Its presence in food should require labeling so that consumers can make an informed decision and the market can reach consensus. The world is big enough for everyone to disagree about what's safe to be in our food, and for everyone to still get what they want, but it only works with transparency.
Is there actually any consensus as to whether it does cause cancer, or how much you have to use it for ill effects? All I ever see in these stories are a list of lawsuits in CA (which doesn't count for much, TBH), various places it's been banned "as a precaution", and much rejoicing in the peanut gallery because bad things are happening to Monsanto.
Irrelevant considering the stuff glyphosate is mixed with, including emulsifiers, surfactants, stabilisers, buffers, solvents.
The cocktail is designed to protect the solution in storage and transport, make it easy to mix into batches for spraying, atomise cleanly when sprayed, but then cling to whatever it is sprayed on, then get absorbed into the plant quickly.
It is those chemicals which cause wet membrane irritation, chemical burns, skin irritation and inflammation, etc.
The glyphosate itself is basically harmless to humans and any effect it might have on gut flora is overshadowed by the damage RoundUp will do to your throat and gut on the way through.
Basically remember to follow the directions including appropriate PPE: gloves, dust/mist breathing mask and eye protection.
Given that gut flora is connected to everything and involved in many common conditions and more to come, I think that's pretty significant.
It's also further proof that Monsanto is full of shit, always deceiving and lying as much as they can get away with. How much is it going to take before we make them stop?
Just because we know it inhibits one specific enzyme does not mean we know that it will not inhibit any other enzymes.
Enzymes and other parts of biological systems often share similar modalities, and if glyphosate targets a shared modality, it would affect any compound that uses said modality.
This is false. Sufficient evidence was found in the 40s, but tobacco was seen as a threat by some scientists/doctors way before. And today we have a much better understanding of epidemiology, so any cancer glyphosate enhance would have been discovered already. And we did: NHL.
We knew earlier, but I'm sorry; I thought we were talking about actual proof, not lack of knowledge and/or marketing. If nothing could be used by the general public until 'proven safe' you would be living in a cave and discussing this via carrier pigeon.
Bayer owns Roundup at this point and it appears that Australia (note not Austria) in 2017 deemed that it doesn’t cause cancer... so this seems like a purely political move.
Australia's government is owned by argi-mining corperate interests. The ruling poltical party was founded by such creatures, and they all seem to retire into cushy lobbying positions for the same companies after the fact.
The ruling Conservative party ran on a platform of "removing green tape" and often defunds / disbands science institutions which are not friendly to their narrative.
If you read the court documents, you will see just like Johnson and Johnson, Bayer has been repressing science ont he subject for a long time.
I’m not saying it should or shouldn’t be banned. I’d still use it myself though although I tend not to because it takes ages to kill weeds when you can just pull them out, mow the lawn or mulch for instant results.
The patent on it (and the roundup-ready crops) has expired, so there is a strong financial incentive for the company behind it to ban it's own product.
The patent for Roundup has expired, which is why there are a lot of generic versions of glyphosate also now available. So this isn't really just about Monsanto / Bayer?
> The final assessment of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority in 2017 was that "glyphosate does not pose a carcinogenic risk to humans".
I couldn’t agree more. This is “Roundup”, primarily marketed by the most despicable rent-seeking companies that try their hardest to exploit asymmetric markets and push risk - including health risk - onto farmers.
Physical risk, economic risk of farming. Extremely unfair power dynamic between farmers and big agribusiness that sell to them. Just read the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page on this chemical.
For reference.. that’s pretty weak, they just suggest there is a positive correlation with a whole bunch herbicides in uncontrolled and unknown vectors.
I agree with the authors assessment that research should be done, but this is very far from conclusive.
>Glyphosate, which was totally banned by Austria’s parliament on Tuesday, is the world’s most widely used herbicide but there have been growing attempts around the world to stop its use.
There is no ideal “all natural” world. The truth is, you will not be able to feed 7 billion people without using pesticides. With glyphosate, we have a chemical that has seen use for decades in large amounts and even now the case for it actually being harmful to humans is pretty weak. What will happen is that because you need pesticides to support the crop yields necessary for 7 billion people, you will end up with a less well tested pesticide that will end up causing even more problems.
Probably, but the question wasn't 'does it work better?'. The question was 'does it work?'. The two are different in an important way.
Better is a very difficult quality to nail down in an objective sense. If I pay twice as much for something I expect I'll get a product of much higher quality. Is it better? That depends on how much I value quality.
I've got no insight at all into how farming works, but it the bottleneck might be any number of things rather than the pesticides. It is obviously better to keep the process cheap all else being equal, but there might be another way that works well enough.
The salient point is that people will use dangerous and less effective solutions if they're cheaper. Leaded gasoline is a good example. So when people suggest there might be alternatives to pesticides the answer is not automatically that pesticides are the best solution. They might just be the cheapest.
I the position that massive (and apparently unlimited) population is necessary and a foregone conclusion wasn't the default, perhaps things would be approached a bit better than 'what's the cheapest bulk solution' to problems...
Your video link focuses on alpine-region permaculture in Austria. Some of the biggest food security threats are in entirely different regions (Africa).
The effect of no herbicides on food production is negligible compared to the effect of eating too much meat. In fact a lot of herbicides are used just in the production of stock feed.
Truth is 7 billion people are an exponential bacterial like growth which under natural circumstances should collapse and is instead collapsing the entire planet and the rest of its living population with its tech to sustain its unsustainable growth... and arguments to humanism and capitalism are used to justify its ludicrous behaviour which is completely unnecessary and easily controlled through birth control.
Bring food supply in line with carrying capacity or destroy the planet, scientifically the options are simple, politically while espousing humanist rhetoric like how do we feed the hungry it's impossible.
Economic growth is the same as population growth. When the population increases consumption increase. Economic growth is increase in number of goods and services produced which leads to more consumption per person, which in most cases leads to greater use of natural resources per person. Hence countries in the West who have smaller populations consume much more than poorer countries with less economic development.
Most of those countries claiming to have replacement level fertility are still growing either through immigration or through economics. This is the case across the board... If they are not then they are considered in trouble as is the case with Japan.
we are far beyond any reasonable carrying capacity. i fail to understand why any mention of reining in population growth creates such a knee jerk reaction of rejection. if perpetuating the species is our prime directive, we are too far gone down the path of species destruction with uncontrolled population growth.
we are not just an apex predator. we are a super apex predator and by destroying habitat, we are literally eating the planet that is supposed to sustain us. we are dependent on every other species and environment(marine, terrestrial and all things environmental) for our survival as we cannot synthesise our sustenance..our current strategy is not akin to sitting on the top most branch and sawing the trunk away.
the destruction of habitat and the early indication of disappearance of several insect species should cause alarm. we can extend our life span and freeze our genetic material. this is exactly what we must do to stop self inflected genocide and preserve what remains of our planet.
this entire planet is drenched with glyphosate. every human being and fetus yet to be born will test positive for glyphosate. it is found in breast milk of mothers. it has destroyed soil biome and by extension, human biome. there is finally some validity to the transhumanist values i had tentatively held for decades now. we cannot survive unless we genetically modify ourselves because we have modified our habitat and environment so drastically. we are no longer the species we were meant to be...by design. by our own design. but even at any H+ revival of our species, we will still need to respect this misshapen rock that seems to be..by all known accounts..the only place that supports human life as we know it.
> We are far beyond any reasonable carrying capacity. i fail to understand why any mention of reining in population growth creates such a knee jerk reaction of rejection.
Two reasons.
1. The last time eugenics, and population control was a mainstream ideology, it culminated in things like WWII, and the Holocaust. For various reasons, that's not a road people are particularly interested in going down again.
2. The wasteful habits and tastes of rich nations are are the reason we are in this mess. It is unreasonable to expect poor nations to to sacrifice to fix the problem we have created. Especially when the richest 25% of the world (Which, for odd reasons, is never the target of people talking about population control) currently consumes 50-70% of the world's resources.
> The wasteful habits and tastes of rich nations are are the reason we are in this mess.
All the poor nations of the world would be as bad or worse given the opportunity to do so. There is no enlightenment in poverty. There is no moral high ground there either considering the amount of environmental damage that happens in poor countries like India at the hands of 1+ billion people.
Also: our current mode of procreation without saving our genetic material is not recommended as a planetary threat or mass extinction event can leave us severely compromised.
For sure..a cataclysm or mass extinction event will..by definition..wipe out most if not all of the world’s living organisms..but we should be focusing on diverting our existing resources to living better to find solutions to save humanity and species survival rather than scraping by and hanging by a thread..hoping that mutations and sheer numbers will keep us going.
1. but trying to rein in population to save habitat has nothing to do with eugenics or hatred.if we dont stop procreating at this rate, all of us will perish.
2. i disagree. the wasteful rich will never create as big a carbon foot print as the countries with the billion+ population: india and china.
our carrying capacity is anywhere between 500 million-2 billion. in 1600s, we were 500 million. that would be a start. if everyone had 1/2 surviving child quota, we can get to that number in about 150-200 years.
Consider this...how much of the world’ resources are used by the various countries to export to the rest of the world.
China supplies most of the manufacturing muscle to the whole world including India. Also consider this...the foot print of India is much less because the resources are all used up. The older the country, the less natural renewables remains..
I am from India myself and I realize that their carbon foot print is certainly less than America even with what I said above..but 1+ billion people is simply not sustainable in a land which is water and power and resources availability is challenged.
The entire world should adopt the 1/2 surviving child/person quota that is non transferable so we can maintain diversity in the gene pool and across cultural/socio-economic/religious segments.
Population grows exponentially. That’s what the OP meant(I assume) with the comparison of human population to bacteria. The geometric progression will eventually explode within a constrained environment. And if resources aren’t available to continue, the die off will likely begin(I am not a microbiologist tho)..
Does it matter which country one is from...species extinction is species extinction. We can arrest the speed and/retard the progression and explosion and die off sequence with strict population control quota across the board.
Starting with 1/2 surviving child/person. We are all going to live longer or we can..but we can’t if we insist on living like it’s 1900.
In 1981, population was 700 million vs 1.3 billion in 2016.
World population in 1981: 4.4 billion. World population in 2016: 7.4 billion.
2.2 replacement rate is still too high for India.
China stats are at a more slower rate due to the one child policy. It wasn’t perfect and that’s why we need to incentivize rather than act punitively.
If the US or China or even Europe or Africa has the accepted 2.1 replacement rate, they can manage due to land mass and resources..India is tiny and we are already bursting at the seams.
While the US can claim to reduce population because it’s a ‘problem’..it’s a full blown crisis in India. The future generations will suffer. I can’t see the rationale.
When one compares the quality of life benefits to low density living, it is baffling that current generations want their descendants to suffer and perish.
> If the US or China or even Europe or Africa has the accepted 2.1 replacement rate, they can manage due to land mass and resources..India is tiny and we are already bursting at the seams.
The current lifestyles of US, Europe, and China are only 'sustainable' thanks to unsustainable import of non-agricultural resources from the Middle East, South America and Africa. And that's not even getting into their addiction to carbon-derived energy.
Example: if we stop all trade. US/China/Europe can grow food, have enough water and take care of existing citizens.
India is running out of water. I think it’s time to stop having multi children families. Communal living should be in and nuclear families must be out.
FWIW: I grew up in an Indian joint family. Even as an only child, I never missed having a large family or siblings. The rationale behind large families is having kin and bloodline. This is acutely felt in nuclear families. I always say that I was raised by four mothers. All my cousins are my siblings, as far as I am concerned. Perhaps that would provide some psychological salve to the loneliness of nuclear families.
You are right. I don’t think it’s sustainable. A lot comes the other way too by way of industry and technology. It’s not a one way transfer.
But ..regardless..that is not a reason for a overpopulated country to compete with under populated counties and insist on rationalizing more children/person.
its both. that's why so called organic breakfast cereals have traces of glyphosate.
i am keen about automated farms and it will never be realised as long as we have 1000 acre farms that feed us. food has to be local to a certain extent and supply chains should be shorter. of course, not everything can be local. we have created a very efficient way of delivering food to 7+ billion people but commoditising food has destroyed our canvas that is the basis of all life. we need a paradigm shift and this is only possible through automation, robotics as we localise most of our food needs.
i also believe..in my heart..that we will have to transform and tinker with our DNA rather than tinker with our environment which has proved to be costly and rather inefficient.
For example, US PIRG tested 20 beer and wine brands and found that 19 contained glyphosate, but how does the consumer know? https://www.ecowatch.com/glyphosate-beer-wine-2630077686.htm...
Here's a page with citations to relevant research: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/