As we mentioned in a previous article called “A World At War: GMOs Infiltrate ‘Natural’ Foods”, over 93% of all U.S. soy products and over 86% of all U.S. corn products are Monsanto GMO, and almost all are certainly Roundup Ready.

Monsanto claims that their Roundup Ready system provides a more convenient, and efficient method of farming that allows for greater crop yield.  This may very well be true, but what they don’t mention is how dangerous both spraying our food with harmful chemicals like Roundup, and changing the genetic structure of our food actually is.  We’re not going to get into this process here, as we’ve discussed it before (please read “What Is GMO And How Is It Harmful?” for more on this), but we will highlight some of the dangers arising that are specific to Monsanto’s Roundup line of products:

1.  Similar to how pesticides are being shown to lead to the decline in bee populations, Monsanto’s Roundup has been linked to the population decrease of monarch butterflies because it kills the very plants that the butterflies use as a habitat and rely on for food.

2.  It has been recently discovered that Roundup Ready crops contain an organism that leads to miscarriages in animals.  This unknown organism, which researchers at Purdue University recently discovered while examining a Roundup Ready crop under a 36,000X microscope, is about the size of a virus, and can even reproduce.  We know very little about this rare breed of organism, which can cause disease in both plants and animals, and we have no idea just how harmful repeat exposure will be.

3.  The excessive use of Roundup in agriculture over the past 30+ years has been proven to lead to herbicide resistant superweeds.   These superweeds have apparently evolved over generations of repetitive exposure, and now show a resistance to Roundup and other herbicides, and because of this, they are increasingly difficult to kill.

4.  When you drench plants with any liquid, that liquid has to go somewhere, and often it ends up seeping into the ground, finding its way into our waterway.  Roundup is sprayed so heavily on crops today that it is found to be contaminating our world’s aquifers, wells, and springs.  It appears that we are eating these chemicals on our fruit and vegetables, and even drinking it in our water.  Roundup is so prevalent in our food today that one study found glyphosate in the urine of 100% of the patients it tested.

5.  As we’ve written is the case with antibiotics (Read: A Vicious Circle: Antibiotics Destroy Gut Health, Leads To Mental Illness), the consumption of genetically modified foods also seems to kill the good bacteria in your gut, which is linked to mental illness.  Some are pointing the finger at the proliferation Roundup Ready crops for the increase in depression and other mental illness seen recently in society.

We at Pro-HPC hope that this article clears up the confusion over the relationship between Roundup and the foods we eat.  Unfortunately for all of us, this relationship is far closer than it should be.  Before you sit down to your next meal, keep this article in mind and take a second to think about what you’re actually eating.

We wish you all the best in your quest for health.

Sources:

http://www.naturalnews.com/033772_Monsanto_Roundup.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/23/monsanto-roundup-ready

http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/new-research-finds-that-roundup-ready

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/03/monsantos-roundup

http://www.monsanto.com/weedmanagement/Pages/roundup-ready-system.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_(herbicide)#Genetically_modified_crops

http://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-roundup-ready-crops-decreased-gut-flora/

http://naturalsociety.com/monsantos-infertility-linked-roundup-found-in