References:
“What’s Making Our Children Sick?” by Dr. Michelle Perro, Vincanne Adams
“Is Roundup safe for dogs?”
https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/is-roundup-safe-for-dogs/
Champion died on October 29 at 3 pm. He was four years old.
We laughingly referred to our beloved pup, Champion, as our lemon (if he’d been a used car, we would have returned him for our money back!). Lemon that he was, we loved him to pieces and the loss of him has been huge.
When Champion was a pup, he had a kind of “failure to thrive” syndrome. He was slow to gain weight, and he had frequent stomach ailments. After a particularly disastrous encounter following eating the drippings of a roasted chicken, we took Champ to the vet where it was suggested that he might be allergic to chicken and that we change to salmon/sweet potato chow. He started eating that chow when he was one, and seemed to be much, much better.
At the end of this September (2021), Champ developed what seemed to be a bladder infection which was intractable to antibiotics. On the Saturday two days after starting a second course of a second antibiotic, Champ began vomiting and subsequently refused all food. On the following Wednesday, I had gone down to the orchard to work. Champ normally went everywhere with me, but he did not come. As I walked back up towards the house, I found Champ laying flat on his side. He did not move when I sat down on the grass beside him. I put my hand on his heart – it was like a wild caged bird trying desperately to escape. There was no steady beat at all.
Ben and I took Champ to the vet. He was in heart failure, and the vet told us that there was no hope – dogs in heart failure like this simply did not recover. She told us about research she had read last summer about young dogs dying of heart failure when they were fed grain-free food. She said that many of the grain substitutes in dog foods were of crops treated with Roundup just prior to harvest. Sweet potatoes were one of the crops mentioned as such a crop.
We took Champ home. We talked about putting him down, but a dear friend texted me with such good counsel – God alone has the number of the days of his creatures – and on thinking on that, we decided to let him die whenever it was his time. I sat vigil with him – just loving on him and talking to him and praying over him and singing. It was dreadfully sad, but such a blessing to get to spend those last two days with him. He died on Friday afternoon – truly a remarkable death at the touch of an angel.
We looked for the research by the FDA mentioned by the vet in which there was shown to be a strong association between dogfood which included crops typically sprayed with Roundup, and it was nowhere to be found. The only articles we could find were pretty innocuous, and were nothing like the article the vet had described. The article cited above was sent to us by a friend and was particularly helpful (and troubling).
It is troubling to realize that Monsanto, and those in agribusiness know full well the dangers of Roundup and the GMO seeds on which Monsanto holds patents – and that they seem very cavalier about their use. It has been known for a long time that there is a strong association between exposure to Roundup and cancer. It seems that there are other health implications when this poison is ingested through foods sprayed with it prior to harvest.
I have been aware of the dangers of various pesticides and have chosen for years to generally eat organic produce. Somehow though, I hadn’t made the association between the need for seeds to be GMO and the use of Roundup. GMO seeds turn into plants that will tolerate Roundup which leads to more and more frequent use of Roundup by those who are growing our foods. Here in Montana, I have seen the planes spraying the canola fields – they spray the fields a couple of days prior to harvest with Roundup as it causes the entire crop to be ready for harvest at the same time. Makes for a super-efficient harvest process – which makes for a more profitable crop.
The Sunday after Champion died, both Ben and I were a mess. The house felt so dead without him. I decided to look for a new puppy and found one in Arkansas. On the drive back to Montana, I listened to one of the books our daughter, Celeste, had recommended a while ago (cited above). I did not realize that this book was written to expose the impacts and effects Roundup and other pesticides are having on the health of our children. The author also brought attention to the increasingly frequent use of Roundup and other pesticides on our food crops. Monsanto has been busy developing more and more seed strains of various different crops that are genetically modified to tolerate Roundup. Monsanto has patented all of these seeds – and these seeds typically have to rebought each season – definitely a cash crop for Monsanto!
One of the authors of “What’s making our children sick?” is a medical doctor who has seen many children with intractable illnesses of various types – from rashes all over the body, to digestive troubles, to radical behavioral issues. Dr. Perro had developed a dietary and supplement protocol that seemed to work really well in helping kids for whom prescription drugs and other interventions had been unsuccessful. The most effective part of the protocol is to switch the child to eating a diet of only organically produced food, and to supplement with pre and probiotics.
Roundup was designated an antibiotic in 2000 – and just like other antibiotics, it kills off the normal bacteria that facilitate digestion and absorption of nutrients. Many of the children described in this book were having trouble with elimination. Many were malnourished as far as trace minerals and nutrients for which a healthy microbiome of the gut is necessary for absorption and utilization.
The dietary changes recommended by Dr. Perro brought about significant changes in the lives of the children, and in the lives of their parents.
Champion’s death, and all I have learned since, have brought home to me the degree to which our food production is messed up. While I cannot cite double-blind, placebo studies as to how Roundup and GMO seeds effect a population, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that would indicate that there is trouble at hand in the way our food crops are being produced. The profit motive seems to be the driving force behind the use of Roundup and GMO seeds. Has love of money so blinded agribusiness that they have ceased to see using a known poison on crops intended for human and animal consumption as wrong?