FTS001 Glyphosate & Roundup: Poison in Our Daily Bread

[00:00:00] Welcome to Fork the System, the biweekly podcast of GMO and Toxin Free USA. Join us for deep conversations about the systemic problems that prevent us from having the world we all wanna see, with a clean food system, healthy environment, fair markets, and good government. Our guests will include individuals who think outside the box and aren’t afraid to rock the boat, who inspire change. Subscribe to GMO and Toxin Free USA’s YouTube channel so you don’t miss an episode of Fork the System. You can also listen to Fork the System everywhere podcasts are available.

[00:00:33] Nomi Carmona: Hi, welcome to “Fork the System”. This is your host Nomi Carmona coming to bring you the latest on billionaires destroying our environment and food system news in the U.S. with lots of deep dives along the way to help you stay informed and help us fork the system. I want clean water. We need healthy soil. We want all the world to be bee, butterfly and baby safe. It is so royally forked out there. So let’s get our environmental lives together and stop these toxic profiteers before they stop us. Joining us this week is our guest, Henry Rowlands, founder of Sustainable Pulse and the Detox Project. Also one of our beloved board advisors at Toxin Free USA. Henry has been an advisor on sustainable agriculture to a number of governments in the European Union. I’ve known him since I started Babes Against Biotech back in 2012. And we worked together for many years, tackling the world’s largest chemical companies. He was brought up on a family run sheep farm in Wales and then got his connection kicked off to sustainable agriculture. And from working as a journalist, he came to start Sustainable Pulse which now educates about a million people every month or more from over 125 countries. I literally don’t know how he does everything that he does. He seems like a hundred men in one with everything that he works on and he seems to always be creating something new. So I’m sure he does way more than we know. We are so grateful for his work and happy to have him here. Henry, welcome to Fork the System.

[00:02:05] Henry Rowlands: It’s wonderful to be on Nomi. Thank you very much for inviting me.

[00:02:10] Nomi Carmona: Always a pleasure. It’s been a long time. I think we first met probably online in 2012 and linked up. I want to talk about your new report from the Detox Project. But before we get into that… Have you heard anything else coming out about Roundup news lately?

[00:02:31] Henry Rowlands: There’s all sorts of things happening. There’s a huge study going on at the moment in Italy, which I hope we’ll have some results out soon- actually the most comprehensive animal study that’s ever been done on glyphosate and Roundup. So both the active ingredient in Roundup and Roundup itself. And so we should get some news out of that soon, which will hopefully move the needle a bit on changing how the scientific community, or the mainstream scientific community, which is basically the community that works for the agrichemical companies. It will change the discussion a bit just because of how comprehensive it is. So that’s one thing to keep an eye on.

[00:03:13] Nomi Carmona: Helpful, because a lot of times I can’t help but notice Monsanto, now Bayer-Monsanto, always refers to glyphosate, but there’s been some evidence in prior studies that when glyphosate is mixed with all these other so-called inert ingredients, that it can actually become more toxic. So I always notice when Monsanto is like “glyphosate is perfectly safe”, they’re not talking about the formulation in Roundup.

[00:03:38] Henry Rowlands: Exactly. Exactly. So that’s why I think the global glyphosate study will be very interesting. Other things… basically there seems to be a kind of groundswell of lots of different regional groups now, around the world, started working on the subject of trying to get rid of Roundup or glyphosate based herbicides from their local communities, which I think is massive. I’ve just been talking to some groups in the UK. I know there are lots of groups across the U.S. and Europe who are starting to form a regional battle against Roundup and I think that’s fantastic. It’s a real important step because I think when local communities become aware of the problem, some of the local governments struggle to cope with all of the information that they get given, often are able to move much faster than some of the national governments who have been delaying taking action for many years. So it’s really good news.

[00:04:38] Nomi Carmona: And why be so focused on Bayer-Monsanto’s Roundup and glyphosate? Like why is that such a big problem?

[00:04:46] Henry Rowlands: I think we all know that there are hundreds of toxic chemicals out there and in agriculture, hundreds of pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, but Roundup and glyphosate based herbicides have basically formed the base of the whole agrichemical business. It’s a chemical that has been used in the creation of GM crops, basically as the main chemical that they make money from. The focus is simply that Roundup has formed a really important role in destroying sustainable agriculture. And that’s why I think so much of a focus on it. There are many other even more toxic pesticides out there. But glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world by far. But also because I think getting rid of glyphosate would cause massive damage to the current, unsustainable model of agriculture, and also the companies that have been profiting from the environmental and health damage that it’s been causing over the years. That’s why the focus. I think it’s very rare for a whole business model, a multi-billion dollar business model, this current agricultural system, to be based on one chemical. And it’s their weak point. So that’s where we’re targeting.

[00:06:08] Nomi Carmona: Yeah. And that feels urgent because aren’t all the weeds that they’re trying to get rid of, and bugs, developing resistance to glyphosate and Roundup?

[00:06:20] Henry Rowlands: Even they’re struggling now, right? Which is really interesting because, obviously, there is lots of consumer interest and there’s more scientific interest in the problems that glyphosate based herbicides are causing. But now, because there’s so much problem with superweeds, which have developed, basically, immunity to the use of glyphosate. So they don’t get killed by glyphosate anymore. Even the farmers are starting to struggle with just using glyphosate. That doesn’t mean they’re moving away from using the chemical because they’re now just starting basically to mix glyphosate herbicides with other herbicides, such as Dicamba, 2,4-D, to look at creating something that’s more toxic and that will create more environmental and health damage. So it doesn’t necessarily, it’s not necessarily a good direction that lots of the agricultural communities moving in, but hopefully we can guide them in the right direction over time.

[00:07:13] Nomi Carmona: Yeah, and speaking of heading in the right direction, you started something called the Detox Project. Can you just tell us about that? What is it? Why did you start it?

[00:07:24] Henry Rowlands: Sure. So basically, because I worked as a journalist before, in a few different news agencies in Europe and it was always really interesting to look at the lack of information on general exposure. So when we were writing… how many people are exposed, what type of exposure, what kind of damage is that exposure causing? And there were never ever any answers to that specific problem. And so when I’d been working on Sustainable Pulse for a few years, looking at different news stories from around the world, I thought it was about time that we started to find out more about exposure. And the Detox Project, which I started in 2014, was basically at first looking just at exposure in the human population. So we worked a little bit with UCSF, University of California, San Francisco, looking at what the American population is exposed to regarding levels of glyphosate. And we did one of the first studies on how much glyphosate was in people’s urine. At that stage it was found that there were about 80 to 90% of the population in the U.S. had some form of glyphosate exposure. So there was glyphosate in their urine, which was quite shocking because there haven’t been any cross-referenced studies on the general population’s exposure before then, really only studies on, for example, farm workers or small groups had been done. So that was fascinating. We then moved into different forms of testing for the human population. So we tested blood. And then we moved into hair testing. So we’re now testing people’s hair from different parts of the world.

[00:09:17] Nomi Carmona: Why make the switch to hair testing? Does that give you more information?

[00:09:22] Henry Rowlands: Hair testing is fascinating, right? Because hair testing gives you a much longer exposure window. So it tells you which chemicals you’ve been regularly exposed to over a six month period. Whereas urine in testing, for example, really only gives you your last week of exposure, which is not necessarily what is causing for example, health damage. Because most health damage to toxic chemicals is not caused by one-off exposure at low doses. It’s caused by regular exposure over a long period of time. And so hair testing gives you a better picture of that, the neuron testing does. We’ve been concentrating on that for the last three or four years now with a laboratory in France that sends out kits all over the world. Not just for glyphosate, also for many other pesticides and now, plastic pollutants and heavy metals as well.

[00:10:16] Nomi Carmona: Right. Because now microplastics are in our bodies also.

[00:10:20] Henry Rowlands: Yeah, microplastics and also the chemicals from plastics such as PFAS and phthalates, bisphenols like BPA.

[00:10:28] Nomi Carmona: PFAS is definitely on our list of nightmare chemicals, “forever chemicals”.

[00:10:33] Henry Rowlands: Exactly. Exactly. So the bigger picture we get of exposure, the more we can educate people. But also just to give you the main reason why we have focused on human testing is because there’s so much information out there and Nomi, from the time we’ve been working together, there’s just a like constant information on this topic that goes out all over the place, which is great. But, just because everyone’s swamped with all sorts of different types of information nowadays, it’s easy for people to ignore. And so the whole aim of testing the general population was to make things more specific to the person. So in other words, that they will actually take action because they realize that it’s affecting them. And that’s why we focused a lot of our work onto that. Yup.

[00:11:24] Nomi Carmona: Can anyone contact you to get tested through the Detox Project?

[00:11:28] Henry Rowlands: Yeah, so basically it’s an online process. We just promote the laboratory’s work that is focused on hair testing and also food, water and soil. It’s basically an online order process on the Detox Project website.

[00:11:44] Nomi Carmona: Wow. It looks like something I want to look into. I’d certainly like to know exactly what’s in my system too. Okay. So you just came out with a report as well, “The Poison In Our Daily Bread”. Is that a name? What is the report about? Why did you pick that name?

[00:12:02] Henry Rowlands: Everyone’s talking about the name of the project, so it must’ve been a good one. Basically we wanted to focus minds, right? I think one of the huge issues that we have is that essential foods, things like bread, haven’t been tested much. To see what kind of chemicals there are in them. So we wanted to do something on the foods that are regularly eaten, especially plant-based foods. So you’re talking bread, lentils, beans, wheat based, oat based, pea protein based products. Things that are becoming more and more popular as well. So we wanted to look into the general exposure that we all get from them specifically to glyphosate. And we’ve done smaller reports before, looking at, for example, pea protein, cereals, all which found high levels of glyphosate in multiple products.

[00:12:56] Nomi Carmona: Oh no.

[00:12:59] Henry Rowlands: Yeah. That’s basically the idea of the report is to do as comprehensive a testing process as we could possibly do, with limited funds as normal. We actually went and collected samples from five of the major grocery stores, all in the Midwest. And we picked the Midwest on purpose because it’s, as we like to call it, ground zero for toxic chemicals, just because of the farming systems in the Midwest, which use huge amounts of glyphosate and other pesticides. And so we went to Walmart and Target and Whole Foods. We bought some products on Amazon and also Natural Grocers, which is slightly smaller. And a local grocery chain called Hy-Vee. And we bought products off the shelf and sent them to the lab to be tested. It was quite a labor intensive process because we wanted to pick products that were really across the range. So, from organic to conventional, to non-GMO, to products which contain GMOs, just to get as wide a possible results span as we could. We tested across the board and we were looking at products basically that could be pre-harvest sprayed. So we were looking at products that were most likely sprayed within two weeks of the harvest of the ingredients that went into them. And just to outline what pre-harvest spraying does, basically pre-harvest spraying, or desiccation, is used to ripen the crop faster, or to dry it out so that it can be sent to the mill quicker. So that the whole process is speeded up for the farmer and for the processor. It’s something that only started really, en mass, in the early 2000s. Before then farmers used to send, for example, wheat and oats and corn to the drying mill. So they had drying bins, which were located across the country, in the U.S. and elsewhere. And that’s how the process was done to dry out the crops. Then farmers started to realize that if they use glyphosate or other pesticides like diquat, paraquat, that they can actually dry the crop out quicker, that way not have to send it to the drying bins to be dried. And it’s an off-label use, so actually it’s not meant to be, glyphosate based herbicides are not meant to be used as a desiccant or pre-harvest spray, but now they’re regularly used, especially in the moister climates like in the north of the U.S. or Canada. They regularly use within two weeks of harvest. So obviously, when they use close to harvest, it’s likely that they’re going to get into the final product. So when we tested, for example whole wheat, any forms actually of whole grain bread, they had the highest levels of glyphosate of all the products we tested. And we’re convinced that the only reason that could be happening is because of that pre-harvest spraying. And surprisingly to us, also a lot of the Non-GMO Project Verified products were quite high in glyphosate. And some of the products in Whole Foods, some of the breads, and Whole Foods being a more, let’s say healthy alternative. Some of the other grocery chains also had quite high levels. So yeah, that’s what we, that’s what we found. But we tested, I think it was over 80 products. So it was quite a range.

[00:16:36] Nomi Carmona: Wow. Yeah, you see the Non-GMO label and I just always think, oh it’s non-GMO, but you’re basically telling me you probably have a lot of pesticides since you haven’t made it organic.

[00:16:47] Henry Rowlands: Absolutely. It’s not just the problem that the Non-GMO Verified system, or any non-GMO label, was set up for the specific reason to enable consumers to avoid GMOs. Which is a great, which is a great thing. And it’s been amazingly successful, which has raised awareness, more than even most campaigns have, on GMOs in general. Which is only a benefit to public health. So they’ve done a wonderful job. It’s just that I think consumers have a little bit of a misunderstanding about the difference between organic and non-GMO, and that’s causing a bit of a problem, whereas it’s quite obvious that organic will protect public health more than the non-GMO does as a label, purely because organic massively reduces the amount of toxic chemicals that people are ingesting. Yeah, it’s just a, it’s just an awareness thing, I think.

[00:17:41] Nomi Carmona: Definitely interesting because the chemical companies have often used as a talking point, the label is law. The label is the law. But they’re using it off-label at such a high level that it’s contaminating, and sounds like, quite a bit of our wheat products at least. Why wheat? Why oats? Why are those majorly sprayed, majorly desiccated crops?

[00:18:07] Henry Rowlands: Sure. Oats and wheat, and some other things like potatoes, are generally the crops that need the most drying, or the most desiccation in this case. So that’s the reason basically. Not to say that wheat and oats are the only problem. Because of course, things like GMO soy, which is sprayed very regularly with Roundup and other glyphosate based herbicides also contain high levels of glyphosate. But wheat and oats, currently in the U.S. at least- although there is some GMO wheat being grown in Argentina now for the first time- but basically, wheat and oats are non-GMO. And it’s interesting that they’re causing a major problem with glyphosate in the food supply. Something that we wanted to draw attention to as much possible.

[00:18:56] Nomi Carmona: The beginning of the report starts with a pretty powerful quote. I’m just going to read it. This quote says, “The terms glyphosate and Roundup cannot be used interchangeably. Nor can you use Roundup for all glyphosate based herbicides anymore. For example, you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen. We have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement. The testing on the formulations are not anywhere near the level of the active ingredient”. And that is coming from Donna Farmer. She’s Monsanto’s lead toxicologist. Why open with that?

[00:19:39] Henry Rowlands: Good question. I think basically, it’s amazing for the lead toxicologist of Monsanto to have admitted. It’s the major problem that we face on all pesticides, which is the formulations are not tested by the regulatory system. So the people who are meant to be protecting us, the regulatory agencies, whether that’s the EPA in America, or EFSA in Europe, or FSANZ in Australia, wherever it is in the world, these regulatory agencies are meant to be protecting public health. And they simply don’t if they’re not testing the product that is sprayed or the products that are sprayed on our food. Their ignorance, and this is not that they don’t know, it’s just that they choose not to know, that the full product is more dangerous, in many cases, than just the labeled active ingredient, is a failure, right? It’s basically them failing to do their job. And so that quote basically blows the arguments out of the water of both the agrichemical industry and the regulatory agencies that only the active ingredient needs to be tested. And it should be pushed for, across the board, that all pesticides have to be tested, have to have safety tests on the actual product that is sprayed on our food.

[00:21:08] Nomi Carmona: Yeah. So what all did the report uncover? What are like the highlight findings of the report?

[00:21:16] Henry Rowlands: I think the main things that we looked at were one, the problem of desiccation, pre-harvest spraying, and how much, that’s causing regular exposure to the general population, two, that lots of non-GMO labeled products have high levels of glyphosate, and three, having a look at all of these essential foods that everyone’s eating every day, and looking at what exposure levels they have in them. And so when we’re looking at whole wheat, oat based products, everyone should be aware that they should be focusing on buying organic or, specifically in this case, Glyphosate Residue Free certified products, in that sphere. So in the whole wheat and oats, pea protein, and by the way, one thing that I haven’t mentioned is that also some sorts of spices, like cinnamon, are regularly sprayed and as a drying agent with glyphosate, even after harvest. Some of the highest levels that we’ve ever found are actually in spices. The general population being able to concentrate on organic, Glyphosate Residue Free certified products in that area, would help public health a lot. So I hope that’s what the report will point out as much as possible.

[00:22:32] Nomi Carmona: We shouldn’t have to work this hard to have safe, clean food. We need regulatory overhaul. Like you said, the EPA is not doing its job or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

[00:22:46] Henry Rowlands: It’s true. And even on a local level, right? Local food agencies are basically failing, even though they know what the problem is, which is the worst issue, but everyone knows what the problem is. No one really wants to try and fix it.

[00:22:59] Nomi Carmona: So you found glyphosate basically in almost all the products. It sounds like even the non-GMO and organic? Did organic companies?

[00:23:08] Henry Rowlands: Organic this time… because in our first testing a few years ago, actually, organic wasn’t so good. But organic this time, in these specific products, was pretty good. It showed that the majority of organic products had either low levels or non-detect levels of glyphosate in them. So that was a real big positive for me coming out of that report, because in a previous testing and in background testing that we’ve done, two, three years ago, there was more glyphosate in the organic products. So that’s going in the right direction, which I hope means that some of the organic brands are now regularly testing their products.

[00:23:44] Nomi Carmona: I hope so too. I hope that means they got the memo from a few years ago. And I have to wonder how this is affecting how things taste when it’s layered in glyphosate and Roundup.

[00:24:00] Henry Rowlands: Sure. No, it’s interesting. I know there’s been some testing on French wine that was done. They did blind testing and they found that the people could actually identify when wine had levels of pesticides because the taste was worse. So this is really interesting.

[00:24:17] Nomi Carmona: Wow. Okay. So Detox Project does glyphosate testing too, or works with the lab. Like do companies come to you and get certified as glyphosate free?

[00:24:29] Henry Rowlands: Yeah. So we started, I think in 2017, certifying brands as Glyphosate Residue Free, and it was quite slow to begin with. I think we had three or four brands in the first year. But now we’re closing in on a hundred plus. I think it’s over 5,000 products. So the whole idea of the certification was just basically to increase the number of brands that test regularly. That’s what we want everyone to do.

[00:24:58] Nomi Carmona: So does a brand come to you and have different products tested and get a certification for each product?

[00:25:04] Henry Rowlands: Yes. Yes, exactly. And that’s exactly what they do. So they basically pay a one-off annual fee and it covers as many products as it wants certified. And they send their products to a third party laboratory. And then we receive the results and we also spot check to make sure that they’re glyphosate residue free by buying those products off the shelf. That’s how the system works.

[00:25:29] Nomi Carmona: What are the standards for the glyphosate testing?

[00:25:33] Henry Rowlands: Yeah, so basically we rely on the European and Japanese maximum residue limit for default products. In other words, they haven’t got a maximum residue limit written down, which is 10 parts per billion, which is the generally reliable level of detection for glyphosate. So anything above 10 PPB which comes back and reports, can’t be certified. We’re basically a non-detect certification. Anytime there’s a detection at that LOD, we can’t certify the product.

[00:26:04] Nomi Carmona: And then you’re testing at multiple times a year with the spot checks?

[00:26:09] Henry Rowlands: Yeah, exactly. Each brand has to test at least three times a year on each of their certified products. Plus we do spot checks as well.

[00:26:16] Nomi Carmona: Have any organic companies failed the test?

[00:26:19] Henry Rowlands: That would be telling. Yeah, they have. Multiple brands have failed the testing process and we try and then help them to get in compliance, to see what the problem is in their supply chain, where there are issues, how we can look at solving it. They often change their supplies and get their suppliers to start testing. So it’s like a waterfall effect, which is really exciting. It’s like seeing how you can push the supply chains to actually be better.

[00:26:46] Nomi Carmona: That’s nice to hear. The other end of that is actually helping them get glyphosate free because I feel like so many things are a mess in the manufacturing process. I think we maybe just have to take it one thing at a time. Getting glyphosate out would be a huge move for a large amount of our food supply. Is there anywhere that people can see a list of all the companies that have certified glyphosate free products? What’s the name of the certification?

[00:27:16] Henry Rowlands: Yeah, it’s Glyphosate Residue Free is the certification and it’s on the Detox Project website. Again, there’s a searchable list on the certified products on the website.

[00:27:27] Nomi Carmona: Okay, great. We’re going to take a really quick commercial break and we will be right back. Thank you.

[00:27:37] Stop dicamba from becoming the next glyphosate. Dicamba is a toxic cancer causing, volatile herbicide sprayed on GMO crops, can actually go back into the air after it’s sprayed and spread even further. Dicamba drift from herbicide tolerant, GMO soy and cotton is destroying millions of acres of food crops that we eat every day. It kills everything from trees to home gardens, and organic farmer’s ability to bring their food to market if it’s contaminated by dicamba. It is extremely hard to track harmful drift and can cause cancer even 20 years after exposure. Demand the EPA ban dicamba now at tinyurl.com/StopDicamba. That’s StopDicamba, D I C A M B A. Now.

[00:28:27] Nomi Carmona: And we are back. Thank you so much, Henry Rowlands. Okay. Quick question. Before we go any further, why is glyphosate showing up in organic foods? Do you have any thoughts on that? Any theories?

[00:28:42] Henry Rowlands: Yeah, there’s a couple of thoughts. One, is if it’s showing up higher levels, I would imagine that it’s coming from supply chain issues. That could be anything from fraudulent behavior, so in other words, something called swapping out, which is when in the supply chain, conventional foods basically put in the mix with organic and sold as organic. So that’s one issue that happens in certain supply chains. We suspect that was happening majorly in the pea protein supply chain a couple of years ago, because when we tested it, it seemed like there was consistent high levels of glyphosate and other pesticides in pea protein products that were being labeled as organic. And in other products where there’s the occasional level, usually at lower levels, it could be from things like spray drift, right? So from drift from neighboring farms that gets into the final product. But again, these are not regular things in the majority of organic supply chains. There are some specifics that organic supply chains that have issues. In fact, a strange fact is that the highest level of glyphosate we’ve ever seen detected was in an organic product, which was in an organic labeled cinnamon product. It was just cinnamon, sorry, wasn’t a product, was basically organic labeled cinnamon. And it was over 70,000 parts per billion in two or three samples that were tested. But generally the organic supply chain is much, much cleaner than any other type of certified supply chain apart from Glyphosate Residue Free, of course. But yeah, that’s what we’ve seen.

[00:30:15] Nomi Carmona: Wow. So chemical industry and the government, which seems like they work together often, they’re talking about safe levels or tolerance levels for toxic chemicals, like glyphosate, in our food, and our water, in our bodies. What is a safe level of glyphosate really mean?

[00:30:35] Henry Rowlands: It’s a huge question because it relates not only to glyphosate, but to all toxic chemicals. Basically at the moment, what happens is safety tests are done on the active ingredient, which we’ve already covered, is not the correct thing that should be done. They should be doing the actual final product. But when they do test the active ingredient, they test it on animals. So they test it in rat studies, mouse studies, and they find a level that is causing specific damage to those animals. They then divide that number by a hundred and they come up with a safe level. And that level is basically what they put as the safe level for glyphosate or for any other toxic chemical.

[00:31:23] Nomi Carmona: Sounds so arbitrary.

[00:31:25] Henry Rowlands: It does sound arbitrary and in reality, from a toxicological point of view, it is arbitrary, right? Because in the early 2000s, a group of scientists, including Dr. Laura Vandenburg, who’s been working on endocrine disruption for a long period of time, found that there is not a linear response for safety. So the agrichemical company rubbish that they have been coming up with of “the dose makes the poison” is actually not true. The nonlinear response meaning, means that the hormones of animals and the hormones of humans are affected not in a linear way, from the point of view that if at a very high dose causes a problem and at a low dose doesn’t cause any problem. In fact, what they found is often low doses can be just as damaging when consumed regularly, as high doses of the same chemical or vice versa. It actually changes depending on the chemical. The fact that there is not a linear response and hormonal effects, whether these be estrogen affecting or androgen affecting. The idea is that if there’s not a linear response, you would have to do animal safety studies or general safety studies at low doses of these chemicals, which have never been done. So there have been no low dose, comprehensive safety studies of glyphosate or, indeed, that I know of pretty much any pesticide out there. Without doing those low dose safety studies, we don’t know what levels are safe or not. That means, just using the precautionary principle, we should wait to use any of these chemicals until we have multiple dose from very low to very high, comprehensive safety studies done on the final products that are sprayed on our food that get into our environment, that get into our water. Until that’s done, all of these chemicals should actually be stopped from being sold and that’s the regulatory agencies job. Not many people also know that regulatory agencies do not do any testing themselves. They rely almost entirely on studies that are done by the producer or manufacturer of the said chemical, which is obviously open to all sorts of fraudulent activity. It’s a ridiculous system.

[00:33:55] Nomi Carmona: The fox guarding the hen house. Hey, Monsanto, is this safe? And we’re like, yeah, it’s really safe.

[00:34:00] Henry Rowlands: Yeah, here are studies done by the scientists that we paid. It’s an insane regulatory system. If you explained it to an alien, they’d laugh at you. And so basically, right, the whole system has to be changed. To change the comprehensive testing, to make all testing independent, and for all of it to be publicly funded. In other words, that you either have publicly funded completely by the public, by the general public, or you have funds that are directed by the agrichemical industry into a pot that is third party controls, so they have no control over. And so that the study is totally independent. And that’s what we’ve been calling for for years. It’s fallen on deaf ears.

[00:34:45] Nomi Carmona: Is that the case in Europe as well? Or is that a strictly the level of corruption in the U.S.?

[00:34:51] Henry Rowlands: No. It’s the case all over the world. The regulatory system is set up to protect the companies that are causing environmental and health damage and have done for the last 50, 60 years.

[00:35:01] Nomi Carmona: The lobby is so strong and we just can’t afford to buy politicians at the level that they can.

[00:35:07] Henry Rowlands: Yep. And the solutions are easy. Basically, one is that we can complain as much as we like to the regulatory agencies. But it’s unlikely that they’re going to listen. So the solution is that we change the brand world, right? We change the world that we live in from a point of view of production. And we make the brands responsible for the farming practices that create the ingredients that they use and that, that is slowly changing. So there’s some positives on that front, as well as supporting independent science as much as possible to raise awareness. So those are the two main things that we work on.

[00:35:42] Nomi Carmona: Have you seen any evidence of a decline in the use of glyphosate desiccation since you started this work?

[00:35:51] Henry Rowlands: Yeah, actually, there’s been some positives. There’s a huge Canadian multinational called Richardson International, which is one of the biggest food businesses, from the point of view of, I think oats, wheat- I’m not sure if other things they produce- who banned desiccation I think two, three years ago. They’ve slowly phased out the use of desiccation in their supply chain. You’ve had Kellogg’s starting to talk about doing the same by, I think, I can’t remember the date, maybe 2025. Was it…

[00:36:23] Nomi Carmona: 2025. If that’s just greenwashing.

[00:36:26] Henry Rowlands: It could be, no, it could be, Kellogg’s has had a terrible history of not looking after consumers. But there is some positive moves, whether that be in some cases, greenwashing, in some cases, reality. And we have certainly found in some supply chains that the levels are going down, and that is probably because desiccation is being put into contracts from the brand downwards. When we started this whole process of looking at brands, brands often didn’t have any connection to the farmers, right? None at all. There were no contracts going forward, going through, regarding food safety, from brand all the way through to farmer. Now we’re starting to see, because of obviously the publicity that some of the brands have got, the bad publicity, and legal threats, that they’ve startedto take responsibility for their supply chain more. And that’s really nice to see and can only be pushed as far as we can. People who were interested in protecting the health of their families basically should be pressuring the brands that they buy regularly to do regular testing, and to make sure that they have a transparent supply chain. That can, that will change things far faster than regulatory change will.

[00:37:40] Nomi Carmona: It’s time for another quick commercial break. And when we come back our final segment on what you can do. So stay tuned.

[00:37:48] One thing we’re constantly being asked at Toxin Free USA is where do we shop? We know how hard it is to find non-toxic everything. So we have very carefully chosen to share our favorite things and companies we love and trust. Not all the brands have affiliate programs, but most of them allow you to support Toxin Free USA while you shop. From the best organic mattresses and self-care, to our favorite foods, check them all out at toxinfreeusa.org/affiliates.

[00:38:17] Nomi Carmona: And we are back. Okay. So what can people do to help protect organic foods from glyphosate contamination, to help advance the goals of getting glyphosate out of our food systems? I would think we’d just touched on this a little bit in terms of pressuring the brands, is that the main action? What are options from the master of fighting glyphosate?

[00:38:46] Henry Rowlands: I think one of the main points is, as I just said, is definitely pressuring the brands. I think if you have brands that you purchase regularly, contacting them on social media where they spend loads of time on Instagram, however sad that is, they spend a lot of time doing publicity on Instagram, pretty much all of the brands out there now. Contacting them on social media and asking them for test results, asking them to test, asking them to certify, is a huge benefit for us all, right? Because brands react very quickly to a few people asking them a question, because they know that a few people asking means thousands more are interested in the subject. So that’s one main feature. And I think the other thing is, on the local level, is to start getting involved in local governance. Whether that be school boards, whether it be getting involved in talking about what’s being sprayed in your local community, on parks and gardens. That’s also a massive awareness raiser and something that can be easily done. I would call for everyone to ring the EPA and tell them that they’ve done a terrible job, but I don’t think that’s going to work very well.

[00:39:58] Nomi Carmona: We still try every day.

[00:40:00] Henry Rowlands: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I hope they improve, right, over time.

[00:40:04] Nomi Carmona: We might need like a whole new, I dunno how much lipstick you can put on a pig here are pretty far gone, but we’ll, we will continue to give it a try. We’ve been trying to get Kellogg’s to get their food together and clean for kids for years and they don’t listen. But maybe now that they’ve made this 2025 commitment, I dunno, maybe we can dare them to do it by 2023. We’ll keep trying for sure.

[00:40:36] Henry Rowlands: Absolutely. And I think some of the medium and smaller brands often change quicker just because of the size of their supply chain. Yeah, that’s the main things that I would definitely focus on from a point of view of action.

[00:40:48] Nomi Carmona: Yeah, what we can do. How has this report been received so far? Are you getting any traction, any conversations out of it?

[00:40:56] Henry Rowlands: Sure. We changed our tact a little bit from our previous reports, which would definitely focus on trying to reach as bigger public audience on this one. We went for the food industry news sector. So we looked at Food Dive and Food Navigator, things like this, which are looked at by all of the brands. And we thought, let’s focus directly on the things that they read, the brand managers, PR managers for the brands, the CEOs, you know, the investors in food brands, and to try and make sure that they can get the message, as much as possible. And we’ve got some good traction there in that space, which was exactly our target. We’ve had a little bit of industry coverage and we’re aiming to get some more over the summer so that’s the approach.

[00:41:39] Nomi Carmona: That is all very exciting news. It has been so good to have you on, so wonderful to have you. Thank you so much for joining us. The system is so forked and we really need a regulatory overhaul of everything and the meantime to get us food sovereign as we can. So we really appreciate that education. We’ll be looking for those Glyphosate Residue Free certifications. And, just quick question, before you go, where should people find you and follow your work?

[00:42:13] Henry Rowlands: Cool. We focus a lot of our attention on our website, www.DetoxProject.org and on our Instagram, which is Detox Project on Instagram and, not so much on Facebook anymore, but we’re still there.

[00:42:28] Nomi Carmona: You’re speaking for a lot of us there.

[00:42:30] Henry Rowlands: I know

[00:42:31] Nomi Carmona: Going downhill.

[00:42:33] Henry Rowlands: Becomes a sad place to be. And yeah, so that’s the main places to find us. And I’d like to thank you too, Nomi, because your wonderful work in Hawaii influenced a lot of the work we do all over the world. It’s just been wonderful to connect again.

[00:42:47] Nomi Carmona: That means so much to me. I’ll be happy to come on your show anytime you have one. So welcome. Thank you so much, Henry. Have a wonderful day.

[00:42:59] Henry Rowlands: You too, thanks.

[00:43:03] That wraps up this episode of Fork the System. Be sure to subscribe to GMO and Toxin free USA’s YouTube channel and visit our website at gmofreeusa.org to sign up for our email newsletter, stay on top of the things you need to know to Fork the System. You can follow us on social media at GMO Free USA on all platforms. And if you wanna follow me at Nomi Carmona, that’s N O M I C A R M O N A on all platforms. To view transcripts of this podcast, submit a guest idea, or share some juicy news you want us to cover, visit gmofreeusa.org/podcast or email us at podcast@gmofreeusa.org. You can also just send us a joke about those forked up systems, and we might just tell it on the air. That’s it for today. Thank you so much for listening. Let’s get out there and fork it up. We all need to eat, and we certainly can’t count on these overlords. So see you next time. Thanks, bye.