Glyphosate in Chicken Feed- Should I be concerned or not?

[Jimmy W]

IMO a more important issue for our backyard flocks concerns lead. Older buildings will often have lead paint, which flakes off into the soil nearby. Chickens root around in that soil and eat the paint chips, soil, and plant growing in it.
We are blessed with buildings that weren't painted, and had some of our eggs tested for lead this spring, and all were fine. That may not be true elsewhere!
Eggs can be tested, check where you live about that. Here the MSU veterinary path lab has it done.
Mary

Back in 2018 I became interested in Metal Detecting and bought me this super-duper model. I was pretty addicted to older properties, cause that's where the "good" stuff is. You hit the nail on the head, because I dug up so much trash and junk from those old homesites I was amazed, then found out in most of the rural areas, there was no trash collection like we have today, so everyone had their own dump.

Lead rings up pretty on a detector, and there is alot of it in the ground.

Thats when I started having a interest in pollution, then 2 years ago, a young guy in our township tested his water, turns out the whole area is one of those PFAS/PFOS hot spots. And yes, I buy water for the animals and my family. Do not use the public water.

Oh god, I hope I am not turning into an environmental nutjob, I do not consider myself one, just trying to do the right thing.

 

[Folly's place]

It's not 'nutty' to try and be safer out there! But it's also true that everything can't be avoided, it's not a perfect world.
Mary

 

[Shadrach]

I don't feed chickens commercial feed if I can avoid it because it's crap.

Wait!

I eat a lot of crap. I'm reasonably well informed on nutrition and reasonably intelligent and I still eat stuff science indicates is unlikely to do me good.
I do try and eat an affordable balanced diet, fruit, veg, unproccesed when possible, low saturated fats etc but an awful lot of crap still slips by.

It's interesting to note that despite eating crap the expected life span for people in the more affluent countries has increased steadily until recently and the decline is being blamed on eating, breathing and drinking crap. We may have reached our ingested crap limit.

As Ridgerunner points out; it's eat, breathe and drink crap, or die. Apart from the local environmental crap the chickens eat better than I do. I feed them whole grains and seeds and meat and fish etc and what I don't feed them they get at least some of from forage, organic forage crap in the case of the field I have my growing plot on. Fact is they eat better quality food than I do.

As U_Stormcrow has pointed out here and elsewhere, we can cope with a certain amount of crap, it's the amount, the percentages that's important. The days of zero crap, if they ever existed, are long gone. Yup the science gets the safe percentages wrong but we wouldn't even know the crap was there if it wasn't for research.

If you are that seriously concerend about healthy diets the answer is do a lot of research, a number of trials and make your own feed. It will still be crap, but less crappy than it was assuming one gets the numbers right.
Otherwise I wouldn't worry about the glyphosates in the feed.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Used to be a lot more crap - but it was literally crap - mostly in the water. more natural, more dangerous.

No guarantees in life except that none of us get out of it that way. There are no safe alternatives, but that doesn't mean you have to sit at the tables with the worst odds.

 

[Sally PB]

One of my personal mantras: Do the best I can with what I have where I am.

That goes for what I eat, what my chickens eat, what my dog eats. (Hubby makes his own decisions.)

As @U_Stormcrow says, I'm not getting out of here alive, but I'd like to have a smile on my face when I wave goodbye.

 

[Nym]

Jeffery M. Smith has a few great books that are well worth reading.
The Monsanto movie is worth watching and shows how genetically modified crops are bred to withstand the weed killer known as glysophate being sprayed on them and the damage these do to a human body.

On the side, but related, another great book is The Coke Machine, which tells of the public protests launched against the confectionary / sugar industry and how they continually moved their conferences to remote parts of America to make it harder for the public to attend and have their concerns heard.

Our silence is their permission.

 

[Nym]

Pastured Products Directory – Pennsylvania

Organic Feeds.com

 

[Jimmy W]

Pastured Products Directory – Pennsylvania

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Organic Feeds.com

Nym- Thanks for the link, appreciate it.

Jim

 

[Kenya Mwangi]

Good morning,
After taking a course in Poultry management from Penn State, my interest perked in how items in feed can be transferred into the end product (Eggs and Meat). I have been researching this for the past week or so and have come to the conclusion that all poultry feed is contaminated. Similar to recent PFAS/PFOS legislation, big brother has set acceptable limits for human as well as animal consumption.

My main concern in feed products is Glyphosate. I have read research papers where commercial eggs, the ones we buy in our stores, were found to have Glyphosate contamination in 85% of the brands tested (both Organic and non-organic). I also read in my opinion a pretty decent study by a Mike Adams on contaminants is Chicken feed. The study limited to 6 mainline products, so it is not all inclusive of the feed network available.

Study Link- https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-03...ctor-supply-producers-pride-chicken-feed.html

This has prompted me to compose this post, as I am now at the point of seeking a source of the least contaminated feed at a reasonable price.

On the flip side, I am a second time Chicken owner, this time only 6 birds for eggs, and feel I am overreacting to this.

Has anyone found a source of contaminant free Feed, or close to it? Should I really be this concerned?


Thanks,

Jimmy

Hello Yes, you should be concerned. Glyphosate is poison. It has a MSDS sheet that you can read about the dangers of being exposed to it. Then imagine eating it. It is even in your Cheerios. That's how much the US uses it. Some people believe the rise in gluten sensitivity isn't from being sensative to gluten, but instead their stomachs are reacting to the glyphosate in the food and causing stomach pain and diarrhea to get it out of the body. If you find the least contaminated source besides growing your own, I think sharing it would be appreciated by many people.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

The mere fact that a chemical with industrial use has an MSDS is meaningless. Details matter.

MSDS for WATER
Table Salt
Wheat (Flour, Bran, Germ)
Vitamin A
Calcium Carbonate
Iron

and yes, Glyphosate (Roundup Pro Concentrate)

What "some people believe" is meaningless. Reality is not decided by a committee of common beliefs.