Researchers at Emory University have recently had a study published in the journal Public Health Nutrition that found that in comparison to organic milk, conventional milk samples contained more pesticide and antibiotic residues. In addition to that, some of the samples collected contained residue levels above the federally recognized limits for antibiotic residues. Study researchers explained…

To our knowledge, the present study is the first study to compare levels of pesticide in the U.S. milk supply by production method (conventional vs. organic)…It is also the first in a decade to measure antibiotic and hormone levels and compare them by milk production type.”

Fewer Pesticides, Fewer Antibiotics

The study looked at 69 total samples of organic (34) and conventional (35) milk from all different regions of the United States. Of the 14 pesticides researchers tested for, both organic and conventional samples tested positive for legacy pesticides, chemicals that are no longer allowed in the United States but remain in our environment and food supply (DDT, DDE, and hexachlorobenzene). In addition to those, conventional milk also contained atrazine, chlorpyrifos, cypermethrin, diazinon, and permethrin.

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

There was an even more clearcut difference between organic and conventional milk when researchers examined antibiotic residues. Organic milk samples did not test positive for antibiotics, while conventional milk samples tested positive for 5 different kinds of antibiotics, amoxicillin, oxytetracycline, sulfamethazine, sulfadimethoxine, and sulfathiazole. One of the conventional samples contained levels of amoxicillin above federal limits, while 37 percent of samples had higher than legal amounts sulfamethazine. Twenty-six percent of those samples also contained high levels of sulfathiazole.

Critics of this study have pointed out the involvement of The Organic Center, a non-profit research organization. Be that as it may, it’s hard to deny the facts. Organic milk has fewer pesticides and antibiotics, and some conventional milk contains verified unsafe levels of these chemicals.

Related: How to Eliminate IBS, IBD, Leaky Gut

Chasing the Pesticide Free Life

You would think that I would be urging you to live a pesticide-free life, seeing that this is Organic Lifestyle Magazine. And I will. Organic milk will always be better than conventional milk from the viewpoint of someone trying to avoid pesticides and unnecessary antibiotics in their food. It seems an added insult to conventional milk to reveal that some of that product isn’t even meeting the basic federal requirements for those chemical residues. But it’s difficult to realize that both types of milk contain pesticides banned in 1972 (DDT). These samples were collected in 2015, the same year the International Agency for Research on Cancer finally classified as “probably carcinogenic” and 43 years after the pesticide was banned. How pesticide free can we truly be at this point?

Sources:

• Production-related contaminants (pesticides, antibiotics and hormones) in organic and conventionally produced milk samples sold in the USA – Cambridge Core
• Study finds residue of pesticides, antibiotics and growth hormone in non-organic milk – USA Today
• New study shows that choosing organic is an easy way to avoid pesticide, antibiotic, and synthetic growth hormone residues in milk – The Organic Center
• The differences between organic and conventional milk – Feed the Wisely

The Trump administration wants to exempt many new genetically engineered crops from regulation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Trump wants it to be easier for genetically engineered plants and animals to enter the food supply. He signed an executive order on June 11th to have federal agencies simplify the “regulatory maze” for genetically modified food producers.

The administration says it wants to cut the cost of genetically modified crop development and exempt crops that have similar traits to plants that could be produced through hybridization (traditional plant breeding). GMO companies would be allowed to determine if their products are exempt from regulation.

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

The administration argues the approach will allow regulators to focus on ‘increasingly complex products which, in turn, may pose new types of risks.’ “

Bloomberg

Crops produced with the newer gene-editing technologies wouldn’t automatically be subject to special oversight under the proposed rule. GMO companies say gene-editing makes it so that they can easily and more precisely alter the DNA of plants and animals, and that these changes to the DNA could be done with conventional breeding techniques.

Jaydee Hanson of the Center for Food Safety warns that these new gene editing techniques can make significant changes, “including those that would never happen in nature,” and says that the companies need oversight.

The proposed rules are open for public comment through Aug. 5 before the department issues a final regulation.

The Trump Administration has been friendly to companies like Bayer (formerly Monsanto) in the past. In 2019 Trump’s administration lifted Obama’s ban on GMOs and bee-killing chemicals in wildlife refuges.

The hits keep coming for pharmaceutical giant Bayer and their popular herbicide Roundup as a California jury awards two plaintiffs $2.055 billion dollars in damages. The verdict came in the case of Alva and Alberta Pilliod of Livermore, Calif., who say that three decades of exposure to Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, are the cause of their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Each plaintiff received $1 billion in punitive damages and an additional 55 million in collective compensatory damages. Bayer refuted the jury’s findings in a statement released on Monday,

Bayer is disappointed with the jury’s decision and will appeal the verdict in this case, which conflicts directly with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s interim registration review decision released just last month, the consensus among leading health regulators worldwide that glyphosate-based products can be used safely and that glyphosate is not carcinogenic, and the 40 years of extensive scientific research on which their favorable conclusions are based.”

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

Not the Only One

This is not the first successful verdict against Roundup within the last year, all of them occurring in California. The first judgment was reported in August of 2018, where judges awarded $289 million in damages (later reduced to $78 million). The second happened in March of this year, where a San Francisco jury found in favor of plaintiff Edwin Hardeman to the tune of $80 million in damages.

California Dreaming

In every statement following the verdicts against them, Bayer has cited the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) classification of glyphosate as non-carcinogenic. Until recently, that was powerful evidence for the pharmaceutical corporation. In 2015, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer listed glyphosate as cancer-causing. There were strenuous objections from then Monsanto and the EPA, but emails released in an early 2017 lawsuit suggested that prominent employees at the government agency had suppressed research unfavorable to glyphosate. The State of California recognized glyphosate as carcinogenic in July 2017. Since then, lawsuits against the herbicide have gained increasingly more traction.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

Money on the Mind

Three juries have found in favor of plaintiffs vs. Bayer, and there are anywhere from 4,000 to 11,000 lawsuits pending. It remains to be seen if spending large quantities of money on court cases will be enough for Bayer to pivot to a different product or begin to take responsibility for their product. Monsanto made $1.9 billion in gross revenue from herbicide products in 2015. The current bill for Roundup cases is $2.213 billion dollars. Is it enough?

Sources:

• California Jury Awards $2 Billion To Couple In Roundup Weed Killer Cancer Trial – NPR
• Jury returns $2 billion verdict against Monsanto for couple with cancer — the biggest so far – CNN
• Bayer statement on jury’s decision in California State Glyphosate Trial – Bayer
• EPA Says Roundup Is Safe While Bayer Is Losing Millions In Lawsuits – Organic Lifestyle Magazine

Bayer finally got some good news after two recent major defeats in court. With more than 11,000 lawsuits pending, Bayer stands to lose billions, but at least the EPA is in its corner.

The lawsuits claim that glyphosate causes cancer. In March a federal jury in San Francisco awarded $80 million to Edwin Hardeman, a plaintiff with cancer. In August of last year, Bayer was ordered to pay 289 million to Dewayne Johnson, though the award got cut down to 78.5 million. Regardless, the EPA…

…continues to find that there are no risks to public health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label and that glyphosate is not a carcinogen.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Environmental advocates denounced the decision, and so did the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Agency.

Just weeks ago, the administration’s own officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry released a toxicology report for glyphosate, which confirms that exposure to the toxic herbicide is harmful to human health. ‘Health agencies and credible non-industry experts who’ve reviewed this question have all found a link between glyphosate and cancer,’ Sass says.”.

NRDC

Recommended: How To Heal Your Gut 

Right now Bayer is in the middle of the third glyphosate lawsuit. It’s a joint trial with Alva and Alberta Pilliod. Brent Wisner is representing the married couple from Livermore, California. They say that their 35 years of spraying Roundup on their residential properties gave them the disease.

The probability that both Alva and Alberta would get non-Hodgkin lymphoma is 1 in 20,000, Wisner told the 12-person jury in Oakland on Thursday. Their treating physician said it was so unlikely they would both develop the same cancer that an environmental factor like Roundup was the likely culprit.”

The Guardian

Alva was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2011. He has been in remission ever since, but he says the aggressive chemotherapy degraded his cognitive abilities. Alberta was diagnosed with the same cancer in 2015. She had a tumor in the middle of her brain. The chemotherapy left her with extensive brain damage and then she relapsed. She did more chemotherapy and is now said to be in remission.

In the lawsuit, Brent Wisner has made the explosive allegation that Monsanto used fake data to win over regulators.

The company planted one of its employees at a contract lab called Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT) in the 1970s to fake negative mouse carcinogenicity data for Roundup’s active ingredient glyphosate that were to be used to win regulatory approval for the weed killer in 1975; planned an attack to discredit the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer research agency, anticipating the agency would classify glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015; and exploited “deep connections” within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to classify glyphosate as non-carcinogenic.

The Guardian

Related: Gluten Intolerance, Wheat Allergies, and Celiac Disease – It’s More Complicated Than You Think

Glyphosate may increase the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma by 41%, but it’s not just cancer we have to worry about. A recent study showed that individuals who were exposed to pesticides were more than twice as likely to have heart problems including heart disease. Another recent study showed that prenatal exposure to glyphosate increased odds of having a child with autism spectrum disorder with intellectual disabilities by 30%. It also has been shown to cause tumors and birth defects.

And glyphosate is hard to avoid. Corn is often drenched in glyphosate, so are oats and wheat and many other very common crops. It’s been found in beer, wine, and coffee. In another study, it was found in 93% of urine tested.

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

Bayer bought Monsanto for 66 billion dollars in 2016. Since then Bayer’s share prices have been cut in half.

Bayer firmly believes that the science supports the safety of glyphosate-based herbicides, which are some of the most thoroughly studied products of their kind, and is pleased that the regulators tasked with assessing this extensive body of science continue to reach favorable conclusions.”

Bayer

A New Zealand company pled guilty to charges of adding artificial chemicals to their Manuka honey in order to charge a higher price for it.

New Zealand Food and Safety filed a lawsuit in 2016 against Evergreen Life Ltd after the company recalled 18 of its products. Everything recalled consisted of or contained Manuka honey, and the recall suggested the company had been adding dihydroxyacetone and methylglyoxal to their products.

Related: Healthy Sugar Alternatives & More

DHA and MGO

Both of these substances are crucial to the antimicrobial activity that is so highly prized in Manuka honey. Dihydroxyacetone (DHA) is found in the nectar of Manuka tree flowers, and it converts to methylglyoxal (MGO). The higher the levels of MGO are, the more potent the antimicrobial activity in the honey is. This translates to a more expensive product. While these chemicals naturally occur in Manuka honey, Evergreen Life Ltd has pled guilty to adding artificial DHA (often found in tanning lotions) to their products.

Supply and Demand

Manuka is a highly sought after medicinal product. But is there enough honey to meet the demand? Probably not.

In a 2014 article, the Independent reported that people in the U.K. consumed 1,800 tonnes of Manuka honey. That total is significantly less than the 10,000 tonnes consumed worldwide, but U.K. consumption was still greater than the reported amount of authentic Manuka honey produced: 1,700 tonnes. That math means that the majority of all Manuka honey sold is not genuine.

Recommended: How To Heal Your Gut

The organization behind those numbers, the Unique Manuka Factor Honey Administration Factor (UMFHA), has since introduced a Unique Manuka Factor (UMF) certification for Manuka honey. The grading system has been called into question, as the UMFHA is a paid membership trade association. There is also the MGO developed by professor Thomas Henle and used primarily by New Zealand based company Manuka Health. The KFactor grading system has been developed by the Wedderspoon company. These are not independent rating systems, and until recently that didn’t even matter. The New Zealand Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) only introduced the science-based definition of Manuka honey in 2018, leaving companies free to choose their own authentication methods prior to that decision.

Regulation and Reality

This is the service that government food and regulatory agencies are designed for. Often, the alternative health world has with stories of the USDA and FDA’s incompetence, but those agencies are responsible for food recalls and the reason we have labels on our food in the first place. The biggest problems with these agencies arise when they become bought and paid for, putting corporate profits and big business over the public, or when the agency is unable to keep up with the market. For instance, the U.S. regulating agencies still see no problems with Roundup – despite much evidence to the contrary.

Research is the reality of being a consumer in today’s world. We spend hours looking for the best possible product and hours looking into where it’s from and the history of the manufacturer. Yet today’s world has also gifted us that opportunity. You used to have to take their word for it.

Sources:

• Premium New Zealand honey producer admits adding chemicals: media – Reuters
• New Zealand brings first ‘fake mānuka honey’ prosecution – The Guardian
• Evergreen brand mānuka honey products – New Zealand Food Safety
• How to Find Real Manuka Honey (80% is fake) – Healthy Home Economist
• The Manuka Honey Scandal – Guardian
• FAQS – Wedderspoon
• Manuka Honey – Ministry of Primary Industries

On January 30th Tyson recalled 36,420 pounds of chicken nuggets due to potential rubber contamination.

A recall on 5-pound bags of “Tyson WHITE MEAT PANKO CHICKEN NUGGETS” that were produced on Nov. 26, 2018 and have a use-by date of Nov. 26, 2019 was issued after consumers complained of “extraneous material, specifically rubber” in the product, according to the press release.

Time

Pilgrim’s Pride Corp is owned by JBS S.A., a Brazillian company, which is the largest meat producer in the world. They also recalled about 60,000 pounds of chicken products due to possible rubber contamination.

The problem was discovered on Jan. 30, 2019 when the company was informed by Publix Super Markets’ employees about a consumer complaint regarding white rubber in the products.

USDA

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

On March 22 Tyson Foods recalled approximately 69,000 pounds of frozen, ready-to-eat chicken strips due to potential metal contamination.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) said here late Thursday it had received two consumer complaints of extraneous material in Tyson’s chicken strips and that there were no reports of illnesses.

Tyson is recalling all its fully cooked buffalo-style chicken strip fritters, crispy chicken strips and chicken breast strip fritters, which have a use-before date of Nov. 30, 2019.

Reuters

On April 3 Tyson Foods recalled about 20,000 pounds of ready-to-eat beef patties due to plastic contamination.

A Tyson unit, AdvancePierre Foods, is recalling ‘fully cooked flame-broiled beef patties’ after two consumers complained about soft purple plastic in the product, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service said the USDA on Tuesday.

The USDA categorized the recall as ‘Class II’, which indicates a remote probability of adverse health consequences from the use of the product.

Reuters

Perdue Foods, reportedly the third-largest American producer of broilers (chickens raised for human consumption) has had a couple of recalls of its own.

Must Read: How To Heal Your Gut 

On January 17th Perdue Foods LLC recalled their “Simplysmart Organics Gluten Free Chicken Nugget Products” because of potential “foreign matter contamination.”

The problem was discovered when the firm received three consumer complaints that wood was found in the product.

USDA

Then slightly more than a week later on Jan. 28, Perdue recalled more than 16,000 pounds of “Refrigerated Fun Shapes Chicken Breast Nuggets” due to “misbranding and undeclared allergens.”

Perdue Foods, LLC, a Bridgewater, Va. establishment, is recalling approximately 16,011 pounds of ready-to-eat (RTE) chicken nugget products due to misbranding and undeclared allergens, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today. The products contain milk, a known allergen, which is not declared on the product label.

USDA

That’s three recalls in four months so far this year for Tyson Foods, the world’s second largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork. And that’s one recall by JBS S.A., a Brazillian company, the largest meat producer in the world. And there are two recalls for Perdue Foods, the third largest broiler chicken producer.

Tyson and Perdue are also known for poor treatment of their animals:

• Many Companies Are Treating Their Chickens Better. Why Isn’t Tyson?
• Tyson Tortures Animals
• Frank Perdue’s Legacy of Animal Abuse
• Perdue Tortures Animals

A large study looking into how pesticides affect developing fetuses and newborn babies finds that the most commonly used pesticides may result in a higher risk of autism spectrum disorder.

The study, published in the BMJ, was led by Ondine von Ehrenstein, associate professor in the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California.

Researchers looked at the autism registry data and the pesticide use data in California. The study included 38,331 participants with 2,961 cases of autism.

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

Eleven “high use” pesticides were selected for examination. Ehrenstein chose these pesticides because previous research with animals found developmental (including fetal) and neurological issues.

Researchers looked at agricultural areas where these pesticides were frequently used. They found that pregnant women who reside within a 2,000-meter radius of such agricultural areas were much more likely to have children with neurological issues.

Prenatal exposure to glyphosate increased odds of having a child with autism spectrum disorder with intellectual disabilities by 30%.

Related: Autism Correlates with Circumcision

Exposure to the common insecticides chlorpyrifos, diazinon, permethrin, methyl bromide, and myclobutanil within the first year of a child’s life increased the odds for autism with comorbid intellectual disability by up to 50%.

 Findings suggest that an offspring’s risk of autism spectrum disorder increases following prenatal exposure to ambient pesticides within 2000 m of their mother’s residence during pregnancy, compared with offspring of women from the same agricultural region without such exposure. Infant exposure could further increase risks for autism spectrum disorder with comorbid intellectual disability.

BMJ

Recommended: How To Heal Your Gut

This is the largest study but not the first one to show a link between autism and pesticides. The video below is from four years ago: