By Zen Honeycutt, Executive Director, Moms Across America

My bed time reading is not the most relaxing these days.This week, I was once again perusing the Monsanto documents revealed during the discovery from the Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman lawsuit and came across this shocking admission:

I immediately wanted to know if UK scientist Dr Michael Antoniou had seen this email and what his response would be. Antoniou was the lead scientist of a team which discovered that Roundup full formulation caused non-alcoholic liver disease at an extremely low dose, far lower than what regulators permit and say is totally safe to be ingested on a daily basis.

Here was his comment:

“This is very interesting and indeed quite damning with even Monsanto expressing concerns about the potential liver toxicity of Round formulations compared to glyphosate alone.

We would certainly agree with them based on our recently published results!

From my side this makes studies comparing the toxicity of Roundup and adjuvants in formulations a matter of even greater urgency. If the adjuvants at real world levels of ingestion (and we know precious little about this right now!) are a serious source of long term toxicity then we are in even greater trouble than with any active ingredient such as glyphosate since they are found in all pesticides and a huge range of domestic products!” -Dr. Michael Antoniou

So to reiterate:

1. This is proof that Monsanto knew that the formulants could cause acute liver toxicity. How do they sleep at night?According to the Mayo Clinic close to 1 out of 3 Americans now has non-alcoholic fatty liver disease ( NAFLD) in America. The NAFLD diagnosis has skyrocketed in the past 20 years since GMOs and glyphosate were allowed on our food. In the past,to treat the 64 million Americans with NAFLD US government is spending 103 billion dollars a year. Currently the number have risen to 80-100 million.  The costs to individuals and families is not included in this figure.  If people I took care of had liver disease, I would be knocking on Monsanto’s door with a team of lawyers and a stack of medical bills.

1. Possible cover up revealed! Alachlor and Acetochlor were obviously similar to glyphosate and this email clearly indicates more lies, cover ups, and collusion to conceal the toxicity of chemicals used on our food crops. Scientists who are interested in the truth would be prudent to look into the Alachlor and Acetochlor studies and their “careful” handling of those results.

1. This final point is huge. The formulants being a source of serious long-term toxicity is even bigger than glyphosate herbicides being harmful. We have been after glyphosate herbicides like a dog on a bone because it is the most commonly used in the world and 80% of GMOs are engineered to withstand glyphosate. The fact is however, that the formulants, also known as the adjuvants or surfactants, or simply the other ingredients besides glyphosate in the herbicide product, are acknowledged by the Monsanto scientist to be an “issue” which would have to be carefully managed, clearly manipulated. The formulants are likely in every herbicide on the market! This means if we make headway with regulatory agencies, city councils, state health departments, and landscapers, that all of them will need to stop allowing all synthetic herbicides and pesticides with these co-formulants in them to be used altogether. This means, just as we have been calling for, the End of the Chemical Era. The beginning of the organic regenerative!

Here’s what you can do to protect your family and our country from further harm by toxic chemicals.

1. Share with your local farmers the good work of farmers like Gabe Brown, Joel Salatin, John Kempf of Advancing Eco Agriculture. Ask you farmer’s market farmers to farm organically and regeneratively.  

2.Contact the EPA at 703-308-8187 and demand that they revoke the license of glyphosate immediately. Ask them to improve their policy to require final formulation safety studies!

3. Grow, buy, eat and protect organic. Tell your Senators and Representatives that you want organic standards protected and for the US government to allocate more funds in the Farm Bill to organic farming.

To counter the enormous amounts of money and propaganda the GMO and toxic chemical proponents put out, we must be more active, more vocal, and expect more from our elected officials.