GMOs and Glyphosate (Roundup)

[Maria]

I never paid much attention to the GMO controversy before. It always seemed a bit silly to me. Things are always mutating. How bad could a little genetic shift be? Why the panic? I'm still pretty much that way, but I've come to be quite leery of Round up in the food supply.

This past summer I was helping my boss research current papers on gut bacteria for a seminar he was going to give at a local college. I'd been attempting to increase the biodiversity of my own gut bacteria, so was quite interested in the project. (Multiple rounds of different antibiotics had left me sadly deficient in that area- but that's a different story.)

Anyway, I ran across this paper : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24678255 It caught my serious attention right away, since I'm gluten intolerant. I got the full text version and read the whole thing and came away with several things to remember.

Glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) was also patented originally as an antibiotic and a chelator (binds minerals) .

Virtually all corn and soybeans grown in the US are now sprayed with Roundup as they grow, to keep weeds down. That's their genetic modification: roundup doesn't hurt them, but it does hurt the weeds.

Sugarcane is routinely sprayed with roundup as a ripening agent- makes it get sweeter just before harvest.

Lots of grains and legumes are sprayed with roundup just prior to harvest as a "crop dessicant" - mostly to kill the weeds in the field so they won't jam up the harvesting equipment.

I was immediately concerned because here I had been for months buying lots of different probiotics trying to get my gut bacteria healthy and to cut down on the chronic GI tract yeast infections I was having. Was I killing off good bacteria with virtually every mouthful of food I took in, with this antibiotic "glyphosate"?

It was disturbingly possible.

So, we made the conversion to all organic foods this summer. The cost!

The only difference I've noticed is an unexpected one.

For years, I've had to take lots of potassium tablets daily in order to keep from having both night time massive leg cramps and day time tiny painful muscle spasms in my hands and feet and lower legs. Several of you have expressed concern over this a while back, but I couldn't stop and still function.

After a month or so of all organic food, I tried stopping the potassium tabs (I've done this before, always with crampy results) . Nothing happened. I've gone several months now and the only time I've had to supplement is after I cheat and eat a probably roundup contaminated food. The roundup in my system is acting as a chelator and binding the minerals. Potassium in particular, it seems, although maybe the micro nutrients are lost as well.

Last night I had bacon with supper (you just can't get decent organic bacon!) and I had such an awful leg cramp in the middle of the night my calf is still sore this morning. I knew it was going to happen, and took 3 potassium tablets before I went to bed, but apparently it wasn't enough.

*sigh*

I know potassium can be dangerous, that's why they only make it in 99 mg tabs. It's annoying that stuff in my food can snarf up all the potassium and leave none for my bodily functions! Also, I have to take a fresh round of probiotics with every bite of food for days afterwards, or suffer a resurgence of the GI tract yeast.

I've since bought a couple of videos for my husband to watch on the subject, because he won't read science papers. "GMO OMG" was so pathetic we stopped watching after a few minutes. "Genetic Roulette" was much more science based, and interesting enough that we watched it to the end.

Neither movie made much of the chelation problem, but that's the most immediately apparent consequence to me. The antibiotic issue is also of importance, because having a good diversity of microflora is really important to just about every aspect of your health.

They do make much of the fact that "unnatural" molecules that your body doesn't know what to do with is in itself a problem, but I expect your body will excrete them if it can't use them. It's the overly high levels of roundup in the food supply that I worry about.

Well, I don't worry anymore. When I eat something round-up flavored, I take extra minerals and probiotics to compensate.

There's nothing much I can do about the farmers in the fields next to us growing round-up ready corn or soy and having a crop duster apply roundup several times a summer. The plane turns around right over our house!

[Frelga]

I used to work for a place that worked with farmers to minimize pesticides in foods, both conventional and organic, which was a fairly new movement back then. I remember that the crop spraying was an issue - sometimes lettuce from the edges of he fields would have twice or more the level of that in the center because it got the overspray from the neighboring field, and like you, organic farmers can't do anything about overspray from their neighbors. Just because they don't apply pesticides doesn't mean their produce won't end up with some.

[Passdagas the Brown]

GMOs are a difficult issue. They can be harmful when they are produced for resistance to pesticides (esp. roundup), as this encourage massive amounts of over-spraying.

But they are also critically-important when modified for drought resistance, particularly in arid and underdeveloped areas that will be experiencing more and more water stress due to climate change and other factors.

So for me, it's impossible to say: GMO bad! I can only say: GMO bad sometimes, good sometimes. It depends on how you use it!

[Maria]

I doubt that the genetic modifications are intrinsically *bad*. It's the fact that they allow the plant to be drenched in roundup that makes them dangerous.

I got concerned for my animals last summer, as well. We'd fenced in a new field, and turned our cattle out onto it. Through the middle of the area runs a wet weather creek that drains from the neighbors' soybean fields. At one point in the summer we were having trouble with a cow who wouldn't wean her calf, and separated the herd for a month. Half the herd was in a field away from the creek. The other half, including some young ones, had access to the creek water when it rained.

The half who drank run-off from the soybean fields had diarrhea problems all the rest of the season. I think the glyphosate was killing their gut bacteria over and over again. I'm going to have to time it next year so they do most of their grazing in the run-off available field before round up usage starts to be an issue, I think. And add another fence in order to be able to keep them away from the creek area.
(fencing isn't easy!)

[Passdagas the Brown]

Well, right. As I said, GMOs that are developed specifically to resist massive amounts of pesticides are a pretty serious health and environmental problem.

I just wanted to clarify the other varieties of uses for GM crops, as this issue is often simplified in the media.

[Maria]

I was actually agreeing with you. Clumsily.

[Passdagas the Brown]

[Impenitent]

I agree also, about both GMOs and Roundup.

Monsanto is one of the more villainous multinationals, IMO.