I thought this would be a pretty simple first blog post – Monsanto’s Roundup Contaminates More than Just the Food on the Store Shelves – but breast milk?

Nothing is supposed to be safer than breast milk. But as I looked deeper, I found a conspiracy, a profane alliance between industry, academia and the government.

As more facts come to light, industry and public research continue to soft-sell the dangers of GM crops and the herbicides that are so liberally soused on them. Residue levels of Roundup (glyphosate) are found to be increasingly higher on the food we eat, and what does the government do? It quietly raises the allowable residue levels on food.

So, it’s safe because they say it is, even though no research has been done to show it’s safe in the human diet. It is so pervasive, how could one study it?? Ninety-plus percent of the soy and 80-plus percent of the corn grown in the US are GM. This was Monsanto’s plan from the beginning, close to 30 years ago – to get it into the food system quickly, quietly so it can’t be stopped.

So, one might ask, what was the impetus that caused the Food and Drug Administration to raise the acceptable residue levels on food? Well, it was a petition from IR-4 Project, which is, to quote the USDA:  “Inter-Regional Research Project Number 4 (IR-4 Project, also referred to as the Minor Crop Pest Management Program) has been established since 1963 by the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service in coordination with the Environmental Protection Agency to assist in the collection of residue and efficacy data in support of the registration or re-registration of minor use pesticides and the determination of tolerances for residues of minor use chemicals in or on raw agricultural commodities.”

Interesting that most of the tweets on the IR-4 site are from CropLife America; and who are they? The trade group for agriculture biotechnology, Monsanto et al. So, do you think they might pull some weight? Is anyone surprised that they would want acceptable pesticide residue levels to be higher? The only thing better would be unlimited residue levels. Why not – who cares about safety when there is money to be made?

But back to the breast milk. Moms Across America and Sustainable Pulse did a pilot study, because they wanted to know if, or how, herbicides were impacting their health. Fair question.
They noted, in regard to their study, “The purpose of this glyphosate testing project is to shed light upon the presence of glyphosate in our water, children’s bodies and mother’s breast milk, hopefully inspiring further scientific studies to support the world in being a healthy, safe place to live.”

Here is the whole story – they knew it was not a scientific study; they knew the powers that be would ignore it; they were just moms concerned about the health of their babies. They hoped, I assume, that our fine land-grant universities would take up the challenge.

Public universities should be concerned about the health of babies, too. CropLife America, however, is mostly concerned about corporate profit. And FDA is concerned about?

What are the chances that a credible, peer reviewed scientific study on glyphosate levels in breast milk will be done, and why? What could be safer than mother’s milk? Well, nothing, as long as no one looks.