As it turns out, there is a well-established relationship between
pesticides, GMO crops, cancer and any number of other diseases, but it’s
probably not the link that most people assume -- and certainly not what you
read in the press these days.

For Europeans obsessed about “chemicals” and who willingly pay high
premiums for “organic” foods, it may come as a shock to learn that the only
real dangers in what they eat are 100% natural. One, in particular, is a lethal
carcinogen.

100% natural poisons

It’s called aflatoxin. It’s one of a large family of toxic metabolites
produced by molds (fungi) that infect food crops. Wet weather, insect damage and
inadequate storage all enable the mold to contaminate plants and allow its
deadly products to flourish.

Aflatoxins are frequently found in most staple crops, including corn, sorghum,
wheat, rice; oilseeds such as soybeans, sunflower seeds and peanuts; spices
such as chili peppers, black pepper, coriander, turmeric and ginger; and tree
nuts. If cows eat infected feed, the toxins can end up in your milk.

Turmeric is touted as a folk remedy, but without pesticides you can also get a large dose of natural toxins. Image: istock

Just how poisonous are aflatoxins? For Aflatoxin B1, the LD50
(the amount that kills half a population of test animals) is somewhere between 0.3 and 17.9 mg/kg, depending on the animal. That makes
it about as toxic as Mercury Chloride, Hydrogen Cyanide and Chlorotoxin (the poison in a scorpion’s sting).

Carcinogens, mutagens and teratogens…oh my!

Even very low level Aflatoxin B1exposures can give you cancer, most often
liver and gallbladder cancers. It’s a known mutagen (causing damage to your DNA) and teratogen (causing birth defects). It’s
also an immunosuppressant that can leave you vulnerable to innumerable other
diseases. Even if you avoid eating it, the toxin can permeate your skin.

Aflatoxins are just one of a large family of fungi-produced poisons,
which are collectively known as mycotoxins. Globally, mycotoxins scare the hell
out of food and health authorities. The UN’s Codex Alimentarius, or "Food Code," sets maximum
aflatoxins levels at 0.5 to 15 parts per billion in grains, nuts and other
foods. Countries in the developed world extensively monitor the food supply and
maintain very tight controls on toxin levels. Internationally, most countries check
for mycotoxin contamination of imported, high risk foods and destroy
contaminated products immediately.

Pesticides and GMOs: the first line of
defense

The first line of defense, however, is always in the field, and a key part of that defense is the use of the modern, synthetic pesticides Europeans love to hate,
particularly fungicides that kill toxin producing molds and insecticides that
prevent insect damage to the crops (damaged plants being more susceptible to
molds). GMO crops engineered to express the natural Bt insecticides (deadly to
insects, harmless to humans) also provide protection, typically reducing aflatoxin contamination by 50 to 90 percent, and often bringing levels below concentrations that pose any risk to
humans.

For chemophobic anti-GMO Europeans, this presents a certain irony. The
very pesticides and technologies they want banned are helping to save their lives while the “nature” they so idolize is trying to kill them. A recent study of mycotoxin contamination around the world
described Europe as a “severe risk” region, with more than half of tested
samples above risk threshold limits. DON (deoxynivalenol), some of the deadliest mycotoxins, were
found in 65% of samples, with the average level detected, 555 parts per
billion, well over 250% above risk thresholds.

Europe has the wealth and technical ability to closely monitor its food
supply and that keeps it relatively safe -- at least for now. But Africa and
the less developed nations of Asia have no such ability, which is why is why
the situation there is not so much ironic as tragic.

Worse than malaria

More than 5
billion sub-Saharan Africans and South Asians, according to a 2017 study,
are exposed to uncontrolled levels
of aflatoxins. That’s nearly 2 billion people consuming aflatoxins at levels
far above European standards. This hits low‐income countries lacking
the resources to monitor and control high aflatoxin levels in food and
animal feeds especially hard.

Across Africa more people are
exposed to potentially deadly aflatoxin contamination than to common deadly diseases
like malaria
and tuberculosis. Hundreds of direct deaths in countries including Kenya and Tanzania are the result. Indeed, just last summer,
Tanzania experienced eight
new direct deaths from contaminated maize.

But the deadly and
often lingering diseases
fueled by aflatoxins cause an even higher death toll. The FAO reports, for example, a
high correlation between mycotoxin exposure and liver cancer in countries
including Kenya, Mozambique and Swaziland. With more than 26,000
sub-Saharan Africans dying annually of liver cancer often associated with
aflatoxin exposure, this represents an enormous human toll for already
over-taxed and under-supported African health care systems.

Of course, mycotoxins
are also a major threat to farm economies and African food security. According
to The Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa (PACA), crop losses from
aflatoxin contamination alone exceed $670 million annually.

Nature reigns supreme

When you add the mycotoxin threat to the growing crop destruction across Africa caused by the invasive Fall Army Worm (first detected in Nigeria in 2016 and now spreading in almost
every sub-Saharan African nation) that exposes over 300
million people to starvation, and the near biblical
plague of locusts that descended
on Africa this last winter, you get a good picture of the real costs of the organic,
back-to-nature life-style.

In the Western Hemisphere, the Fall
Army Worm is largely
controlled by a combination
of pesticides and GMO Bt crops. While constantly complaining about this, the EU
depends on pesticide-protected, GMO crops from the US, Canada, Argentina and
Brazil to feed the livestock that feeds its First World appetite for fine
dining.

All the while [as I pointed out in an
earlier article] EU bureaucrats and their like-minded allies in international
development organizations are pressuring African governments to forgo the only
proven defenses against these natural scourges -- GMOs and pesticides.  

Africa’s neo-colonialist EU masters,
in short, appear intent on keeping African agriculture in a primitive “state of
nature” -- i.e. unable to feed its own people -- so Europeans can stock their
bursting markets with “organic” produce which they fool themselves into
believing doesn’t contain chemical pesticides (anyone paying attention knows
that it does - lots of them).

And thus does European irony become an
African tragedy.