1 February 2021 — US Right to Know

A new animal study found that low levels of the weed killing chemical glyphosate and glyphosate-based Roundup can alter the composition of the gut microbiome in ways that may harm health.

The disruption was caused by the same mechanism of action by which glyphosate acts to kill weeds and other plants, the researchers said. The microbes in the human gut include a variety of bacteria and fungi that affect immune functions and other important processes, and disruptions can contribute to a range of diseases.

• See Carey Gillam’s report for U.S. Right to Know and video interview with study authors Drs. Michael Antoniou and Robin Mesnage of the Gene Expression and Therapy Group, Dept. of Medical and Molecular Genetics, King’s College London.

Showdown over human rights at Food Systems Summit: UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Professor Michael Fakhri, warns that the World Food Systems Summit is on track to be meaningless. Billions of dollars in future investment to improve food systems is at stake. In a letter to Special Envoy Agnes Kalibata, Fakhri shared concerns about the the Sept. 2021 Summit that is heavily influenced by the World Economic Forum, Bill & Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations.

In two video clips, Professor Fakhri explained his struggle with the summit leadership and how civil society and human rights “was at first excluded, and then brought in and marginalized” from the event. “It took us a good almost year just to get human rights on the agenda,” Fakhri explained, “it took us a year to explain, educate and convince the Summit that human rights matters.”

More public health news of the week:

• No friend to farmers: Confirming Biden’s buddy Tom Vilsack as Sec. of Agriculture adds insult to the Democratic Party’s long record of malign neglect to rural Americans – The Nation
• Tanzania cancels GMO trials again, reports African Center for Biodiversity; and see update in Xinhua, Tanzanian official restates negative position on GMO seed imports
• Farmers in Kano, Nigeria call for ban on GMOs — Vanguard
• More microplastics contaminate agricultural lands than oceans, impacting plant development and ending up in produce and people — Civil Eats

Congratulations to our colleague Carey Gillam for being selected by the Media Democracy Fund as one of an inaugural class of “Unicorns” in 2020. The program “supports under-resourced grassroots leaders, including independent journalists, who face attacks for expressing their ideas, telling the truth, and taking a stand on the front lines of narrative change.” The fund is currently seeking nominees for 2021.

U.S. Right to Know is an investigative research group focused on promoting transparency in public health. Please donate here to support our work!

For our right to know,
Carey, Gary, Sai, Stacy