Once a word that most reporters could not pronounce, “glyphosate” is now a common household word, with new studies popping up monthly on the harms of this ingredient that is the most widely used herbicide in the world.

A new report by Friends of the Earth shares that U.S. food retail sector faces $219 billion risk from pesticides. Three new studies show why this is happening.

Glyphosate is revealing itself not only to be harmful to human and wildlife health but to the profits of the agriculture industry as well. Don Huber PhD., the lead author on the first paper discussed here, is a Professor Emeritus of Purdue University, a 60-year plant pathologist, a farmer educator, and a glyphosate expert. Glyphosate application has been widely shown to impact the earthworms and the soil microbiome, depleting the growth potential of crops. Huber often shares in his global presentations that the application of phosphorus, a common fertilizer, can desorb (or unlock) residues of glyphosate in the soil (which can remain present for years from previous farming practices) and kill a crop, even if it is organic. He has been educating farmers about the harms of glyphosate for decades.

The first new study, the Saga of Soggy Sauerkraut by Don Huber, Dieter Harle, Michael McNeil, Martha Carlin, et al, shows another disturbing result of Huber’s recent investigation into farming crop losses. When asked to investigate why a farmer's cabbage crop turns into very soggy sauerkraut when fermented, Huber discovered that the chicken and turkey manure, from poultry fed genetically engineered animal feed, contained glyphosate. The glyphosate then interacted with the cabbage crop and disrupted the formation of the cabbage plant. When fermented, the cabbage then turned to mush and was unable to be sold. The farmers suffered over a million dollars in losses even though they had not applied glyphosate herbicides to their organic crops.

The research shows that the same mechanism that impacted the cabbage structure is also the mechanism that glyphosate has on the formation and retention of collagen in the human body. That process is described below. Therefore, we can thank Monsanto/Bayer and the glyphosate manufacturers for our rapid aging, the sudden rise in collagen supplement products, anti-aging creams, and costly anti-aging procedures. The anti-aging industry, currently valued at 47 billion, is projected to grow to 80 billion by 2030. The largest anti-aging company, L’Oreal, was also the owner of Synthélabo, which became Aventis CropScience and eventually merged into Bayer Crop Science, makers of GMOs and glyphosate. The connection between companies benefiting from the sales of anti-aging products and those benefiting from the sale of products that cause us to age is concerning.

The second study we are discussing in this article was published by the Weston A Price Foundation in an older but widely underreported paper from 2016. Author Stephanie Seneff, who also authored the book Toxic Legacy How Glyphosate is Destroying Our Health and The Environment, writes of the complicated but clearly plausible theoretical process of glyphosate substituting by mistake for glycine, the smallest amino acid, during protein synthesis. This “substitution error,” as she calls it, interferes with protein synthesis and often severely disrupts the function of many proteins. She argues that the manufacturers of glyphosate-resistant GMOs have taken advantage of this feature of glyphosate by removing a glycine residue in the enzyme that glyphosate suppresses in the shikimate pathway to make commodity crops resistant to glyphosate.

Remarkably, three different microbial species have developed resistance to glyphosate by swapping out a glycine residue at the site where the substrate phosphoenol pyruvate (PEP) is secured in place. 4,5 All three microbes have replaced this glycine residue with alanine (adding one extra methyl group). This results in a reduction in the efficiency of the protein, but, most remarkably, completely protects it from any suppression by glyphosate. One of these mutated microbial proteins is the basis of the genetic engineering that is done to afford resistance to glyphosate to all of the GMO Roundup Ready plants.

She continues to link this glycine and glyphosate interaction with human conditions and concerns:

Two things to consider when thinking of proteins that might be most affected by this substitution error are the expression rate of the protein and the percentage of the protein that constitutes glycine residues. When you take these thoughts into consideration, one molecule stands out: collagen. Collagen is the most abundant protein in the body – one in every four protein molecules in our body is collagen. Collagen is what gives our joints, bones, and skin strength and elasticity (delays aging!).

Collagen is loaded with glycine. Twenty to 25 percent of the residues in collagen are glycines. Collagen forms a triple helix (see Figure 3) in long segments of the molecule through a repeat pattern of GXX, where G stands for glycine and X is usually either proline or hydroxyproline. If you start randomly inserting glyphosate in place of glycines in this triple helix, you will disturb the crystalline structure and wreck the collagen properties of elasticity, strength, and the ability to retain water. This will almost certainly result in joint pain, a major contributor to the opioid epidemic we’re currently witnessing in the U.S. Rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, and various skin disorders can all be anticipated.

Once you think of glyphosate insinuating itself into collagen, it’s an easy step to imagine that glyphosate would be a major contaminant in gelatin, a very common food additive and the main constituent of gelatin-based desserts. Gelatin is routinely added to marshmallows, pudding, gummy bears, yogurts, margarine, frosting, cream cheese, sour cream, non-dairy creamers, and fat-reduced foods.

Influenza Vaccine	undiluted	0.331 ppb
MMR Vaccine	undiluted	2.671 ppb
Pneumococcal Vaccine	undiluted	0.107 ppb
Hep B Vaccine	undiluted	0.325 ppb
T Dap Vaccine	undiluted	0.123 ppb

It should be noted that 25% of live-virus vaccines, such as MMR, comprise gelatin as a stabilizing agent. Glyphosate has been found in two separate testing trials, to be present in all or the majority of the childhood vaccines in each of the test groups, 5/5 and 12/14, respectively. Glyphosate injected into children or adults via vaccines is a method described by Monsanto’s former lead toxicologist, Donna Farmer, as an exposure that did cause harm in animal studies. Many scientists and researchers, and especially this author, suspect glyphosate being injected into children to be a major contributing factor to the autism epidemic.

What health conditions are created by the substitution of glyphosate for glycine in the formation of proteins?

Seneff and Samsel showed “systematically how various specific proteins would be adversely affected by glyphosate substitution, and how these could account for the steep rise that we are currently seeing in a number of diseases and conditions such as diabetes, obesity, autism, Celiac disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, just this past week, in a food labeling hearing, admonished the FDA for not acting to ensure food safety and for contributing to the obesity (costing USA $1.4 trillion) and diabetes ($413 billion) epidemic. One would think the government would take action to prevent spending so much money on these issues.

However, Biden’s recent ruling to use taxpayer dollars to fund Ozempic, according to Congressman Rosendale’s office, will result in an estimated 500 billion dollar payday for Big Pharma over the next ten years. Biden originally pledged to find a cure for cancer, and yet continues to allow glyphosate, a carcinogen, on our food. Many are alarmed at the administration’s willingness to fund pharmaceuticals rather than address the underlying cause of the problem and do what the European Union has done, disallow glyphosate from use in our food supply as a drying agent or preharvest weedkiller.

The third study reported on by Henry Rowlands of Sustainable Pulse, is out of the Arizona State University. Researcher Ramon Velazquez and his team demonstrate that exposure to glyphosate weedkillers can result in significant brain inflammation, and increase the risk of neurodegenerative disease and Alzheimer’s-like effects.

Rowland states,“The human brain is an incredibly adaptable organ, often able to heal itself, even from significant trauma. Yet for the first time, new research shows even brief contact with a common herbicide ( glyphosate) can cause lasting damage to the brain, which may persist long after direct exposure ends.”

How does glyphosate herbicide exposure impact the brain?

The study was published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation and reported ten different markers for increases in neurodegeneration, brain damage, or Alzheimer’s. The study found that:

aminomethylphosphonic acid was detectable in the brains of glyphosate-dosed mice despite the 6-month recovery. Glyphosate-dosed mice showed reduced survival, increased thigmotaxia in the Morris water maze* (measurement of increase in anxiety and fear), significant increases in the beta-secretase enzyme (BACE-1) of amyloidogenic processing (likely increases Alzheimer’s), amyloid-β (Aβ) 42 insoluble fractions (also increases Alzheimer’s), Aβ 42 plaque load and plaque size (again, connected to Alazheimer’s), and phosphorylated tau (pTau) at epitopes Threonine 181 (surprise, Alzheimer’s), Serine 396 ( yes, Alzheimer’s), and AT8 (Serine 202, Threonine 205) ( linked to the detection of dementia, an overall categorization of Alzheimer’s). Notably, we found increased pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines (neurodegeneration ie: what happens when someone has Alzheimer’s and other brain disorders) persisting in both 3xTg-AD and NonTg brain tissue and in 3xTg-AD peripheral blood plasma.

The authors of the study conclude:

Taken together, our results are the first to demonstrate that despite an extended recovery period, exposure to glyphosate elicits long-lasting pathological consequences. As glyphosate use continues to rise, more research is needed to elucidate the impact of this herbicide and its metabolites on the human brain, and their potential to contribute to dysfunctions observed in neurodegenerative diseases.

These three studies don’t even begin to cover the additional impact of glyphosate on our reproductive health. For more information on glyphosate and endocrine disruption, increased miscarriage, androgenization of baby girls, and increased autism symptoms in baby boys whose mothers were exposed to glyphosate, see Moms Across America’s data page and articles.

Huber points to reproductive issues in livestock in his article published in the Western Canada Turfgrass Association:

The triple whammy of reproductive toxicity caused by glyphosate:

In 2002, the Cattlemen’s Association gave a statement to the US Congress on the serious and puzzling rise in reproductive problems. It said: “High numbers of fetuses are aborting for no apparent reason. Other farmers successfully raise what look to be normal young cattle, only to learn when the animals are butchered that their carcasses appear old and, therefore, less valuable...The sporadic problem is so bad both in the United States and abroad that in some herds around 40‐50 percent of pregnancies are being lost.. [and] the viability of this important industry is threatened.”

The United States has a physical, mental, and reproductive health crisis, and they are all directly contributed to, in a major way, by glyphosate. We also have a farming crisis. Loss of farming revenue as described by Huber’s numerous papers, decreased organic matter in the soil, increase of herbicide-resistant crops, and contaminated soil and water all threaten our farmers’ abilities to leave a legacy of healthy farming soil for their children. The solution is to immediately phase out glyphosate (and other toxic chemicals) from being used as pre-harvest weedkillers or drying agents, as the EU has done.

We would like a happy ending to this tale. That ending must start with the beginning of the end of this toxic agrochemical era.