4 ms·
He was using glyphosate as a weed-killer and getting it on his hands and feet. Way higher levels of exposure than any foods. Also if you're afraid of glyphosate
by nemo 3y ago
He was using glyphosate as a weed-killer and getting it on his hands and feet. Way higher levels of exposure than any foods. Also if you're afraid of glyphosate, the Roundup-ready crops are the ones to avoid especially - soy, corn, canola, sugar beets. There's no Roundup-ready wheat, oats, or nuts. (edit: apparently it's used as a desiccant so it winds up in cereals as well - lovely, though still there's no evidence it's got dietary effects).
I'm not really concerned about its dietary effects since there's no evidence there, but as an amateur entomologist the effects of Roundup on butterfly populations have been devastating - in the past milkweed was pretty hard to completely weed out by hand, but modern farming can clear hundreds of acres of every trace of milkweed with Roundup/glyphosate.
- Zigurd 3y agoRoundup is used to dessicate some crops to make harvesting more efficient.
- moberley 3y agoGlyphosate is sometimes used a pre-harvest dessicant with cereal crops like wheat in which case the Roundup Ready gene is not required.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoThe Wikipedia datalinks opines it's a practice banned in Austria and frowned upon by buyers in Canada. Spraying chemicals on crops to make them cheaper to harvest is enough evidence to convince me it's best to avoid all cereal products unless they're organic.
- szundi 3y agoLiving in eastern europe I have not seen butterflies for decades. Now they seem to be returning a bit.
- nemo 3y agoI keep records of butterfly sightings. This is the worst year I've ever seen by far. In a normal year queen butterflies are one of the most abundant migrants. So far I have seen 0. I've seen no swallowtails of any species at all, and massively reduced numbers of typical species or none. But that's because of the drought, not glyphosate.