UPDATE: In Search of CLEAN FOOD - Feb. 17, 2016

[Oscar]

FDA to Start Testing for Glyphosate in Food

[ http://civileats.com/2016/02/17/fda-to- ... e-in-food/ ]

The federal agency already tests for residues of many agricultural chemicals on food. Now it will include the widely used weed killer linked to cancer.

By Carey Gillam on February 17, 2016

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the nation’s chief food safety regulator, plans to start testing certain foods for residues of the world’s most widely used weed killer after the World Health Organization’s cancer experts last year declared the chemical a probable human carcinogen. [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/28/busin ... .html?_r=1 ]

The FDA’s move comes amid growing public concern about the safety of the herbicide known as glyphosate [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/opini ... -pigs.html ], and comes after the U.S Government Accountability Office (GAO) rebuked the agency for failing to do such assessments and for not disclosing that short-coming to the public. [ http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-38 ]

Private companies, academics, and consumer groups have recently launched their own testing [ http://www.reuters.com/article/us-food- ... 9H20150410 ] and claim to have detected glyphosate residues in breast milk [ http://civileats.com/2015/07/30/is-ther ... east-milk/ ], honey, cereal, wheat flour, soy sauce, infant formula, and other substances.

FDA officials dubbed the issue “sensitive” and declined to provide details of the plans, but FDA spokeswoman Lauren Sucher said the agency was moving forward to test for glyphosate for the first time in the agency’s history.

“The agency is now considering assignments for Fiscal Year 2016 to measure glyphosate in soybeans, corn, milk, and eggs, among other potential foods,” she told Civil Eats. Soybeans and corn are common ingredients in an array of food products and genetically engineered (or GMO) varieties are commonly sprayed with glyphosate.

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Experts call on feds to re-evaluate the world’s most heavily used herbicide

[ http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ ... or-science ]

Health scientists—in a review of the published data on glyphosate—see a “desperate need” for federal regulators around the world to revisit the herbicide's health impact

February 17, 2016 By Brian Bienkowski Environmental Health News

U.S. and European health officials need to take a fresh look at assumptions about the safety and health impacts of glyphosate herbicides, according to a group of health scientists worried about the chemicals’ explosive worldwide growth.

A scientific review [ http://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/arti ... 016-0117-0 ] released Tuesday warns that use of glyphosate has skyrocketed, growing 15-fold in the 20 years since "Roundup Ready" genetically engineered crops were introduced. Government health agencies, they said, have failed to adequately monitor how much of the herbicide is getting into food and people and what impacts it might be having on our health.

“It’s time to call on the global science and regulatory community to step back and take a fresh look at glyphosate since everyone on the planet is or will be exposed,” said senior author Charles Benbrook, an agricultural economist and consultant at Benbrook Consulting Services.

Use of glyphosate in herbicides has increased exponentially since it was first used in the 1970s, according to the review. The study, published in the journal Environmental Health, was authored by 14 health scientists mostly from universities. Pete Myers, founder and chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, publisher of EHN.org, was the lead author of the report.

Glyphosate, known most famously as Roundup but also sold under a variety of brand names, is the most heavily used farm chemical in the history of the world. Across the globe roughly 9.4 million tons of the chemical have been sprayed on fields since 1974. Nearly 75 percent of that use has come in the last 10 years, according to a separate report Benbrook issued earlier this month. [ http://enveurope.springeropen.com/artic ... 016-0070-0 ]

That growth, said scientists reviewing the data, means government benchmarks and safety levels are out of step with the reality of exposure risk—for both the public and the environment.

Federal health agencies—such as the U.S. National Toxicology Program, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment—simply haven’t kept up, according to the report.

“Since the late 1980s, only a few studies relevant to identifying and quantifying human health risks have been submitted to the U.S. EPA,” the authors wrote, adding that such assessments need to be based in “up-to-date science.”

Glyphosate—a key ingredient in many weed-killer herbicides—works largely by inhibiting a plant enzyme that doesn’t exist in mammals, so it was initially thought the chemical posed little risk to humans and other vertebrates.

However, evidence has been mounting that exposure to glyphosate may not be so innocuous. The U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2011 found glyphosate in 90 percent of 300 soybean samples, and the UK Food Standard Agency found it in 27 out of 109 bread samples in 2012.

It’s been linked to liver and kidney problems [ http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ ... -toxic-gmo ], birth defects, and it potentially disrupts the proper functioning of hormones. In recent years, scientists have increasingly suspected it might be at least partially behind a widespread kidney disease epidemic in Sri Lanka and parts of India and Central America. [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945589/ ]

Last year the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in March changed glyphosate’s status from a “possible” to “probable” human carcinogen.

One of the main gaps identified in the report is the lack of endocrine disruption testing, said Frederick vom Saal, University of Missouri biologist and co author of the report. There is increasing evidence that glyphosate may impact human hormones, which can spur numerous later health impacts.

"Since the late 1980s, only a few studies relevant to identifying and quantifying human health risks have been submitted to the U.S. EPA."- report authors

Standard federal testing is mostly done by dosing lab animals with high amounts of a chemical, and then looking for obvious impacts such as changes to organ weights and other malformations, said vom Saal. “Very little is done in the way of looking at developmental issues.”

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[ http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ ... or-science ]


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Asia watches as GMO legal challenge threatens Philippines food supply

[ http://www.reuters.com/article/us-phili ... SKCN0VP0TE ]

MANILA | By Manolo Serapio Jr and Enrico Dela Cruz February 16, 2016

A legal challenge to the Philippines' rules on genetically modified organisms is threatening to spark a food crisis in the country and could cloud the outlook for GM technology around Asia.

Government agencies are scrambling to set new regulations on GMOs by Feb. 23 after the Southeast Asian nation's top court late last year demanded an overhaul of existing rules, halting GM planting and issuance of new GM import permits until that was done.

The Supreme Court was acting on a petition by environmental activists led by Greenpeace, with the move likely to be closely watched by governments elsewhere as the Philippines is seen as a trailblazer for GMO.

The country was the first in the region to allow planting and commercialization of GM corn, which it did in 2002, and has permitted GM crop imports for more than a decade.

"Our framework has served as a model for GMO regulatory policy to other countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and even some Latin American countries," said Merle Palacpac, chief of the plant quarantine service at the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI).

"We have the first functioning regulatory framework in Asia. So I am sure whatever happens here, they are closely watching."

With some current import permits starting to expire from March and corn farmers set to begin sowing in May, five government agencies are pushing to sign new rules by next Tuesday to avoid disrupting food supply in a year when voters will choose the country's next leader.

"We need (new rules) to be in place as soon as possible. Otherwise there will be chaos," Palacpac added.

Global agribusiness giants Monsanto Co and Syngenta AG are major suppliers of transgenic seeds to the Philippines. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

ANTI-NATIONALISTIC?

The government said the new rules are expected to tighten environmental scrutiny before biosafety permits are issued, addressing one of the loopholes the Supreme Court cited when it voided the old rules, in place since 2002.

They will also require more documentation from suppliers of GM products, according to an importer who participated in past public hearings on the issue.

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"Since the Philippines began cultivating and commercializing GM corn, there hasn't been a single review by the government in terms of the effect on the environment and farmers," said Greenpeace campaigner Leonora Lava. "Our call now is for an impact assessment."

Lava, who also opposes GMO imports, questioned the speedy way in which the new rules are being drafted. The government launched public consultations on the regulations on Jan. 22, with another public hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

"The concern here is a regulation of national significance. Why the haste?" she said.

Greenpeace is yet to decide whether it will launch a fresh legal battle when the new GMO rules are introduced, said Lava.


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Scientists just found another key threat to global food security

[ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... -security/ ]

By Chelsea Harvey February 16 at 11:40 AM 

With the world’s population expected to exceed 9 billion people by the year 2050, producing enough food for everyone is a top concern for global policymakers. And now, scientists have pointed out another threat to global food security. In a new study in Nature Communications [ http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/16021 ... 10696.html ], a group of researchers concluded that the world’s grasslands are going to need a lot more phosphorus — an important nutrient for plants — if they’re going to produce enough grass to meet future food demands.

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Phosphorus is naturally present in soil in a chemical form known as phosphate. It can cycle through a grassland system by being taken up by a plant, being eaten by an animal and then returning to the soil via that animal’s manure (or through its decaying organic matter, when the animal dies). But because phosphate is found in relatively small amounts in most soils, it often acts as a kind of limiting factor for grasslands and other plant systems.

Adding phosphorus-containing fertilizer to the soil can boost a system’s productivity — but that kind of fertilizer is becoming less and less readily available. That’s because such fertilizers require large amounts of phosphate rock, which must be mined from the earth. And there’s only so much of it left on the planet.

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