The Round-Up On Monsantno's RoundUp

If you haven’t heard of Monsanto’s round-up, you might be living in a bubble. Despite consumers asking for more organic plant foods, our food industry has been monopolized by organizations like Monsanto, who control how our seeds are engineered and distributed and how are crops are raised. Our food systems are not as simple as they used to be. As the population grows, we are quickly eating through our resources in an attempt to feed ourselves. We are constantly in need of more plants to feed the animals that we eat and we also need more plants and animals to feed ourselves. One way of helping our food grow faster is by spraying crops with pesticides and messing with their DNA, or genetic material. We are injecting our animals with hormones to make them grow faster and feeding them with genetically modified grains.

Unless we are choosing to eat organic food, we are being exposed to foods that have been genetically modified and sprayed with pesticides. The most popular pesticide used by Monsanto is known as Glyph sate, and more commonly referred to as roundup. Although Monsanto insists that roundup is safe, there is a huge resistance to its use and mounting evidence to the contrary.

What Is Roundup?

Glyph sate is a broad-spectrum herbicide used to kill weeds and therefore protect crops and increase yields. Monsanto also introduced glyphosate-resistant crops, enabling farmers to be able to kill weeds, without killing their crops in the process. Roundup as it was named and adopted by Monsanto quickly became one of its leading selling products and by 2007, glyphosate was the most commonly used herbicide in the United States. The degree of Monsanto and roundup infiltration depends on your countries policies. In the United States, current so-called Roundup Ready crops include soy, corn, canola, alfalfa, cotton, and sorghum and now some wheat. Exposure to roundup can come from eating these crops, from soil contamination to other crops and also from eating animals that are fed roundup ready feeds. 

Is Roundup Toxic?

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in herbicide formulations that contain it, but other additives, also potentially toxic can be found in its formulations. Glyphosate has been identified as an oral and inhalation toxin at level III (on a I to IV scale, where IV is least dangerous). The United States Environmental Protection Agency requires glyphosate products to contain a label warning against oral intake and that handlers of glyphosate wear protective clothing and to not re-enter crop fields for 4 hours post use.

See Also: Genetically Modified Organisms: Are They Dangerous?

The Environmental Protection Agency considers glyphosate to be non-carcinogenic and relatively low in dermal and oral acute toxicity. So far studies have not found any associations between long-term low levels exposure to glyphosate and the development of disease. However, in 2009, a French court challenged Monsanto and accused them of lying and making false claims regarding advertising roundup as biodegradable and safe.

Are There Potential Side Effects?      

Since roundup is a relatively new ingredient, it is hard to quantify and qualify the effects on our health and the environment. In any event, here are some of the potential dangers associated with roundup usage. 

Environmental Issues

A major concern with farmers becoming too reliant on roundup ready crops is that other weeds and crops could become resistant to roundup.

In areas where roundup ready crops are grown in abundance, there is an issue of other seeds becoming contaminated. This makes organic farming almost impossible in certain areas, as seed contamination through various means is inevitable.

Monsanto has developed something called “terminator technology”, which renders the second-generation seeds from a crop yield in fertile. This means that farmers need to re-purchase round-up ready seeds each time they plant. They claim that this technology

Roundup Ready seeds have what is known as "terminator technology;" seeds that are grown for a second generation are sterile. Farmers need to purchase seeds from Monsanto each year if they want to continue to use their crops. Many cite the terminator technology as restricting and preventing farmers from reusing their best seed, requiring them to rely on the newest strain of Roundup Ready seed each year. Monsanto claims that the terminator technology is used to help prevent the spread of the glyphosate resistance to other species.

Health Issues

Most of the research into health issues surrounding the use of roundup have been published by two scientists, Anthony Samsel, a retired science consultant, and Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Another chemical commonly used in herbicide and pesticide formulations is 2,4-D, which is better researched than glyphosate and has been linked to ceratin cancers and may also affect the endocrine system leading to reproductive or neurological issues.

Glyphosate is believed to impair the cytochrome P450 (CYP) gene pathway, which makes enzymes that help to form and also break down molecules in cells. One function of these CYP enzymes is also to detoxify foreign chemicals like drugs, carcinogens or pesticides.

See Also: Are Bugs The New Food Craze? The Benefits Of Eating Insects, And Which Insects To Eat

Another concern is that exposure to genetically modified crops in general might cause allergies. Genes from one plant are introduced to other plants as part of genetic engineering. This means that people allergic to certain foods might react to a food that they were not previously sensitive too. For example Brazil but genes have been introduced into certain soybean varieties. This could spell unseen trouble for Brazil nut allergy sufferers.

The Bottom Line

Despite the potential issues surrounding roundup and glyphosate exposure, the general message being put out by Monsanto and the Environmental Protection Agency is that it is safe for human consumption in the levels found in our everyday food. For those concerned, protect yourself by eliminating foods and food ingredients that come from roundup ready crops, and eat animals that have been fed organically.