GMO, Roundup & Wheat: Get the Facts | John Douillard's LifeSpa

GMO, Roundup & Wheat: Get the Facts | John Douillard's LifeSpa

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While wheat is not an approved GMO food anywhere in the world, Monsanto conducted experiments from 1998 to 2000 using GMO wheat in the Pacific Northwest. This variety of genetically-modified wheat, called MON 71700, was designed to be resistant to the herbicide, glyphosate, commonly known as Roundup.

In years since, GMO wheat has been popping up in wheat fields in Washington State, as the pollen from wheat is quite difficult to control. Recently, 22 unapproved genetically modified (GMO) wheat plants were discovered by a Washington state farmer. This was third time Monsanto’s experimental GMO wheat was found in farm fields in the past three years.

The first GMO wheat plants were found in Oregon in 2013, and this prompted Japan and Korea to temporarily ban the import of any wheat from the US. The USDA is testing wheat fields, as are farmers, to prevent the spread of these rogue GMO plants. Due to the small number of GMO wheat plants found, the USDA has stated that there is no threat of GMO wheat entering into our food supply.

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[whatelse]

Why the Monsanto add advertising their poison Roundup.

[gskibum]

Snip…

"Detailed investigation by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) uncovered some very strange facts. The GE wheat found in Alberta contained the same herbicide-tolerance (HT) gene (designated MON71200) that was field tested by the Monsanto Company (now Bayer) between 1998 and 2000, but those field trials were no closer than 180 miles from where the sample was found.

Most puzzling to the investigators, however, was that the genetics of the newly found wheat plant itself not only didn’t match any of the approximately 450 registered varieties of wheat allowed to be grown in Canada, but it didn’t match any wheat plant anywhere of which the Canadian authorities were aware.

Could the newly discovered GE wheat have escaped from a field trial and survived for nearly two decades? The findings of the CFIA don’t support that thesis.

The registered field trials with wheat containing the MON71200 gene were discontinued in 2000 as the company moved to newer, more effective HT genes. This means that the HT gene found in 2017 was either stored somewhere or propagated in the wild for 17 years before it was discovered on the roadside in Alberta. The official field trials were far away, so local escape of the GE wheat is not a realistic possibility. That’s strike one for the inadvertent-contamination theory.

Alberta winters are very cold, and exposed wheat seed is unlikely to survive well and spread. Still, if it was propagating in the wild for all that time, there should be many instances of it showing up in Canadian wheat crops, but the CFIA examined more than 170, 000 samples spanning several years and found exactly zero that contained the MON71200 gene.

Even if the herbicide tolerance gene did come from the original field trials, we are still left with the question, how did it naturally move into a new variety of wheat that does not exist in Canada? That’s strike two for the inadvertent-contamination theory.

The Alberta farmer on whose land the GE wheat variety was found never took part in the original field trials and when tested, his farm — fields, equipment and buildings — was completely free of the herbicide-tolerance gene.

Neither did this unknown wheat variety match the GE wheat used in U.S. field trials, so the “rogue” Canadian GE wheat could not possibly have escaped from any field trial in North America. Strike three for the inadvertent-contamination theory."

End snip.

[plarkin]

Do you think organic NOW brand sugar from beets has glyphosate in it?

[WXUZT]

As this Genetically modified crop is having Roundup resistance, it will contain more of Roundup residue. The possibility of getting Non Hodgkin's lymphoma will increase !!!

[charlesmrader]

I don't want to get involved in a pissing contest between organic food and GMO food. They both have their place. So let's just compare glyphosate tolerant GMO wheat (which, so far, is not in the food supply) and non-GMO non-organic wheat. Let's, for purpose of argument, accept the idea that glyphosate is bad for you. I'm not asserting that, just pretending that it is bad for you so that I can make a fair comparison between GMO and non-GMO wheat when neither wheat is organic.

The glyphosate for a GMO wheat field has one purpose, killing weeds so that the young wheat plants don't face competition, for water and nutrients, by weeds. The farmers therefore only apply glyphosate to their GMO wheat fields when the wheat plants are quite young, months before the grain is set. Between the spraying and the harvest, the glyphosate that reaches the eater is reduced by two effects. First, as time passes, several months, the sprayed glyphosate can degrade, can wash away, can be metabolized. So far less glyphosate reaches the eaten food than was sprayed. Second, as time passes the plants get bigger and the remaining glyphosate is diluted by being distributed throughout a larger plant. I don't want to put any numbers on this but it should be clear that both these mechanisms will greatly reduce the amount of sprayed glyphosate that ends up in food.

Now what about the non-GMO wheat? Whatever is done to protect the young plants from weeds, it certainly won't involve glyphosate. But there is another way that glyphosate can get into the eaten wheat grains. Many wheat farmers spray their wheat with glyphosate about a week before harvest. The reason they do that is to kill the wheat plants so that the not-yet-harvested grains will dry on the plant. It's necessary to dry the grain before harvest, otherwise it will go mouldy. This method is NEVER used with the GMO wheat because it simply would not work - the glyphosate wouldn't kill the GMO wheat.

So let's try to compare the glyphosate content of those non-GMO grains with the glyphosate content of the GMO wheat. The non-GMO wheat sprayed just before harvest has only a week to degrade or to be metabolized, instead of a few months. Also, the amount sprayed is more, because the big mature wheat plant is much bigger than the baby GMO wheat plant. The non-GMO wheat plant is killed, so there's no dilution of the glyphosate as the plant grows bigger.

Bottom line - you are going to get many times more glyphosate in what you eat if you eat a non-GMO (but not organic) wheat. That's the exact opposite of Mr. Douillard's implication.

To be fair, there are other ways that non-GMO grain can be dried before harvest and those methods do not involve use of glyphosate at all.