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Disturbingly, with Europe being a primary leader. Europe thousand vehicles at least partially on biodiesel

all of the was already much more comfortable with diesel- as of 2017), New Orleans (which uses biofuel in
powered cars than the U.S., with over 20 percent city buses) and Washington, DC. It is probably
sources of of European automobiles powered by diesel fuel no accident that these three cities are all at the
raw materials versus 2 percent in the U.S. Within Europe, Italy mouth of large navigable rivers (the Hudson,
for biodiesel has played a leading role in developing technol- Mississippi and Potomac rivers, respectively),
ogy that can convert used olive oil collected given that river barges are the most economical
have likely from restaurants into biodiesel fuel. Because mode of transport for the collected biomass.
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been Europe is unable to keep up with demand in- Disturbingly, all of the sources of raw
contaminated ternally, it also receives a significant amount of materials for biodiesel listed above have likely
biodiesel from Argentina every year. Argentina been contaminated with glyphosate, and we
with is a major worldwide supplier of biodiesel, which have known for a long time that glyphosate is

glyphosate, it primarily derives from its massive cultivation readily absorbed from the respiratory tract. In a
and we have of GMO Roundup-Ready soy. China, mean- study on farmers’ use of glyphosate, the authors
while, has been leading the charge to develop measured urinary glyphosate before and after
known for a biodiesel fuel from canola (rapeseed), much of the farmers applied glyphosate to their crops
long time that which grows along the Yangtze River, which and noted a significant increase in urinary levels

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glyphosate cuts through Wuhan. after application. GMO Roundup-Ready soy
In the U.S., technology development has and corn are sprayed with glyphosate several
is readily focused on making usable biodiesel fuel from times a year to control weeds, and wheat (though
absorbed the remnants after a crop has been harvested not a GMO crop) is routinely sprayed with
from the (typically corn or wheat) or the debris generated glyphosate as a desiccating agent right before

respiratory by the forestry industry. This seems appealing harvest. The forestry industry also makes heavy
because it does not directly divert what could use of glyphosate to kill off hardwood trees and
tract. be food crops into fuel. However, there is a dark provide more space for planting faster-growing
side to biodiesel fuel manufacturing, exposed conifers. As for canola, an online article from
in the 2019 documentary Planet of the Humans 2017 describes the technique of “straight-cut-
(with Michael Moore as executive producer). ting” canola to optimize yield at harvest time.
Three major cities stand out as leaders in At the time, the author estimated that half of
the adoption of biodiesel for vehicle use on the all canola acres would be straight-cut by 2020.
roads: New York City (which powered eleven Because the green stalks make it difficult to feed

TABLE 3. Correlations over time between glyphosate usage on core crops
and diseases that are risk factors for acute outcomes in Covid-19
CONDITION CORRELATION COEFFICIENT PROBABILITY*
Hyperlipidemia/hyper- 0.973 7.9E-9
cholesterolemia (death)
Diabetes (prevalence) 0.971 9.2E-9
Obesity 0.962 1.7E-8
Hypertension (deaths) 0.923 1.6E-7
Thyroid cancer (incidence) 0.988 7.6E-9
Liver cancer (incidence) 0.960 4.6E-8
Pancreatic cancer (incidence) 0.973 2.0E-8
Kidney cancer (incidence) 0.973 2.0E-8

* 7.9E-9 = .0000000079 (shift the decimal point nine digits to the left).
Source: Swanson NL, Leu A, Abrahamson J et al. Genetically engineered crops, glyphosate
and the deterioration of health in the United States of America. J Org Syst 2014;9:6-37.
30 Wise Traditions SUMMER 2020