#334 The One Pesticide Everyone is Exposed To and Why It Should Be Banned | Prof Michael Antoniou

Glyphosate is the world's most widely used weed killer. It's found on farms, in parks, and in over 50% of the UK's population urine samples. And today, you're going to find out more about its impact on human health and why it should be banned from Professor Michael Antoniou. Hi, I'm Dr. Rupi. I'm a medical doctor and nutritionist. And when I suffered a heart condition years ago, I was able to reverse it with diet and lifestyle. This opened up my eyes to the world of food as medicine to improve our health. On this podcast, I discuss ways in which you can use nutrition and lifestyle to improve your own well-being every day. I speak with expert guests and we lean into the science, but whilst making it as practical and as easy as possible, so you can take steps to change your life today. Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen Podcast. This week I'm joined by Professor Michael Antoniu. He's a molecular geneticist and gene engineering expert at King's College London whose research explores how agricultural chemicals like glyphosate affect our bodies, our microbiome and potentially our long-term health. So we're going to discuss what glyphosate actually is and how it works by blocking a crucial enzyme found in plants and in microbes. That's the big caveat there. Why it was deemed safe and why the new evidence suggests that we may have underestimated the risks. We talked through the latest research linking glyphosate exposure to gut microbiome disruption, liver disease and cancer. which foods carry the highest residues and whether washing peeling or buying organic actually makes a real difference and how chronic exposure builds up in the body and what steps that you can take to reduce your exposure today now i'm not going to shy away from this today's episode is probably going to make you feel pretty angry and so it should but we can do something about it and professor implores everyone to support the pan movement to prevent glyphosate use in towns and across the uk food supply and you can check out the link in the podcast show notes to help create pesticide free towns and right now and honestly this is the time to act because it's up for reapproval in the uk in 2026 so the window of opportunity to intervene is closing this took me 30 seconds and the link made it super easy for me to have an impact. The link is in the podcast show notes. It's a long link. I can't read it out, but it's all about pesticide-free towns. And it's something that the NGO PAN, Pesticide Action Network, are pioneering. And I'm literally making an impact on my local town by signing this. And it took me 30 seconds. Just go ahead and do that. Another way in which you can reduce your exposure to pesticides is by opting for organic foods and I'm proud to say that the podcast sponsor for today is Linwood's Health Foods. You can find them and order online at linwoodshealthfoods.com and by now you know that I'm a huge fan of Linwood's. I love how easy it is to add Linwood's milled organic flaxseed blends to all of my daily routines including into my oats i just had two tablespoons stirred into my breakfast oats and it gives me a powerful mix of plant-based protein magnesium and short-chain omega-3 fatty acids that have been shown to improve cholesterol levels they support muscle mass my energy levels even in ensuring that my gut is optimally working as well because it's feeding those gut microbes it's a simple habit that really stacks up over time and they're Available in all major supermarkets, health food stores, and always stocked in the doctor's kitchen. So make sure you check out LinwoodsHealthFoods.com and onto my podcast with Professor Michael Antoniou. I hope you really enjoy this one, even though it is a bit of a somber subject. To keep our podcast completely free for you, our lovely listener, we're going to hear a quick word from sponsors who make that possible. Professor Antoni, it's such a pleasure to have you in the podcast room with us today at the Dr. Skishin Studio. How are you doing? I'm very well, Ruby, and it's really a great pleasure and an honor to be here to discuss with you what is an incredibly important subject that's going to affect everybody. I appreciate that. It affects everybody now and increasingly so. absolutely yeah we've learned so much from you already you know reading some of your work and some of the work that you've done with uh pan pesticide action network um and the privilege is ours i wonder if you wouldn't mind just giving a a bit of your background to our audience um and just assume i don't know anything about glyphosate as well because i really want to channel uh sort of the the complete lack of knowledge that i think a lot of people have around this pesticide and you know the wider world of pesticides in general so yeah absolutely So basically, I'm a professor of molecular genetics and toxicology at King's College London, one of the UK's great universities, I like to boast. Although I have to say, I've recently retired. I'm now a professor emeritus with King's College London, which means I'm still involved with research both within the university and elsewhere. But historically, I'm a molecular biologist. So I've studied the structure and function of genes and use that knowledge for biotechnological applications, such as gene therapy medicines and industrial production of protein therapeutics like antibodies. But since 2014, 13, 14, I also expanded my research platform at King's to include what I call molecular toxicology with a focus on pesticides. So using my background in molecular biology, using that kind of technology, I've been investigating at a molecular and cellular level the impact of pesticides, but with a special focus on glyphosate herbicides. And since then, we've published tens of papers on the topic. And again, I'd like to believe we've become one of the world leading groups on glyphosate herbicide toxicology in the world. so that that's briefly uh my background and what brings me here brilliant um i wonder if you wouldn't mind explaining exactly what glyphosate is when i think of glyphosate i don't think of it as a uk problem i don't think a lot of people would think of glyphosate as uk problem but what is glyphosate and why should we all be concerned about it yeah this is a very very good question uh because probably most people have never even heard about it probably the people that have heard about it are people who have gardens and they probably buy glyphosate herbicide under the brand name roundup from their garden centers or whatever and they spray the weeds in their garden to kill them but basically glyphosate is actually the world's most used herbicide and actually the world's most used pesticide full stop ever in history. And as far as being a weed killer is concerned, it's incredibly good. And that's why it's been adopted so widely. But actually, there was a massive escalation in the use of glyphosate herbicides starting in 1996 with the launch of genetically engineered, genetically modified crops such as soy and maize that are engineered to be tolerant to glyphosate. So what farmers were able to do was to basically spray their crop with glyphosate herbicides, kill the weeds, but their crop wouldn't die. And the adoption of these glyphosate tolerant crops has massively increased over the years. Although it's been very concentrated in North and South America, pretty much, and a few other nations around the world. But glyphosate is not just used within GM cropping systems. It's also used in general agricultural practices as well. And the one that's particularly worrying for me, and which is used widely in the UK, is its use not only to clear weeds in fields before you sow, the next crop. Yeah. But also is what's known as a pre-harvest desiccant. And this is going to really shock you. Okay. Because it was really shocking to me when I heard about this. Basically, for farmers that especially, you know, this pertains to farmers that are growing cereal crops such as oats and wheat, barley, rye, but even some legumes as well, pulses. Okay. But what the farmer does is this. Within a week or two of when they want to harvest the crop, they spray it with glyphosate herbicides such as Roundup. Okay. And they intentionally kill the crop. Okay. To dry it down, hence the term desiccant. Ah. So this way, they say they get a more uniform drying of the grain, and they're able to harvest earlier in the cultivation cycle and get to market earlier and make a bigger profit, that kind of thing. Now, all well and good for the farmer. But what this means is that within a few days of spraying, your wheat, your oats with Roundup glyphosate herbicide, you're harvesting, which means there hasn't been any time for the glyphosate and its associated chemicals to dissipate. So you end up with the food being contaminated, whether it's bread, breakfast cereals, those sorts of things. Can be contaminated with glyphosate herbicide. Many years ago now, the Soul Association conducted a project led by Peter Melchett, who looked at bread on the supermarket shelves and just sort of analyzed for glyphosate. And they found that over 30% of the bread on the shelves in supermarkets here in the UK is contaminated with glyphosate. 30%? Yeah, 30% is contaminated. It could be higher now because the use of glyphosate as a pre-harvest desiccant, if anything, has been going up and up and up. Wow. They didn't look at other things, which I think they should have, where it could be even higher, and that is on oats. Really? In the United States, when similar surveys were conducted by an NGO called the Environmental Working Group, they found the highest residues of glyphosate oat products, porridge, porridge oats, oat granola, all that kind of thing. Really massive, absolutely massive amounts. But I'm glad to say the amount, as the years have gone by, clearly the industry took note. Sure, yeah. And the levels have been coming down. Okay. But here in the UK, I don't think anything like that has happened. Really? There hasn't been a survey of foodstuffs for glyphosate residues here. There hasn't been? Not recently anyway. So we don't know what the levels and scale of the contamination is, but I think it would be very, very interesting. My educated guess would be that it will be higher now than it was when the Solar Association conducted its survey several years ago. So it's been used for widely in agriculture, but also we have to bear in mind that it's also used in urban environments. Councils will spray to clear weeds of pavements in parks, in other words, along the roads and in parks. It also, the railway companies, they will spray along railway tracks to clear weeds along there. And so people going into parks, playing with children especially, playing in parks that have recently been sprayed with glyphosate herbicides, and they're rolling around in the grass or whatever, playing around. They're going to be picking this up. And then, of course, as I mentioned earlier, in your garden, when you're spraying, to get clear your weeds with glyphosate in your garden, you're going to be picking this up, especially if you don't protect yourself. Because think about glyphosate, you know, the way it is. It's not only through eating it in your food, but you can inhale it. If you're spraying it from the aerosol, you can breathe it in. And if you get some on your skin, it will readily just penetrate through your skin and do that. Which is why, again, in surveys in the United States, the highest residue levels of glyphosate in humans has been found in agricultural workers, applicators in agricultural settings. and in people that are routinely spraying it's like in school playgrounds and other urban settings as well. Really very high worrying levels. Because I see those people in the council, you know, this hardworking folk with the high-vis vests on and they're going around, they're spraying all the weeds and I'm walking my dog at the same time and I've just thought nothing of it, to be honest. And then I realized it was actually Roundup. and I'm thinking to myself, my dog sniffs everything, licks everything, chomps at some of those little weeds in the corners of the pavement and stuff. So she's probably getting exposed to glyphosate as well. Indeed. It's not just humans, but also animals that are being exposed. But also farm animals are getting even much higher doses even than humans, Whether it's especially those animals that are given high protein like soy and maize that are imported from North and South America, virtually all, almost 100% of the soy and the corn or maize as we call it here in Europe crops in North and South America are glyphosate tolerant GM crops. Wow. So they're coming in with huge residue levels, and I mean huge, very, very high levels of glyphosate, herbicide contamination. And that's going straight into the animal feed. Wow. And so our farm animals are actually being exposed to really quite high levels. Is there a particular reason why it tends to be cereals, grains, maize or corn? Yeah. Well, for these two reasons I mentioned earlier, Rupi, which is the pre-harvest essiccation of the cereal crops. And the genetic glyphosate tolerant genetically modified. Gotcha. So those tend to be those. Those are the major ones. Right. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Let's talk about the mechanism of action actually for glyphosate. And perhaps that will allow us to meander into a conversation as to why this is potentially detrimental to humans as well. So glyphosate was created. When was it? Like 1950s. 1950s. Glyphosate was invented by a German chemist in the 1950s. And initially, it was marketed as a metal chelator, i.e. it's a glyphosate bind. I'll come back to this because there are health implications to this as well. But glyphosate was invented. People didn't actually know what to do with it initially. And then eventually, it was found that it can bind metals. Okay. And it was patented as what's known as a metal chelator, as a metal binder. And it was initially sold as something that you can clear metal deposits in pipes, like calcium deposits in pipes. So it was a pipe cleaner. Wow. And it wasn't until the 1970s that Monsanto company in the United States discovered, actually, that it acted as a herbicide. And that's when its use suddenly began to increase. And the way it acts as a herbicide is that it inhibits an enzyme that's part of a biochemical pathway present in plants called the shikimate pathway. And the shikimate pathway, which is responsible, among other things, for producing in plants the essential aromatic amino acids. If you block it with glyphosate, you block that pathway with glyphosate, the plant can't synthesize its essential amino acids anymore. It can't synthesize its proteins anymore. So it dies. And it dies quite quickly. Okay. So it's very effective. And because the shikimate pathway doesn't exist in animals and humans, it was always then claimed, well, it's got to be completely safe. for us and for animals that may contain it. Of course, what was ignored at the time by the industry who was pushing this claim was, firstly, that there are different ways glyphosate can be toxic other than blocking the shikimo pathway. And I'll come back to those mechanisms shortly. But also, of course, our gut bacteria, many species in our, the bacteria in our gut, do have the shikimate pathway. And perhaps glyphosate herbicides can block the shikimate pathway in our gut bacteria and cause imbalance in our gut bacterial population, what we call gut dysbiosis, which can lead to ill health. And probably to your listeners, I'm sure they're all familiar just how important balance of the gut microbiome is for health. Yeah. This imbalance in the gut, not just the population of bacteria, but more importantly in its function is biochemistry. Imbalance in this, dysbiosis in this, has now been linked to a plethora of chronic diseases. Not only in the gut itself, like with inflammatory bowel disease and that kind of thing, but in more distant locations in the body, whether it's liver disease, immune system imbalance, even behavioral problems because of the gut microbiome, gut-liver axis. You disturb that two-way communication through gut dysbiosis, and you can end up with behavioral problems such as contribute to autism and ADHD in youngsters, and even to cancers as well. There is a link between gut dysbiosis and gut and different cancer initiation and progression as well. So it's very, very important. So anything that disturbs the gut microbiome is not a good thing. And we now have not just work from my own lab, which, again, kind of pioneered that work showing glyphosate, gut dysbiosis connection, but many other labs. We now have some pretty clear evidence that, first of all, the shikimate pathway in the gut microbiome is blocked by ingestion of glyphosate herbicides. But more importantly, the biochemistry of the gut is disturbed by exposure to glyphosate herbicides, particularly resulting in what we call oxidative stress, which is a very damaging cell molecular. a DNA damaging outcome in the body So we have the situation where it been generally regarded as safe because we didn appreciate the fact that we have trillions of cells in our body that can be affected by glyphosate um and it only apparently has an impact in plants um you mentioned earlier that 30 of bread had glyphosate residues on in the uk supermarkets given all this um interest or not interest that given how ubiquitous glyphosate is now how many of us in the uk are actually exposed to it do we have a semblance of like how much is actually in our systems at a population level yes we do actually although it's it's limited my group has been the only one and i don't mean this to boast sure but to say in a way how shameful the regulators have been in Not monitoring for this, really. But my group has been the only one that has looked at glyphosate residues in the urine of humans, UK citizens. We conducted this several years ago and published it. And what we found there was that over 50% of the people we surveyed, there was 168 of them from different parts of the country. more than 50% of them, I think it was 53%, had readily detectable levels of glyphosate in their urine. Wow. So if we can extrapolate from that, we would argue that over 50% of the people in the UK at any given time are going to have glyphosate residues, exposure from different sources. Mostly for us living in cities, it'll be mostly from food ingestion. That'd be the primary source. in rural environments it could also be from when the herbicide is sprayed by farmers during their cultivation cycles so it is there is a wide level exposure in the United States it's virtually 100% but that's because it's so much more the large scale use of glyphosate in the USA is so much greater because of the glyphosate tolerant genetically modified crops as well as the pre-harvest desiccation all the surveys that have been conducted there have found essentially 100% of different varying levels. Oh, my gosh. They tend to be higher, again, in the United States than in Europe, but nevertheless, we find that. And also, there's been surveys conducted on the continent here, in the European continent, very similar results. Yeah. I can't remember the exact percentage, but readily detectable levels of glyphosate in a high percentage of people. So it is, as you say, it's almost ubiquitous out there in the environment. So it's very difficult to avoid, actually. So it is very worrying. I should add, perhaps, though, that in the UK human urine samples, we analyzed for glyphosate. We actually analyzed for over 160 other pesticides as well. And we found that all of them, 100% of the urine samples, were positive for pyrethroid and organophosphate insecticides. Really? At rather worrying levels as well. Really? So again, it showed you that we're not just exposed to one, but as expected, we're the UK population. And it's generally, we're not trying to single out the UK here, but people are generally exposed to a large cocktail of pesticides on a daily basis, which includes glyphosate as the only herbicide because it's just the most widely used. Gotcha. So you've probably had pushback from industry about this. Imagine I'm a lobbyist and I say, all right, professor, I get it. But, you know, just because it's got just because 50 percent of the UK population have got glyphosate in their urine doesn't mean that it's at a harmful level. We just pee it out. The clearance is in a few days. Nothing to see here. Yeah. What would your rebuttal be to that? Yes, indeed. We've had a lot of pushback on our work along those lines from industry and their academic collaborators, colleagues, whatever. Well, in order to assess whether, first of all, the level of glyphosate in people's bodies is being topped up daily. It's not like you get exposed one day and then nothing. Clearly, if you're eating the same things, doing the same things each day, you're going to be getting almost like a daily top up of this. So it's a constant daily exposure level that we're talking about here, whether in Europe, UK, North America. And the levels that are found in urine imply, again, we can't do the human studies really to prove it. Sure. But based on what we know about ingestion rates and secretion, elimination rates, it's been calculated that the level of ingestion on a daily basis is quite low. It's about in the low microgram per kilogram body weight per day. A microgram is a millionth of a gram, so it is really very small. And so it is a small amount, and that might give the impression that, oh, why should I be worried about this? Well, actually, when we do experiments, again, obviously we can't do experiments in humans. This is unethical. So we use what are regulatory accepted studies in laboratory animals, mostly in rats and others have done in mice as well. but in that let's just to show you how such a tiny amount of glyphosate herbicide exposure can be harmful we we analyzed the uh the livers and the kidneys of rats exposed to a glyphosate herbicide for two years and the and the amount of glyphosate that they were ingesting these rats for a two-year period was, let's see, what was it? It was basically, it was incredibly low. I called it an ultra low dose. I'm trying to think up of the figure now. It was roughly about 1,000 times lower, at least 1,000 times lower than what somebody may be ingesting typically in North America at least than maybe even, maybe not at least 100 times lower. Okay. 100 times lower. So order of magnitude much lower than what? Oh, yeah, at least two orders of magnitude lower. Okay. And yet when we looked at these organs of these rats, especially the liver, we found that at the end of the two-year period of exposure, the animals suffered what's known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. So what's that? Now, fatty liver disease is pandemic. We've got about 30% of people in the UK who suffer from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Fatty liver disease is a serious thing because it can progress to more serious fatty liver conditions, leading to cirrhosis and liver cancer. So fatty liver disease is a known risk factor for cirrhosis and liver cancer. So it's not something to scoff at, basically. So anything, again, that constitutes a risk factor for developing fatty liver disease, you want to really try to avoid, especially if it's being caused by very low levels of exposure. And so my group was the first to identify exposure to glyphosate herbicide as a risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. and that's been built on by other groups around the world. They've done other animal studies, both in my own group and elsewhere, animal studies, but also some epidemiological human survey work has also found that people with the more serious your non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, the higher the levels of glyphosate you have in your body. So there's an association there that's been found as well. So I use that as an example to show that that's one example where even low levels of glyphosate, given enough time, can lead to serious chronic illness. And so these levels that people, you know, the levels you find in food leading to a daily intake level that our regulators say is safe, I would say there's scientific evidence that that is not the case. for me the most striking finding that was published earlier this year in june was actually a carcinogenicity study in rats led by the ramazzini institute in italy which i was involved in as well and what these rats were exposed to again starting from mid-gestation from prenatal in the womb, and then for two years of life after birth, they were exposed to glyphosate alone or two different types of commercial glyphosate formulations. Why do we need to make a distinction there? When you buy glyphosate, herbicide from a shop, it's not just a glyphosate solution in water. Right. In fact, if you sprayed a plant of a glyphosate solution in water, nothing's going to happen because the glyphosate can't get in outside the plant to act as a herbicide. So what the manufacturers have to do is to add additional chemicals that basically weaken the plant's cell walls, punch holes basically in the plant's cell walls, allowing the glyphosate to get in, and then it can kill the plant. Now, it turns out, and again, my group has done a lot of work on this, is that these additional chemicals that are present in the commercial glyphosate formulations that farmers use and gardeners use at home or are being sprayed along the streets or in school playgrounds, they're highly toxic in their own right. So that's why in a properly conducted study, you've not only just got to look at glyphosate on its own, but you've got to also compare it to a representative commercial formulation of the product. And that's what we did in the Ramazzini Institute study with the carcinogenicity study I mentioned. That's what we did. We had glyphosate alone at three doses, and we had these two formulations, a representative European commercial glyphosate formulation and one sold in the United States. All of them were carcinogenic. Wow. And most worryingly, they were carcinogenic, causing many different types of cancer, leukemia, liver cancer, skin cancers, brain cancers. And really a very wide range of different cancers resulted in these animals, highly statistically significant. Most worryingly, the lowest dose these animals receive, what's known as the European and UK acceptable daily intake of glyphosate. What is the acceptable daily intake? The acceptable daily intake of a chemical is what a regulator says you can ingest on a daily basis, day in, day out for all of your life and suffer no adverse health consequences. Okay. So the lowest dose in this animal experiment was the European and UK acceptable daily intake of glyphosate, which is 0.5 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day. 5 milligrams per kilogram? 0.5. 0.5 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day. Massive cancers resulted. Really? Many, especially leukemias and skin cancer. Oh my gosh. Many, many cancers were being caused by the glyphosate alone, just as bad as a commercial formulation. So meaning that the glyphosate was really the cause here. It wasn't the additional chemicals in the formulations. They didn't do anything extra in these particular cancers. But at a dose that the regulator says should be completely safe. So what does that tell us? it means that the regulator has clearly got it wrong. And that what the regulator says is an acceptable, perfectly safe daily intake level actually is not safe at all. And that the level of daily ingestion, well, at the moment, I need to say that based on the evidence from this carcinogenicity study, but also other studies, including earlier ones like this, the one I mentioned about the fatty liver connection, I would say at the moment that we don't know what a safe dose, daily dose of glyphosate is. Really? Because think about it. You've got even the acceptable daily intake is clearly causing cancer. And the way the regulators set an acceptable daily intake. That was going to be my next question, actually. What they do is they feed lower and lower amounts of the chemical to the animals until they get to a dose where they reach what's known as the no observed adverse effect level. Okay. No observed adverse effect level or no AL. No AL. And once they've established a no AL, they're then for the fact that the study was done in rats and there's obviously great variation in the human population. They add a hundred fold safety. They put in an 100-fold safety margin and say, yeah, the NOAL in Europe, as it's said, is 50 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day of glyphosate. And we're going to add a 100-fold safety margin. So from 50 comes down to 0.5 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day. But what the latest study has shown us especially is that the NOAL, sorry, what's considered as the ADI is not the NOAL. Okay, wow. Because that still caused the cancer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So where do we stand? It means we don't actually know the no-alpha glyphosate anymore. We thought we did. Yeah, yeah. But now, with the latest science, say that was wrong. And we don't actually know the no-al. And if we don't know the no-al, we can't set the acceptable daily intake. So where does that leave us? It leaves us with a situation where we don't actually, at the moment, all the science is saying we don't know what is a safe dose daily ingestion rate of glyphosate is. For me, what that argues is that we need to look at this very carefully and revise the exposure levels downwards massively. I would say initially at least 100-fold. Yeah, just as an extra safety margin. Just as a precaution because it's people's health we're talking about. Yes, it may inconvenience industry and farmers, whatever, But there are alternatives, of course, to using glyphosate. For sure. It's just that farmers have become rather addicted to it because it's rather effective at what it does. And, of course, it's been boasted as being particularly safe to handle and to use. I just want to reiterate that for the listener just so they understand that. So the acceptable daily intake is set by looking at animal studies where they determine that this is the lowest dose that doesn't cause a toxic effect. And then to create a buffer of safety, they revised that down a hundredfold to create the no AL, which is the no observed. You establish the no AL, and then you divide that by 100 to get the ADI. Oh, apologies. I'm glad we did that because it wasn't clear in my mind. So you do it the other way around to get the ADI. So there's that margin of safety. Correct. And what you're saying is in the latest studies that ADI, which is meant to be inclusive of the buffer of safety, is still toxic. Correct. That's absolutely right. And in terms of how much we're being exposed to, even despite the ADI, is it above the ADI currently? Do we have a semblance as to what level of exposure? The daily exposure is lower than the ADI. Oh, it is lower than the ADI. I would say it is lower than the ADI. Even with agricultural workers, it may be low, although they may be pushing it at the time when they're spraying. And if they haven't protected themselves properly, particularly they may, for a limited period, be getting up, pushing the ADI. But for us, for consumers generally, you're going to be below the ADI. but again that doesn't mean it's a safe level of daily ingestion all the same because we know the ADI is wrong and we don't know what the real ADI is and it's possible that the ADI is actually you know we're exceeding what would be a true ADI if we were to do for example if we were to do this cancer study with the animals and then just keep reducing the dose and find out what the lowest dose of glyphosate is that doesn't give the cancers, it's possible that we could end up with an ADR that's even lower than what the daily ingestion is right now. It's speculation, obviously, but the point is with these unknowns there, we're talking about very serious illnesses here, fatty liver disease, cancers. In other contexts, glyphosate has been shown more in the rural areas where large-scale glyphosate use on genetically modified crops is being undertaken. People have been shown to suffer from neurological defects and birth defects, as well as cancer. So there are many different conditions now that have been linked with glyphosate exposure. But I think the main ones for us here to concern us is probably the fatty liver condition and the cancers. A lot of people might be thinking to themselves, okay, I get glyphosate can potentially cause these issues to my gut microbiota and create oxidative stress. We'll go back to the metal chelation element as well. How does that relate to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease? Is there a mechanism of action or is it mediated by the fact that you're disrupting that gut microbiome? I think the way in which the liver damage is taking place is both direct and indirect. I think the glyphosate herbicide is directly causing tissue damage. first of all we have shown that glyphosate herbicides will cause oxidative stress and dna damage in liver okay now the oxidative stress is probably the mechanism by which the dna damage is taking place dna damage the number one risk factor for cancer yeah and you know there's for me the evidence is absolutely clear that glyphosate glyphosate herbicides are DNA damaging agents. The evidence is very, very clear. I've seen it in my own lab. And I've seen this, particularly we focused on the liver because it's the major organ that things, from the gut, as you know, that we have a vein, it's called the portal vein. And so the nutrients and other things from the gut drain straight to the liver and the liver has to sort all that out. So it's the primary site for where toxins from the gut can end up. Yeah. So we but we got the glyphosate getting into the circulation It going to directly affect the liver But from gut dysbiosis the liver can also be negatively impacted by the glyphosate indirectly. Because we know that if, again, we've shown, and many groups now have shown, but again, we were the first to show just how bad glyphosate and glyphosate herbicides can be in causing what we call gut dysbiosis in terms of changing the population of bacteria and fungi in our gut from a nice balance to having different bacteria going up, other bacteria coming down, including reductions in bacteria that are secreting our, what's known as short-chain fatty acids. Short-chain fatty acids are very important because they're immune system modulators. If we block that, then our immune system ends up being imbalanced. And with an imbalanced immune system, it's not just leaving you prone to infections, but other internal body conditions as well. Yeah. So we know that glyphosate herbicides cause imbalance in bacteria and fungal populations. But also, more importantly, they can cause disturbance in their biochemistry. In our very first study, it was very interesting, actually, because we looked at the populations of bacteria, and we saw some changes, but they were fairly modest. But when we looked at the biochemistry, we found massive changes in the biochemistry of the gut. And the most striking thing that was thrown up was the oxidative stress, which can damage the cells and the functioning of the gut in general. In our most recent work, which I presented at a conference earlier this year, is that how glyphosate can result in compromised gut integrity. What do I mean by that? That's a very fancy scientific way of saying leaky gut. And now, why is that bad? It means that if the gut becomes leaky, it means that partially digested food and other gut components, such as gut bacterial components, can enter not only the circulation, but the portal vein. And these enter the liver, and they can cause inflammation in the liver. And causing inflammation in the liver can lead to fatty liver disease. And its downstream consequences are increasing the risk of liver cancer as well. So we have a direct effect on the liver of the glyphosate causing oxidative stress, DNA damage, changes in gene expression, also pushing things down a carcinogenic cancer-causing pathway. It was very strange. Every analysis we did on the liver with the different molecular biological markers that we investigated pointed us down a cancer pathway. It was really quite extraordinary in a way. But in other words, it was consistent. We got a very, very consistent pattern of molecular and cellular changes suggesting that the liver was being sent down a carcinogenic pathway. and that was, as I say, through direct effects and indirect effects through, say, the gut dysbiosis and leaky gut. Is this herbicides recognised as carcinogenic by the IARC? Yes, good point. So this is what blew the whole thing into a wide scale in the public arena in terms of the cancer causing potential of glyphosate was a monograph published in 2015 by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer. Because they classified glyphosate and glyphosate herbicides as probable human carcinogens, grade 2A. Gotcha. And that was on the basis of definitive animal experiments, definitive mechanisms, oxidative stress, DNA damage, but not so conclusive evidence from human epidemiology. Okay. And that's why it was a 2A and not a 1. Right. If there was clear evidence from human association studies as well, then they said that it would have been a 1. Okay. My feeling is that since the IARC report of 2015, firstly, we've got many more animal studies showing the carcinogenic potential and mechanisms, oxidative stress, DNA damage, inflammation, and other carcinogenic mechanisms. but also we've got much better epidemiological evidence as well especially for non-hodgkin lymphoma really where there's at least five well-powered well-conducted epidemiological studies in the united states that show a clear association of glyphosate and non-hodgkin lymphoma My feeling, and this has happened since the IR appraisal, I reckon if IR was to return to glyphosate now with this extra evidence in both animals and epidemiology and mechanisms and all the rest of it, it would come out as a class one without a doubt. The evidence is just so, in other words, definitive human carcinogen, which means it should be banned. because the point about carcinogens is that once you identify a chemical as a cancer hazard, it doesn't matter what the dose is. The law says it has to be banned. But that's not happening. Yeah. I was going to say, how have industry responded to this? Because I'm sure they're watching this and they're thinking in the back of their minds, look, we're going to have to reformulate. We have to use different pesticides at some point. It's coming. It's bloody late. We've been sat on this information for so many years now and work of yours and others. What are the next steps and why haven't we been scaling this back if it hasn't started already? Yeah, it's – no, there hasn't been any scaling back, that's for sure. The use of glyphosate herbicides has been increasing rather than decreasing. Yes, there have been, if you go to shops at least, I'm not sure whether these are used in agriculture, but certainly in terms of domestic use, glyphosate in the so-called roundup formulations, glyphosate has been replaced by a couple of other chemicals. One is acetic acid, in other words, vinegar. Okay, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. You can spray your plants with vinegar and it will kill them. That's not bad at all. It's probably the safest option. And then there's other ones with pelargonic acid, which is a plant extract again. Okay. But, you know, it is nevertheless a toxin and it needs to be handled with care. But that's very small scale. The regular glyphosate herbicides, there's no rollback on that. And again, the industry and the regulators are, for me, they're playing what we call the dose game. And they're saying, well, but the doses exposed, you know, the people are exposed to this low and so on. That, you know, we don't think it's of any concern. But actually, for me, they're just not taking all of the evidence into account. They really, really aren't. The regulators tend to also, and this has been published, especially the way the Environmental Protection Agency evaluated glyphosate in the United States, been very, very heavily criticized as basically they really only took into account the work conducted by the industry. And they ignored what independent academics like myself have done. Yeah. And based on what the industry has put to them, they said, oh, well, we think it's fine. that is far from the case of course because imagine your industry your producer's chemical are you going to present damning evidence to a regulator that's going to force a regulator to block the marketing of your product these conflicts are simply not being embraced by regulators and that's true here in UK and Europe as well the way that I perceive it as well the commercial imperative is so strong both not out of the industry but also within with for governments you know they they want to make life as easy as possible for industry yeah uh so they they come up with reasons why it's kind of safe i was shocked for example the two years ago glyphosate market approval glyphosate was re-approved for market use in Europe in 2023. 2023. And it was for 10 years. It was extended for another 10 years. And there's re-approval to be used in agriculture. Agriculture. Okay. There were some restrictions. Okay. Like, for example, no pre-harvest desiccation. Okay. Restrictions there. And some restrictions in urban use as well. So some good things. But on the whole, not much really for farmers, especially because, as I say, pre-harvest desiccation is only one use of glyphosate herbicides in agriculture, not the only use. But what shocked me was that the agencies, the European Union agencies that evaluated the scientific evidence for glyphosate safety ignored all my group's work. I mean, again, that may sound as if I'm something very personal, which it is. But what shocked me was we conducted our experiments according to regulatory standards, absolutely regulatory standards. And we got these adverse outcomes, including glyphosate alone causing DNA damage and the gut dysbiosis and so on. And yet it was completely ignored. Did they give an explanation as to why? I never got a reply from when I put this to them. And also, the other way they get around this, and this is the shocker. I mentioned earlier on how the commercial glyphosate, their formulations, it's not just glyphosate, but many other chemicals that are there to help glyphosate do its job as a weed killer. they completely ignore the toxicity of the coformulants, as we call them, these additional chemicals in the commercial formulations. And they do so at their peril because we know that they're highly toxic in their own right. Whenever we've done an experiment where we've compared glyphosate alone to some commercial formulation, the commercial formulation has always come up. as being more toxic than glyphosate. And that's important observation because when people are exposed, they're not just exposed to glyphosate, they're exposed to the commercial formulations as farmers use them or as you use them at home, et cetera. But they ignore the work that has shown really serious health risks from the commercial formulations or heightened health risks from the commercial formulation compared to glyphosate alone. And that's the other way they kind of get around a lot of the science using the commercial formulation showing serious health risks of glyphosate herbicides. So there's all these, I would say, almost slights of hand that regulatory agencies use in other ways to say, oh, well, this study didn't quite comply with our regulatory standards. Well, actually, they set for me very unnecessary and scientifically unsound, scientifically unnecessary requirements for an academic to conduct a toxicity study, say with glyphosate, and see what the effects are. So a lot of the studies are ignored because some fine, you know, some little requirement is not met. And therefore they say, oh, even though there's evidence of harm, we'll ignore that as well. Yeah. It's a very, for me, it's a very, very almost sinister because it's people's health that's on the line here. And that's their health. You know what they didn't realize? Yeah. It's their health as well. Yeah. So it's people's health and the environmental well-being generally that is at risk here. And you shouldn't be putting money before life. You should be putting life before money. And if something comes up as a hazard for serious illness, then you come down hard on it. 100%. We should be taking a much more of a pragmatic approach. that as we speak, the European agencies, European Food Safety Authority, is reevaluating glyphosate in the light of the latest carcinogenicity cancer study I mentioned earlier that showed that even the so-called acceptable daily intake, the safe daily intake dose was causing serious multiple types of cancer. So we're waiting to see what their outcome is, re-evaluation is. But that study of all was 100% regulatory compliant. Absolutely no doubt. So it cannot be faulted in terms of procedure. And if you can't fault it in terms of procedure, then you've got to take that evidence, the results at face value. which is this agent is carcinogenic, full stop. And if the European Union is true to its own law, when a chemical is identified as a hazard, let alone a risk for cancer, that agent must be banned, full stop. Are there some positive cases within European countries where councils have taken it upon themselves to ban the use of Roundup and glyphosate-containing herbicides. Yes, there have been some encouraging steps taken, like in France. France banned all urban use, domestic use of glyphosate herbicides, for example. And I think cities, local communities have taken that step as well. Here in the UK, there is, I know Pesticide Action Network UK, a great NGO that I'm happy to be working with at the moment on the glyphosate issue. They are campaigning with local groups to try to get local councils to, again, stop using glyphosate herbicides and use other means of weed control along the streets. Because they exist, let's face it. Or vinegar, right? You could use vinegar, for example, for a start. Even if the weed grows up again, which it will do eventually, you go back and you can spray again. I mean, it's a damn sight cheaper, by the way. Oh, yeah. I can imagine. Yeah. And so there are many different ways that you can control weeds without having to resort to Roundup, to glyphosate. Yeah. So there are encouraging signs. Other councils are digging their heels in. We've got local campaigners that have been lobbying, pushing local councils to ban it. But they push back from it and say, no, we're not going to do it. So it's kind of hit and miss out of here as to whether the local councils listen and take note of the evidence, the scientific evidence, and act accordingly. Because, I mean, if you can inhale it, if you can absorb it through your skin, if you're eating it, I'm assuming it's in some cases in tap water, wringing water as well. Again, we're not 100%. We need to do a survey. Again, pan-UK, we're in the middle of a survey to find out about the water level contamination. Because according to European Union law, which again at the moment is the same in the UK, the levels of pesticide contamination in drinking water are very low. Okay. but if there is some it can still be harmful if you're ingesting it on a daily basis in the rat study I mentioned earlier with the ultra low dose of glyphosate herbicide the level of glyphosate in the drinking water of these rats was the what is acceptable what is permitted the maximum permitted in drinking water in Europe and the UK and they're the ones that suffered the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and kidney damage as well okay so you know so we do need to know what's there yeah because and um well so we'll see what that is and i know also that pan uk is also surveying um just the environment generally uh for glyphosate and we'll see what the results are from there and uh but yeah yeah these these are these are things that should concern us yeah as uh the general public and that we should be taking steps to protect ourselves and our loved ones yeah in the meantime we should be definitely campaigning for our local councils and i'm literally in my mind formulating a letter that i'm going to be giving to my council about the use of roundup and whether they use it or not and i would encourage everyone to think about that as well if there are cheaper means that are safer for i'm just thinking about my dog as well um you know there's there's probably a bunch of people freaking out now about everything that you said over the last hour what can we actually feasibly do apart from obviously writing letters to our counselors and lobbying and you know supporting groups like um pesticide action network what are things that we can do in our day-to-day to reduce our exposure to pesticides in general but obviously the number 1%? Yeah. What we can do there is to protect ourselves and our loved ones is first and foremost to buy as much organic food as we can afford. Okay. I know organic food is more expensive, but as much as you can afford, buy organic. And I would say if your budget is limited in that respect, the things to try to buy organic are the cereals, the bread, the cereals, oat products. I was going to say, yes. Because these are key ones where the highest residues are likely to be found. And it's because these are like the big contributors in our diet, and they're usually like huge monocultures that are like sprayed at industrial levels. So the wheat the cereals the corn the soy those kind of products Gotcha Yeah So those and generally where the highest pesticide residues levels are found are in green leafy vegetables and soft fruits. Oh, strawberries. Strawberries. Nice things, unfortunately. So we tend to buy just organic soft fruits and the leafy vegetables. and then the cereals definitely products made out of oats and wheat and rye and barley and even as i say some pulses if you're buying pulses beans and lentils yeah as well try to buy organic if you can or those two and so skeptics of organic right um will say oh well if you buy organic it's still going to have pesticide residues on is it meaningfully lower in terms of I'm sure organic food is still going to have pesticide residues on they will because organic farms you're right because organic farms are surrounded by non-organic farms spray drift and so on and it's true the levels there will be residue levels of pesticides not all but in some organic products but they are a tiny fraction of what you find generally there really are a small fraction of what you find in the non-organic so it can make a difference okay okay for sure okay so or uh go for the you know bread cereals try and go organic where possible yeah there are cheaper organic options now that i've seen in supermarkets particularly frozen organic yeah which i'm a big fan of like frozen berries and that kind of stuff exactly and then do you follow the advice that pan give you know they do like a list of like uh foods that are the most pesticide, which have the most pesticide residues versus ones that have the least? Do you sort of follow those guidelines every year? That's right, which is why I mentioned the green leafies and the soft fruits are the ones where you generally tend to find the highest pesticide residues, including glyphosate occasionally as well in these foods too. And so, yeah, it's worth following the Pesticide Action Network guidelines based on their surveys and which to try to favor as far as your budget allows for organic and so on. So, yeah, there are things we can do. And obviously, if you've got a garden, don't buy spray. Dig up your weeds rather than spray your weeds or spray them with vinegar instead. It's a lot cheaper and it works. What about if you live near a golf course or something? Yeah, those are really bad. I think. But yeah, in places like that, that's where you see a lot of herbicide uses to keep the greens green. It may not be, can't use glyphosate because it will kill the grass. Right, yeah, yeah. But it'll be used on the sides. But they'll be using other herbicides, broadleaf herbicides, to keep the fairways and the greens just with grass and other weeds. But yeah, you could end up with an environment with high levels of pesticides if you're around places like golf courses, but even with farms during the spray seasons. Again, I have a colleague in the United States who focused on glyphosate residues in women that either live near agricultural fields that was spraying with Roundup glyphosate and those that weren't. And also they looked at different times of the year. And sure enough, if you live close to an agricultural field, your glyphosate levels in the urine were high, but also they varied through the years. So if the urine sample was taken near the spray season, then again, your urinary levels were higher than at other times of the year too. So if you're living in agricultural fields and you're concerned, maybe you need to find out when your local farmer is going to be spraying. On those days, kind of be away and reduce your level of exposure because it just spreads. I mean, you can't contain it, especially if the wind is blowing in your direction. Totally, yeah, yeah. And you mentioned earlier the way we measure glyphosate is via the urine. Is this the way in which our body excretes it? Is it just via the urine? No. We measure glyphosate in urine because it's the easiest way. And it's a good measure because anything that's gone into the body comes out mostly in the urine. But anything that doesn't go into the body first comes out in the feces. and we don't absorb everything. We're only going to be absorbing a percentage of the glyphosate in our food, which means that most of the glyphosate is going to be impacting the gut because it's in the food that we've eaten, which is why we are seeing these quite dramatic effects in gut microbiome, gut function, structure, leaky gut. I think it's perhaps not surprising we're seeing these associations, strong associations with glyphosate exposure in the gut. But so I can't, let me think, what's the, I mean, we do, sorry, I can't off the top of my head recall what percentage of the glyphosate in say the drinking water exposed to the animals ended up being taken up. But it's a significant percentage. It's not like 2% or 3%. It's much, much, much higher than that. Wow. Which is why you end up with these relatively, readily detectable levels in the urine can be up to three, four micrograms per liter, which is not insignificant. No, absolutely. That's telling you that you've absorbed quite a lot in order to get that amount in your urine. Absolutely. Absolutely. If people are interested in figuring out how or to what level they're being exposed right now with glyphosate, are there commercially available urine tests that they can do? There are. I'm not sure if there's any in Europe, but certainly in the United States where you can send a urine sample and they will analyze it for you. So if you search the Internet, you may be able to find a service provider. Because it could be quite interesting if someone wanted to do like an experiment, like I'm thinking about this experiment myself, like to test my urine levels pre and post doing an experiment where I go purely organic and just seeing whether the residues are actually markedly reduced in my urine. That would be an interesting one. Very interesting experiment and certainly very doable. there have been short term studies along those lines in the past not looking specifically at glyphosate but a range of different pesticides and so people had their urine pesticide residues measured and then they went on organic diet for a couple of weeks and then measured again and sure enough we saw quite a dramatic reduction even over a relatively short period of time and this one is very encouraging It means the body, given the chance, we could actually detox fairly rapidly, where it would take a bit longer because a lot of these pesticides, not so much the glyphosate, but many of the pesticides are dissolved in fat, the fatty parts of the body readily. And so we end up with deposits in the adipose, the fatty parts of the body. And that will take a bit longer to kind of clear out. because my understanding of glyphosate was that it's water soluble and it will just clear it. Yeah. It can accumulate. It is. It is. It's cleared quite quickly from the animal studies. Again, there haven't been any human studies, but in animal studies that were given like a relatively high dose of glyphosate and then measured over time, most of it will be gone within a week. Okay. But some does still hang around and it tends to concentrate in our bones. Oh, gosh. And again, where it could induce issues with bone function, including bone marrow, it's been hypothesized that bone integrity and also the bone marrow, which is a response for producing all of our blood cells, could also be negatively impacted by having this more persistent levels of glyphosate in that part of the body. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, it would be worth doing the experiment. Totally. For sure. Yeah. So, but, yeah, I'm sure that it can be done even if you have to post your. Yeah. I mean, Pesticide Action Network UK, let's see, they were sending samples to a company in Belgium for analysis. Oh, okay. Okay. So it is possible to do it somewhere in Europe. Yeah. We could probably end up doing it in Europe. We don't have to ship to the USA. Yeah, I'm going to ask them about that. Yeah, do. I'm really interested in that. That's definitely an experiment that I want to do. Yeah, we need more surveys like this. For sure. Of the UK population, like I say. And food's on the shelves. Totally, yeah. As well as with people. I noticed when I was in America earlier this year, during the summer, there's loads of these glyphosate-free labels that are popping up. I haven't seen that in the UK. No, there's nothing in Europe. It's not as much of a buzzword yet. Exactly. We're trying to make it a buzzword. But are those to be trusted? Do they actually do independent analyses of the products? Yeah, as far as I'm aware, I'm aware of at least one NGO that certifies products. So they have a certified laboratory that does the analysis of the product and says yay or nay as to whether you can have the glyphosate-free symbol on your product or not. So yes, it can be trusted. Okay. But I am assuming it's of a certain level or under. Presumably. It's level of detection. Gotcha. And that can vary from product to product. But it should be quite low. Yeah. If the company has its assay working well, it should be able to pick up very low levels of glyphosate accurately and sensitively so yeah I would say that it's fairly it may not be 100% but it will be at an extremely low level if it passes the tests yeah definitely Michael this has been amazing I've learnt so much on this I'm feeling pretty smug about my Riverford organic box now So I'm definitely investing in that. I recently started with them. They're not sponsoring the podcast or anything, but I just love the freshness of it, the seasonal variety, all that kind of stuff. And I think there are lots of other ways in which people can try and sneak in more organic vegetables and fruits into their diet. But by first focusing on the wheat and cereals and corn and soy-based products, I think that's really pragmatic. I think you're absolutely right. And, yeah, I mean, I also recommend going organic doesn't have to be super expensive. I'm very, I admire the work of an NGO in the United States called Mums Across America. Mums Across America? Mums Across America. Okay. If you go to their website, they give you all kinds of advice on cooking organically, affordably. Really? Oh, wow. Buying and cooking organically, affordably, Moms Across America. It was founded by an amazing woman called Zen Honeycutt, an old acquaintance and friend. And she's done amazing things, mainly driven by problems she found in her own family with her own children. Illnesses, food intolerances, really serious chronic illnesses. And she moved them all to organic and they all got better. Gosh. So they're inspired by her own experience. She set up this organization, which has a big membership now, which is still very active. And they've been campaigning for getting rid of glyphosate and pesticides and genetically modified foods for many, many years. But they're also helping people on how to go organic. Because I know the solution is to go organic. And because GMOs and pesticides, GM foods and pesticides are not allowed in organic agriculture. So they advise people on how to affordably go down that route. And so people can kind of get advice on that. So, yeah. So it is possible to shift things. And I think one of the things that people don't realize that if you cook from scratch rather than buy processed foods, they're really expensive. They are. Yeah. Yeah. And we know that the health risk connections with ultra processed foods are now becoming quite well established. And the solution to that is to cook from scratch, from fresh ingredients, which is no doubt what you recommend. First of all, and if you start from that basis, actually, and you buy organic, again, it's cheaper than buying organic processed foods. So it is possible to go down these, change the way we cook, buy and cook our foods in a very positive way and for it to be organic and more affordable. It may not be 100%, but at least you can get a large percentage of it organic and save that exposure to these toxic chemicals. Because let's face it, pesticides are designed to kill. In other words, they are toxic. They are poisons. So we should avoid them as much as possible. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like I'm going to open a can of worms here, but I think we're going to save this for another podcast. You mentioned genetically modified foods. I'm sure you've got a lot of opinions on this. Yeah, again. And a hot take, you know, avoiding it. Are they neutral? Is it because of the stacking of pesticides? What is the issue with genetically modified foods? The problem with genetically modified foods is multiple. Again, we need another hour for me to take you through all of that. It's an issue that I've been raising concerns about in public since the mid-1990s. And it's still a major issue, increasingly so actually, with the imminent launch of what are known as these new gene-edited genetically modified crops, which may sound better and safer but actually they're not so yeah it's the risks are multiple and we need to bear in mind that all of these types of crops whether it's the old style what we call transgenic GM crops with the addition of foreign genes or these newer style gene edited crops where you're just tweaking the plant's own genes, a few at most. They're all going to be grown with pesticides. So they come as a package. GM foods, regardless of what they are, they come as a package with pesticides. And in fact, like for the launch of the glyphosate tolerant genetically modified crops, it meant the exposure to glyphosate just went through the ceiling. I mean, literally. And industry knew that residue levels and exposure levels would be increased with the launch of these crops. So they lobbied incredibly strongly to have the permitted levels, not on the basis of any science, but they lobbied incredibly strongly to have the permitted residue levels in foods increased and the acceptable daily intakes to be increased and so on. So it comes, as I say, this is what we're faced with, with these genetically modified crops. It's still complex mixtures of pesticides. And mixtures of pesticides, by the way, are even more dangerous, of course, than just one pesticide. And again, we're having no time to go into it, but my group has conducted a number of studies along those lines as well where we mix pesticides and feed it to our laboratory animals and show that they suffer consequences. Again, we give them the acceptable daily intake of the mixture, which regulators say, oh, nothing should happen. Well, I'm sorry. Bad things do happen to the gut microbiome, to the liver again. Gosh. So they minimally come with still a big package of pesticide use, But they come also with additional mechanisms of risk. When you start playing with an organism's genes, genetic makeup, it's not a good thing. Not a good thing at all. You cannot predict the outcomes at all. Because genes work as a sophisticated, integrated network. In you or me, plants, animals, it doesn't matter what the organism. The genome, our totality of our genes, is a beautiful, incredibly sophisticated, integrated network of function. It means that if you just change one component of a network, there are going to be major repercussions. And if you change the patterns of gene expression, you change the biochemistry of the organism. And contained within that biochemistry of the organism could be the production of novel toxins and allergens. Yeah. So in a nutshell, that is some of the risks that I've been trying to, not just myself, but many, I've been trying to highlight from these genetically modified foods, which admittedly here in Europe are very, very, very limited. but as I say we're on the verge of a new wave of these types of products entering the market in the coming years so we do need to be aware and aware of it all of what's coming absolutely yeah we definitely need to prepare for that Professor Antoniu thank you so much I'm going to get you to promise that you're going to come back so we can talk more about genetically modified crops and their potential ramifications I will be delighted and I very much look forward to it That's going to be brilliant. I can't wait. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. 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