How Glyphosate Is Damaging Your Health, with Prof. Michael Antoniou

Foreign.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. We have an amazing guest today, so I love him to pieces. Ed's about to fall in love and I'm sure all of you guys are going to be excited too. So today we have Professor Dr. Michael Antonio. He is professor of molecular genetics and toxicology. Toxicology. Who's also the head of the Gene Expression and Therapy group, Department of Medical and Molecular Genics, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King's College London in the uk. He's an expert in virtually all types of genetic engineering technologies, their biotechnical application, and it all within a medical context. For the last 11 years, he's undertaken research in the field of molecular and cellular toxicology research with a focus on pesticides, leading research in glyphosate toxicology. And that's how we met, because he was kind enough, as an aside to take time out of his and explain exactly what's going on with glyphosate. And then I said, I really want you to talk to all the people who listen to our podcast. And he was then gracious enough to come on. So, Michael, welcome. So happy to have you here.

Absolutely delighted to join you today. Wendy, thank you for the invitation.

Yeah. And Ed and I obviously had a memo that we should wear dark navy blue. You can't see his pants, but they're black and my jacket's black, so it's perfect. And it looks like you're in navy blue. So we all got the memo. All right. So I think it's important for people to understand, like, why this matters. Right. Like, how did you get into this research in, in, you know, maybe in a nutshell.

Sorry, you mean my own personal research or.

Yeah.

Before we go into.

Yeah. Why'd you go. Why'd you go from wherever you started into really drilling into glyphosate research and being. I mean, your name has. Every study has your name on it.

So. Yes, sure. In addition to my academic interests in life in general, in general, I've always felt the knew and felt about the importance of the environment, including the way we grow and eat our foods, and the negative impacts that certain types of farming practice can have on both the environment and the quality of our foods. So that's why whenever possible, over the many years, I've always tried, you know, I've been buying and eating with my wife, organically grown food because I was concerned about the. The effects that pesticides have on the environment and potentially on human health as well. And then as you Say about. Well, more than 10 years ago now, an opportunity arose for me to branch out my research program to encompass an investigation of the effects of pesticides. And we began with glyphosate because I met a great scientist who inspired me to this. Really. His name is Professor Gillerique Serolini, and he's based at the University of Caen in Northern France. And I met Gillet and I saw the great work he was doing. He was like a pioneer in flagging up the dangers of glyphosate herbicides. And through that friendship that built up, we were able to raise funds to begin to build on his work on glyphosate toxicology, but giving it a molecular biology background. So this is where I came in, really, using my knowledge and expertise in molecular genetics, bringing that perspective onto investigating the mechanisms of how glyphosate herbicides could be negatively impacting human health as well as the environment as well, but mostly focusing on human health.

What'd you find?

So that. So that's how. That's though, how we got. I got into it and really? Yeah, we published our first paper on. On glyphosate herbicide toxicology. It was when laboratory animals were. Were administered with an incredibly low dose of Roundup. I'm sure everyone in the USA has heard of Roundup. Many, I'm sure. It's hardly out of the news.

One of my neighbors sprays it in the yard, and I always think, do I go? Do I not go? Do I say something? I don't say anything because he's my neighbor. I don't. I don't want to have a bad relationship.

This is true. But it's handheld, thankfully.

And not the whole yard.

Yes, indeed. But they. They were basically based on not just my group's work, and we publish many studies now, but also many others as well. Your neighbor needs to be very careful about using Roundup. And actually they should throw it away because we found that even he lies on.

He sprays the glyphosate and then lies on the grass picking out the weeds. And I'm like, oh, it's a really bad idea. But I don't see anything.

You're absolutely right, because.

What did you find?

Well, yeah, what'd you find? Like, what did you. Why is it so bad?

Our first study found that even an incredibly low dose of this Roundup herbicide caused fatty liver disease in the animals. That was our first observation. I don't know if many people. Actually, it's possible that many of your listeners will be familiar with fatty liver disease. Why is that? Because actually 25% of the US population suffer from what is known as non alcoholic fatty liver disease.

It's on the rise too, and it's.

Probably even on the rise. And by the way, it's the same in Europe. You know, the USA is not unique in this regard.

We're just the leaders.

Yeah, you could say you're the leaders. But the point about non alcoholic fatty liver disease is that it, it's a progressive disease. If you. It can start fairly mild, but it can get worse and worse to a condition known as non alcoholic sterotohepatitis and further progress to outright liver damage or cirrhosis. Now, all of these things are also predisposing somebody to liver cancer. So our early studies, and that was the first one in 2015 and then another one in 2017, which I feel really nailed it, that an incredibly low dose of Roundup herbicide can cause non alcoholic fatty liver disease and all of its complications. And we've been able to confirm that in more recent animal studies as well. And so I feel what we uncovered early on was yet another unsuspected risk factor for non alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is exposure to glyphosate based herbicides. And so something that needs to be taken very seriously because this, you know, we've got a global epidemic really in this condition and nobody is realizing just, yeah, there are. People recognize that there are like dietary factors that can contribute to it, but people are ignoring chemical pollutant exposure that can contribute to it as well. And I think, I would say that Roundup is definitely. Glyphosate based herbicides, including Roundup, are definitely non alcoholic fatty liver disease inducers. Predispose you to or induce it. Literally, they can give rise to it.

Yeah, no, I think so.

That was the beginning.

Yeah, I mean, that's really interesting because we think of non fatty liver disease, non alcoholic fatty liver disease as weight and dietary. But exactly what I mean, this adds a whole new flavor because a lot of the dietary stuff is loaded with glyphosate.

Absolutely right.

All the pastas and grains and all like the study, especially Cheerios.

Ed, can we pause for one second? Because your mic is echoing and I think it's because it's like too far from you.

All right, let's go like that.

That's better. Because you were catching on mine and yours.

So yeah, all the mics, all the cereals, Cheerios is loaded with glyphosate. And how scary is it that not Only are we feeding our kids subpar, nutritious food. It's also a lot of glyphosate and it's, that's causing all this fatty liver disease and it's just, and it becomes a loop.

So it does. Yeah, it is indeed. And the reason why American foodstuffs in particular are really loaded, and I'm, I'm not going to mince my word here, but certain foodstuffs in the US are really loaded with glyphosate is because of two things. One is you grow massive amounts of glyphosate tolerant GMO crops, soy, corn, sugar beet, alfalfa. These are the ones that come to mind. There are also non foodstuffs like cotton as well. But basically the environment, so much of the United States is sprayed with large amounts of glyphosate herbicides every year. And it just spreads in the environment. It's more stable than was previously claimed to be. It's, it can persist in the soil, it gets into waterways, you know, it's in the air, it comes down in the rain and it ends up. And so that's one area. But also glyphosate is used in non GMO cropping systems a great deal as well. That includes, perhaps surprisingly, in orchards where farmers want to clear the weeds under the trees so it's easier for them to pick the fruits, whatever they may be, and that ends up in the fruit. You get orange juice with glyphosate in it. You get wine and beer with glyphosate in it, for example.

Wine. Dirty little secret.

And also. That's right, Wendy. But it's this terrible habit that farmers have got into in Europe, but especially in the United States where they use Roundup as, what's. What they call, as a, as for burn down. I think this is a terrible term. But what they're doing is they're using it as a desiccant, which means they're spraying it a few days or at most a couple of weeks before they plan to harvest the cereal crops or potatoes even actually and, or pulses, as Ed said. And the reason why they do it is purely for their convenience in that they say, oh, it dries the crop more uniformly and I'm able to harvest it sooner. But the problem with that, of course, is that there's no time for the Roundup glyphosate and the other elements within Roundup. Because you have to remember Roundup is a mixture of not just glyphosate, of glyphosate and many other substances which are also highly toxic, by the way. We can come to this later.

Pile it on. Like this is compound it.

Pile it on, pilot on. So they spray this and very soon they harvest the grain and it ends up straight into the animal and include. And the human food supply. Which is why when I think the Environmental Working Group and the. The GMO project in the United States, they surveyed foodstuffs in American supermarkets, just pulled them off, and the highest levels were found in oats. Some of the oat products were having more than 1 milligram of glyphosate per kilogram. Now, that may not mean much to the listeners, but for me, that is astronomically high. You don't want to be eating anything with that amount of glyphosate in it. You don't want to be eating anything with a fraction of that in it.

Actually, this is how medications are dosed, right? You go migs per kg and you figure out much someone. That's a huge amount, Michael.

That's a huge amount. And so what you. And, and, and that's. And bear in mind that it's. We're not talking about GMO oats here. There are no GMO oats being cultivated, being grown. All that glyphosate is there because the farmer has sprayed the oats shortly before harvest. And so it's still there when it goes onto the supermarket shelves.

Yeah, I mean, this is. Sorry, this kind of. For me, we had Dr. Jeff Bland on the show, and he was talking about how important the microbiome is not in the gut, but also in the soil and how that affects the nutrition of the foodstuffs we have. So then you're. You're saying with glyphosate and Roundup, that basically is killing all the microbiome in the soil. So it's depleting the food. Not only is it harmful onto itself, it's also depleting all the food we. Vitamins, minerals, nutrients, phytonutrients, we get. It's just scary.

And it's harmful to bees. It's directly toxic to bees.

It has huge. It has huge, what we call terrestrial ecotoxicological effects from the area, its impact on the soil. I'm glad you mentioned it, Ed, because it's an underexplored area. But our work suggests that it's having a massive effect in the soil, because you may remember that one of the reasons why, the way that glyphosate kills plants, it'll kill all plants, by the way. Except those, of course, who have developed resistance. And there's plenty of those out there now thanks to all this GMO cropping and overuse of glyphosate that's taken place in the last 20 years. But basically, the mechanism by which glyphosate kills plants that the biochemistry that it interferes with, it's known as the shikimate pathway. This biochemical pathway is also present in most fungi and in many bacteria, including bacteria in our gut and bacteria and fungi that will be in the soil that are there as part of the soil microbiome, which is so essential, so vital for plant health and also for the plant to produce nutritious food. And we showed in our studies, we published this a couple of years ago now, we were the first to demonstrate. It was hypothesized, I should say it was hypothesized that since bacteria have this shikimate pathway, glyphosate should interfere with that, too, in bacteria as well as in plants. Something which the industry neglected. You know, when the industry claimed, oh, don't worry, glyphosate works by inhibiting the shikimate pathway, it's only present in plants, and so you can eat it without worrying about it. Well, but they forgot to tell us about the fact that bacteria, very beneficial bacteria, could also have this pathway. So we tested in.

We need to. Let's pause for a minute, Michael, and just talk to our audience about why does that pathway matter? It's because when it's interrupted, they can't produce their essential amino acids and they die. So it's really important. Right?

It's sort of a critical pathway, very important pathway. That's the way it kills the plants. Because the shikimate pathway produces these essential, what we call aromatic amino acids. And when the plant can't make them, it literally just dies very, very quickly because it can't make its proteins anymore. And we. And we've. No.

For our listeners, again, just to. I want to make sure everybody, because I'm just shocked in this stuff like that people understand that, okay, it's in the soil, but then when you eat it, it's going down. Your. How often in this podcast do we talk about the microbiome and how important it is? It's killing your whole microbiome.

It kills the good guys, actually. Right. Didn't we talk about that? The salmonella and some of the more harmful bacteria, they don't have this pathway. So they are just merrily going on their way. But the protective and the good bacteria do have this shikimate. I say shikimate. You say shikimate.

It's shikimate. Shikimate is not correct.

It sounds like a Japanese food. Okay, Shiki.

Exactly.

I'll say it properly now. Okay, so the protective bacteria have shikimate pathway and the, the renegades do not have that pathway. Did I remember that properly?

Something along those lines. What we actually found was in our animal studies is 2, 2, 3, I would say three very worrying findings from exposure to glyphosate and the Roundup that we gave our laboratory animals. Firstly, we proved beyond doubt that glyphosate and roundup definitely inhibit the shikimate pathway in gut bacteria. You know, we, it was in fact the most dramatic metabolic change we saw in the gut of these animals. And in addition to that, that was in a way even more worrying is that it changed the biochemistry of the gut as well. So although we didn't see dramatic changes in the population of the bacteria in the gut, their function, their biochemical activity was changed and we saw evidence, clear evidence of what we call oxidative stress. Okay, and oxidative stress is a bad thing. You don't want that anywhere in your body really, because oxidative stress, which is what is reactive oxygen, it's oxygen that is reactive and can damage, and it will damage anything in your body, including your DNA. And that's why it's particularly worrying, because if it damages your DNA, that is a major risk factor for cancer. So we saw major evidence of oxidative stress induced by glyphosate and Roundup in the gut of these exposed animals. And there was oxidative stress in their blood, there was oxidative stress in their liver, there was DNA damage in their liver, there was, you know, we got the confirmation of fatty liver in the liver. So it was, it was all, everything was connected in a major negative effect with which could have been induced by this oxidative stress that we saw in a follow up investigation. And this was in a way a crucial difference in our first experiments that I just described to you. The exposure to the glyphosate in the roundup was started with the animals. These were rats at young adulthood. They were about five, six weeks of age, obviously very healthy adult animals. And we saw, nevertheless, we saw these negative effects on the gut and in the liver of these animals and also in the kidney, by the way. And then, but in a follow up study we started the exposure to the glyphosate in the roundup in mid pregnancy.

Which is real, right? I mean, that's.

Which is much more real. And that's why we did it. Absolutely. And that's why we got involved with that study, which was part of what's known as the Global Glyphosate Study, being led by the Ramazini Institute in Italy. So we took the like again. We analyzed the gut microbiome in the offspring that were born. So we didn't analyze the gut microbiome in the mothers. We were interested to see what effect it will have on the young, on the offspring. So after they had been exposed, starting with pregnancy. And then we analyzed the animals after 90 days, after weaning, after they'd stopped suckling. And we saw far more dramatic disturbances in the gut population in these animals, showing that actually exposure starting prenatally has far more, in other words, reflecting a more real world scenario, has far more dramatic impacts on the gut microbiome population. We weren't able to do any biochemical analysis, but we saw major shifts in the population of bacteria overall. The complexity of the bacterial population was reduced, whereas the fungal population was dramatically increased. Now, this is.

Pause there. We gotta pause there, Michael, because we have to underscore that the gut, the body, nature loves diversity and loves abundance and loves a wider range of options. So when you're talking about narrowing the diversity that's right in the gut and raising the fungal population, that's not good for us. Just.

No, it's not good. No, it's not good because it creates a niche. You could say it creates a niche. If the bacterial population is decreasing, it's, it's creating like a gap in, in.

The, in the environment.

And it turns out that it's the fungi that then start growing to fill in that gap. And this is not good, obviously, because there are some fungi we know are actually very pathogenic. They will cause diseases. And so the worrying thing here is, of course, is that you can end up with a fungal infection because the glyphosate has created an environment for it to expand, to establish and grow. So it was a very very, again, a very insightful observation that we made. And this happened with this, with the rats. This happened with both the. We, we treated them with two types of Roundup. One which is very prevalently used in the United States, another one that's used a lot in Europe. And we saw the most profound effects with the round, with the USA Roundup. I have to say, go big or go home.

Yeah, we do things well, apparently.

But I have a question just to go back to when you were Talking about the oxidative stress, are you using, when you say oxidative stress, is it appropriate to say free radical formation or is it different?

No, it's. Yes, it's along those lines. Absolutely. Yeah.

Okay, so similar, because when I talk to people about how the liver is getting rid of toxins, fat soluble toxins, phase one, creating a free radical, going into phase two, binding inert, making it water soluble, and then phase three, pee, poop or sweat. I just want to make sure we're having the same language. So when you're saying that you see increased oxidative stress, that is the same thing essentially as free radicals and people different types. I think they understand better that free radicals are also not in your favor pro cancer forming and toxic for you, so.

Absolutely right. Yes, you're right. There, there's different types of free radicals. We don't know exactly which ones were elevated. We got a, we got the markers of elevated oxidative stress response and. Which would have included different types of free radicals generation. And, and, and you're right, our bodies produce these entities naturally and because they, they can serve useful functions. But if, and we have mechanisms of neutralizing them as well to make sure they do not exceed safe thresholds. But what we're seeing here in the animals clearly is that the body's mechanisms of managing the free radical oxidative stress production is being exceeded and we're seeing damage as a result. We see it because.

I have a question, but I wanted to make sure.

I think we should probably spend a little time talking about GMOs and.

Yep, we should. Now. Yeah.

Just, just as a baseline of why do we care?

Before we go to that, I have one other question, Michael, which is when you did these studies, were you able then to sort of close the loop with humans? Because you mentioned the rising increase of fungal infections. But, but do we see perturbations in your mood? Do we see weight gain? Like, what do we see clinically for humans when. If we draw the line between rats and humans and say, okay, we'. Well, we respond pretty similarly. Could you. Do you have any of that information that we.

No, I could only point to human epidemiological studies and. Which I'm glad to say, or proud to say that scientists I know in the United States have conducted some really excellent human epidemiological studies correlating, you know, they would measure the glyphosate levels in people's urine and then look at their health status and see if there's any correlations. I've been involved in one study that shows which actually there's been a couple of epidemiological studies that has linked glyphosate exposure. In other words, the more glyphosate was seen in the pregnant woman, the shorter was her gestation period. And this was particularly in women that were probably more prone to pregnancy complications. So that's not a good thing.

It's an amplifier, right?

It's an amplifier.

You're going to do what you do, but then the glyphosate makes you even more prone to doing that.

Yeah, I think that's probably what we're seeing there. But I would say there are two epidemiological studies that published this year by American groups that really stand out for me in the context of oxidative stress. One of them is in the context of oxidative stress. So what these researchers did was they took farmers and measured their urine for oxidative stress markers before and after they had sprayed Roundup on their fields. So they knew, they went, they found the farmers that they knew were going to do some Roundup spraying. So they got a urine sample before the day they sprayed, and then they got a urine sample the day after they sprayed. And they looked at these markers for oxidative stress. And there are very specific, very clear markers that if somebody is. Their body is in a heightened oxidative stress state, the levels of these molecules in the urine will go up, up very clearly.

I, I have to ask, is it the same ones we look at like lipid peroxide and the H O G or the DNA damage? I forgot the.

Yeah. That they are actually as some of. There is an overlap there, right? That's absolutely right. So what they found was that the day off, you know, there was a certain level of these quite low before the day they sprayed Roundup, but after day after, they dramatically increased. And included in those markers is the 8 hydroxy 2 guanosine. Yes.

Thank you.

Now, why is that particularly important? For me, this was the most key observation because 8 hydroxy 2 guanosine is not only a marker of oxidative stress, but it's a marker of DNA damage. So it's a double whammy. It shows you you've had a massive oxidative stress in salt response to something, but at the same time it tells you that your DNA was damaged by that oxidative stress. So for me, this is the close. You know, without intentionally feeding somebody, you know, Roundup and, and monitoring them, which will be totally unethical, of course, this is the nearest we're going to get for me to directly measuring a response to round up exposure. And you have to bear in mind that is probably what they were absorbing through their skin as well. I mean, it's not like they were. They were breathing it in and it was being, you know, anything that landed on their skin, it was getting in. So there was elevated glyphosate along that. These massive increases in oxidative stress markers, including markers of DNA damage. For me, this was a very, very well executed and very, very telling and worrying study.

Can you pause for a second, Michael? Because, you know, across the world, people are eating food that has been sprayed. The crops are sprayed with glyphosate. But you feel it's unethical to do a study on humans because you'd have to give them glyphosate. But they're getting. Not to be cynical, but they're. You could do a study with humans who don't think that organic is worth doing versus people who do prioritize organic just from a belief system. You're not asking them to do anything different, but you're. But. But the fact that the researcher feels it's unethical to give humans glyphosate to study it is very telling. I just want to.

Yeah, that. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, that's. I would agree with you. I mean, it's. For me generally, you know, I mean, the whole idea of spraying poisons onto our food before we eat it is the most bizarre. I think it was Jane Goodall.

Don't forget alcohol. Don't forget alcohol, because that is a direct poison too.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Crazy.

My favorite subjects.

What were you going to say about Jane Goodall?

Oh, no, I think it was Jane Goodall. And a quote. I think she. She very kindly provided us with a quote. Oh, no, no, it wasn't on. Jane Goodall was kind. Kind enough to provide us with a quote on our book, GMO Myths and Truths, which you may be aware of, I co authored with Claire Robinson and John Fag. And. But I remember a wonderful quote from her where she said that people in the few. Something along the lines of that people in the future are going to look back at this time and wonder how we could possibly spray our food with poisons and then eat it. I mean, it was like, I thought it's just a simple expression, but so, so telling and goes deep.

I mean, I find it really scary that we're considered cutting edge still.

Yes, yes.

Like that this is cutting edge or even Weird, though, when there's clear research, there's clear. Everything's clear.

It is clear.

And there's so few people banging that drum like. Yeah, it's just unconscionable, truthfully.

Then you look at the rise in disease, right? Autoimmune disease, it's, it's seven times more expensive than it was 11 years ago because we're spending that much more on it. 20 billion to 140 billion, year over year.

And America does a good job exporting all their fruits and vegetables to other countries. And grains.

Don't forget the. Don't forget the grains. Okay, Louie, we can't go down this because we're going to get completely horrified. So let's switch to GMOs. Let's talk about GMOs.

I will say, before we get on to the GMOs, I would like to point to two other excellent epidemiological studies in the United States connected with the glyphosate and Roundup. The other one, again published earlier this year, was led by Brenda Ashkenazi and who's based, I believe, at UC Berkeley, but, you know, somewhere in California. And what they did, they looked at glyphosate exposure in, in young and, and how they then. And then their health status as they progressed on through life. And they found a clear evidence that early exposure to glyphosate Roundup, these are people living in Central Valley, California. So they are swimming in pesticides, as you know, in that part of the country, is that it predisposed them then to liver inflammation and liver disease, fatty liver disease, later on in life. So again, we have epidemiological evidence that supports our animal study work here that glyphosate Roundup predisposes to fatty liver disease, including the inflammation which is part of it. Lastly, we mustn't forget the excellent work of Leanne shepherd, who's based, I think, at University of Washington, Seattle is where she looked at the incidence of non Hodgkin lymphoma in relation to levels of exposure to Roundup use. And again, very clearly she found really strong correlation that the higher exposure group to roundup had a 41% increase likelihood of non Hodgkin lymphoma, very serious blood cancer. And so we have really, we've got, for me, unequivocal laboratory studies, not just from, obviously I've talked about my own group's work, but there are many excellent studies from other groups. And then we have this very telling epidemiological work that clearly indicates that glyphosate herbicides are very toxic. And for me, they're deceptively toxic in that they may not be acutely toxic so much, but over time their effects will be felt. You can go down, you know, with fatty liver, with different cancers or neurological problems. We just don't see reproductive problems. We just. It's difficult to then make the connection. And I think that's the way, perhaps that's the way industry gets away with this, you know, because it's. You cannot make a definitive connection. But for me, it's, it's. So then we. That's why you go with combinations. You know, you've got the lab studies and you've got the epidemiology. You marry it together and you say, ah, on the, on the weight of all of this, then I think I can make some fairly strong conclusions. The conclusions are that glyphosate herbicides are far more toxic than industry and regulators would have us believe. Boom.

Crazy. I mean, the follow up is what can we do about it?

What's a girl to do?

What can you do about it? Yeah, that's a good question.

And like to fight Monsanto, there's.

You can vote with your pocketbook, you know.

Right.

You buy organic, you prioritize local, you prioritize organic.

But that's the best you can do, I think, at the moment. Yeah, I think, you know, I think Wendy's right. I think our priority is to protect ourselves and our loved ones. And so we seek out the purest, freshest food locally grown from people we know, grown organically, people we can trust. And first and foremost, that's what we should do and certainly avoid certain products that we buy in supermarkets that have scored the highest. Not just glyphosate, but pesticide residue levels across the board anyway. And that would be the cereals and the more the soft fruits. Strawberries, blueberries and green leafies. Green leafy vegetables, because these are the most susceptible to attack. And so they're the ones that get hit. Get hit the most. But also chocolate. The most heavily sprayed food crop in the world is cocoa, believe it or not.

Interesting.

Oh, so wait, so you get lead and pesticides from your cocoa? That's great.

Nice combination.

Yeah.

In the few minutes remaining, we should talk about GMOs.

Yeah, we should. It's an important issue right now because of this new generation of GMOs that about that are already beginning to hit the market in one or two places in the world, including the United States, but which are for Me just as dangerous as the first generation GMOs that relied on introducing foreign genesis from unrelated organisms into them. For example, the glyphosate tolerant GMO crops like the soy and the corn had a gene from bacteria put into them that conferred the tolerance to glyphosate so they wouldn't die. So these, what we call transgenic crops, the transgene is this foreign gene that you put in to your crop. The new generation GMOs are being produced with techniques known as gene editing.

Is that CRISPR technology.

And what's really driven. That's a good point, Ed, because gene editing tools have been around for a few decades, people, different types. But what has really spurred the real manic, the kind of development in, in the last five to ten years is the, is the invention of the, the CRISPR gene editing tool. Because the CRISPR gene editing tool is very simple and straightforward to piece together and there and less. And because it's less complicated and easier to use, people have just gone crazy over it. Okay, we use it in the clinic. I'm involved with research using CRISPR gene editing to develop gene therapies where you know, I have to say, you know, things are moving forward, I would say in a very cautious way because we recognize that this is not as precise and as controllable as, as we would have liked. And therefore we got to move forward very carefully in treating somebody with a genetic disease, in curing them of one genetic disease. We don't want, of course, replace it with another one. So things are moving forward quite cautiously, I would say. And I'm overall happy with the regulation that's in place to control this technology in a clinical context. What worries me that even it's exactly the same technology with exactly the same problems of imprecision and unpredictability in an agricultural crop development context. It's just being deregulated. I mean, this is bizarre. The rules. If there is any regulatory system like we've had here in Europe, it's being dismantled to allow these techniques to be used any way in effect without any kind of regulatory oversight whatsoever. And this is very, very, very, very worrying because the evidence is very clear that the CRISPR gene editing system doesn't just bring about what you want it to, it brings about unintended DNA damage. And for me, the people. But the people in the agricultural context, the way that I see it, they are just so somehow they convince themselves that it only does what they want. They never do the right experiments to identify the things that go wrong. As well as the thing that they intend to happen.

Can we pause there for Michael for a second? Because I always say to my patients, I actually was working in a grocery store in 1985 when genetically modified foods came onto the shelves. I grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts. And they came on the shelves and I remember it because we never had tomatoes out of season. And this is all sort of industrialization and globalization. I mean, a lot happened at the same time. But I remember thinking, well, why are we doing that? And when I've started to think it through, you think, okay, genetic modification is not to increase the value of the nutrients and vitamins in it. It's actually to make it grow faster, be drought resistant, be able to be picked earlier to be glyphosate resistant. It's not for you, it's actually for the people growing it. It's not to make it better for you, it's to make it better for the companies.

And especially going all the way back to the developer companies, the GMO developer companies, because they, they patent, these products are patentable, which means they have full control over the seeds. And farmers have to pay extra. They have to pay technology fees. They can't save seeds to sow the following season, so they have to keep going back to the company every year. And if the GMO is linked with a pesticide of some sort, like Roundup, they have to buy the company's own pesticide. So they, they are trapped into a package which is very expensive, but which they hope to recoup with, you know, down the line. Whether they do that or not, I don't know. But this is. So you're right in that what's driving this is not for the benefit of the environment or people. What's driving this are purely commercial interests that I, when I first became aware of these developments and started to look into it deeply and found, discovered very worrying developments in the area of GMO foods. I realized very early on that what was being talked about was really no good to the people. It was of no benefit to the people and certainly no benefit to the environment. In fact, many of the developments were very detrimental to the environment. As we now know, the Roundup ready GMO crops have had devastating effects on the environment, not just in North America, but particularly in South America, where the Amazon is being cleared to grow GMO soy and GMO corn. This is the main driver of the Amazon. The devastation of the Amazon is all to do with the cultivation of GMO soy and to a lesser, lesser degree, corn.

Vomiting in your mouth yet.

I, I think I have to leave this podcast now.

I know.

So. Okay, so let's, let's start. We, we need to pause for a minute for the listeners, because if you're in the grocery store and you're buying your food, you. When you touch a fruit, I'll talk about America. So I don't actually know how it is in other countries, but in America there's a little sticker on your fruit or your vegetable or if it's, if it's a thing of radishes, it's wound up. So if it has a, if it has a four, it's not organic. You can count on that. It's been sprayed. Four is at the beginning and then there's three or four numbers after it. If it starts with an eight, it is genetically modified. Don't buy it. And if it starts with a 9, it's organic, which means it cannot be organic. Genetically modified. So you want to look for the number nine at the beginning of those little numbers. And look, look, I am a big menopausal woman. They're really hard to read. You're going to need to bring your cheaters to the grocery store because it's like, how far away is it that you can get to see it?

Or bring your phone or bring your.

Child labor like I do the organic version. Look for the nine. Bring your phone, bring, bring your cheaters, bring your child labor.

Yeah, I remember you have this rather sophisticated labeling system for GMO foods in the United States, in Europe. It just has to be written on the label.

Yeah, no, it just has an 8. If it has an 8, it's GMO, don't buy it.

Yeah, so, but in. But the worrying thing is with these new generation GMOs, because they're being completely deregulated, nobody is going to know. Even the farmer may not know they're growing a GMO with a gene edited product.

Is there any benefit, I mean, is there any way that you can draw a line between GMO and a benefit to climate change or some type of ecology?

Is there any way you can draw it? No. No. This is the way it's being sold as we need gene editing to alter our crops so that they will be heat resistant, drought tolerant, higher yielding, resistant to diseases and resistant to pests and so on. This, these are just wish lists. And anybody who knows about the genetics that I can underpin, these kinds of characteristics of plants will tell you you're going to fail. You're doomed to fail. Because these are what we Call complex genetic traits, where you have the whole family of genes working together to bring about higher yield or drought tolerance or saline tolerance. These what if you want crops to be more resistant? If we want a more resilient agricultural system, we have to look at the system as a whole. There's nothing wrong with our crops as Liano, it's the way that we grow them which is wrong. We need to switch to agroecological farming practices that preserve soil fertility, preserve soil carbon and hold moisture better. And our crops will perform better as well. But we can and if we want to breed, because as I, as I, as I mentioned, these, all these things that are on the wish list of the gene edited crop developers, they are complex genetic traits. How do we bring about the combination, the complex combinations of genes that could bring about that property through normal breeding, normal pollination type breeding. It's the only way. It's really the only way. And before we, some people may be wondering, however, should I be worried? Why should I be worried about these gene edited products apart from the fact that won't be labeled? So again, we've got to look out for that organic, the organic sector doesn't want gene edited products any more than it wanted the transgenic first generation products. So they're going to need to however, work more carefully to make sure that they track things through the system because the labeling is not going to be so clear. But why should we be worried? Because just like with the first generation transgenic crops, when you produce these gene edited crops, they don't just change the function of one gene, but the function of many genes in an uncontrolled way. Now changing the function of one gene can bring about dramatic changes in the biochemistry of the plant. When you change the function of many genes, as is inevitable by this procedure, by the way, then the chances are then the biochemistry changes can be really quite profound. And within that, within those biochemical changes, those compositional changes in the plant can be the production of new allergens and toxins. So here is where people who are particularly food sensitive need to be particularly concerned. Because these products can be out there, they're not going to be labeled. That's the plan. Even here in Europe now, as I say, they're deconstructing the regulations here. And if things go through the way the industry wants and the way the politicians want are heading, we're going to have these new generation GMOs not even labeled in Europe. So how are we going to avoid them? It's going to be very difficult and we have to source our organic food particularly carefully because even an organic farmer may buy a seed in good faith and not know necessarily that it's a GMO seed. Although depending on the law. Depending on the law, I don't know what it's like in the United States, but here in Europe, at least the law that is being proposed, at least is that at least the seed will be labeled. I don't know whether that's going to be the case in the usa.

I have no idea.

I don't know. Okay, but look, at the moment there aren't too many products on the market in the usa. I think in terms of gene edited products, I know there's a, there's a gene edited soybean with an altered oil composition. You don't, you don't want that. You know, you definitely don't want.

Okay, I didn't warn Ed that today was going to be like a Deb downer day.

Horrifying.

Ed's like, I can join the podcast. I said, great, we're talking to Michael. It's so, it's such a great conversation. And then he's like, okay, then you.

Tell me about.

Brazil and the rainforests and the.

But okay, so that kills me. So, okay, so I think what we need to make sure people know because this conversation, I think scratches the surface. It's this entry into how do you protect yourself. So what we need to know for people is how can they learn more about you, how can they follow you? How can they follow your work? What's that access for?

Well, obviously my work gets published in the scientific journals. They're going to be very technical. So you're unlikely to extract all the full impact of it by going there. But there is one NGO here in England that I act as a scientific advisor to and writes up reports on our work for the general population. And that's called GM watch. GM watch.org okay? GM watch all one word and then.org if you go to the gmwatch.org website, you will find it is a wealth of information about GMOs and their associated pesticides, including of course about glyphosate and Roundup and the like. But other, but other things to worry too. I don't again worry that, you know, you folks in the USA are really, really up against it here in your agricultural system because what's happened with, what's happened with the glyph, you know, with all these. For two decades of glyphosate tolerant crop growing, what's happened? The weeds have become resistant. Right, of course, as you would. It was totally predictable. Even though Monsanto swore to it. Oh no, the weeds are not going to become resistant. Oh come on. Anyone with half a biology brain will tell you they're going to become resistant. So that was just a lie. And of course, so now we have. American agricultural fields are absolutely rampant with glyphosate resistant weeds. Almost 20 different species of weeds. So what are farmers having to do? They're having to spray not only glyphosate, they're having to mix in other even more toxic herbicides like 2,4D and dicamba. The industry has responded by launching GMO crops that are double herbicide tolerant. Glyphosate and 2,4D and glyphosate and dicamba. What does that mean? It means that the residues of these additional pesticides, these additional herbicides are also going to go up and up and up in the human food chain. And so what we're facing here is not only just heightened exposure to glyphosate, but increasing exposure to glyphosate along especially along with 2, 4D and dicamba. And my group has done a study with this particular, with the USA in mind where we have fed our animals a mixture of glyphosate, 2, 4D and dicamba. And we fed them at a level that the regulatory agencies both in Europe and the United States say you can consume this day in, day out and not worry about any adverse outcome from it. Well, all I've got to say to the regulators is you try telling that to our rats because they became very sick animals at this incredibly low dose of exposure. And we've begun to publish some of that work and there's more in the pipeline. So watch this space.

So gmwatch.org is where people, gmwatch.org is.

Where you can find out more. And in the meantime, yes, just buy the best organic fresh food you can in your locality, support your local organic farmers that way and that way we're doing the best we can for ourselves and our loved ones and spread the message that these are not good, these pesticide residues are not a good thing. And we just, as you say, just scratch the surface because we are typically you'll be exposed to tens of different pesticides every day in your food supply.

Well, normally I like to be end on an up note, but I would say in this case we're going to end on a down note. So Michael, for those of you who are listening, this is Professor Dr. Michael Antonio and he is a expert in glyphosate GMO and the effects that it has on us. And so a for the listeners, thanks for being with us for this time. And Michael, thank you for spending the time educating us because this is the goal is to the word out. So thank you for being here and being on the podcast.

It's my pleasure. And it's yes, I, I have me again, if you if you feel that it would be valuable, I would love to continue our chat.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you.