Shop-Bought Comfrey Is Ruined Medicinally, And Is Inedible

Natural Remedy Gone Wrong

The old, traditional comfrey with a broad leaf was a great healer, and it was edible.  Recently, I have tried eating a shop-bought, genetically modified comfrey, which I now have in my garden, adding a small leaf of it to a mound of silver-beet, just as I used to do in the old days.  It gave me a mild stomach-ache for several days.

This new comfrey is dry, compared to the old, healing comfrey, which dripped with silica-rich mucilage when you broke off a stem.  Modern comfrey has almost no silica-containing mucilage.

Shop-bought comfrey is recommended by plant shops as a companion plant to fruit trees, especially apple trees, and for this purpose, modern comfrey will still be useful, since the roots help break up clay soils, and bring up nutrients for the apple roots to feed on.  Shop-bought comfrey is still not as good for this purpose as the tradional comfrey, though, because of the devitalized nature of this modern comfrey.

In the 1990’s, traditional, healing comfrey was banned in New Zealand and all over the western world where the reign of the big agri-chemical companies over agriculture was taking off.  These giants began to get governments on board with this comfrey ban, and also their campaign for promoting Round-Up, which contains glyphosate, a probable cancer-causer, according to WHO. Councils all over the world have been encouraged to erradicate comfrey, and use this toxic herbicide, which, conveniently for Monsanto, works alongside their genetically modified plants and seeds without destroying them.

I heard on Radio NZ National news two weeks ago that the amount of glyphosate found in our foods has increased 500 times since 1994, which was when Monsanto’s RoundUp-Ready seeds were introduced into agriculture.

The reason comfrey was banned, our health authorities said, was that comfrey had caused cancer in pigs, due to the high allantoin content, a cell-proliferant.  I wonder – did the researchers feed only comfrey to pigs over several months in order to make them sick?  Or did they invent this pig cancer as a reason to rid the world of one of its most powerful healing remedies?

This allantoin, which has been removed in genetically modified comfrey, is the magic ingredient in traditional comfrey which made comfrey an excellent remedy for burns, abrasions, bruises, intestinal irritations, cancer, arthritis, asthma, or just about any complaint you could think of.

Traditional comfrey is also very high in silica, which is another great healing agent.

But modern, shop-bought comfrey was genetically modified to deliberately remove the healing allantoin, and also the high silica content, a  project which I am sure the pharmaceutical companies would have supported.  Nowadays, medicinal comfrey can only be bought through medical-pharmaceutical channels.

Modern, genetically modified comfrey is marketed as an improved species because it does not self-seed and spread. which the old comfrey was inclined to do. although, really, it never was a problem in my gardens.

Soil and Health did an article on this subject of this genetically modified comfrey in the early 2000’s, when suddenly we found that comfrey was available once more in the plant shops.  They found that the allantoin had been removed, and that the silica content had been greatly reduced.

Banning comfrey was a very clever move, in order to gain the market for a comfrey which people were duped into believing was still a healing plant, and one which now would not spread.  But modern comfrey has sadly been ruined as far as any medicinal use goes.

Banning comfrey for a few years, and getting government agencies to destroy any comfrey growing in wild places, and forbidding people to have it in their gardens, meant that the old, traditional,  healing comfrey died out, leaving the market path open for whatever clever and unscrupulous agriculture corporation was responsible, to introduce their ‘better’ variety of comfrey. and make us pay for it.

I also suspect, and I really hope I am wrong, that the genetically modified comfrey has been bred to cross-pollinate with natural, traditional comfrey and dominate it, so that the new plant will be the genetically modified variety.  I was sure I had traditional comfrey in my garden, but now all the plants look the same.  They are a genetically modified variety.

I would advise not to eat comfrey any more, unless you are sure you have the tradional, broad-leafed, healing comfrey.  I am sure that the agri-companies have stepped up an ingredient in genetically modified comfrey to make it inedible.

And as far as using shop-bought comfrey as a healing herb, I think you might just as well use grass.  Although the agri-chemical companies have been tampering with this also for many years.

Is 1080 Responsible For Sick Cat, Dead Birds, Kaikorai Valley Dunedin

Environment And Health At Risk

1080 is, I am sure, threatening our health, the health of animals, and also the very birds it is meant to be protecting.  It is getting into our waterways, which will kill fish and the life which fish are dependent on for food.  This contaminated drinking water will be a danger to our own health too.  As well as 1080, we have toxic herbicides, such as glyphosate in RoundUp, being sprayed vociferously about the country roads and city parks and reserves.  These poisons also end up in the waterways and affect our health.

Today is Sunday, 29th October, 2017.  I live nearby the Kaikorai Valley Reserve, in Dunedin.  My house is about 15 metres from the reserve. Yesterday, I saw a dead duck lying in a drain by the roadway which runs alongside the Kaikorai Reserve.  The day before that, on Friday, I saw a dead seagull lying on the grass in the park adjacent to the Kaikorai Valley Reserve.  I wonder if 1080 is the cause of these birds dying, and the cause of sudden debilitation in health recently.

It is interesting to me that the Kaikorai Reserve has been closed off to the public for quite a few weeks now.  No sign was up, but some orange netting has been blocking the entranceway.  I also find it interesting that during this time, a neighbour of mine who lives even closer to the reserve than me, had an emergency visit to hospital.  He said he felt ill and had a very flushed face.  But no heart pain.  The hospital told him he was having a heart attack, and put a stent into his heart while he was there.  Perhaps he did have a weak heart, but his condition would have undoubtedly been made worse by what I suspect was 1080 next door.

Earlier this year, sometime in January, I came across a kereru – native wood pigeon – which had died on the footpath, only 30 yards or so up from the entrance to the Kaikorai walkway. It was still fresh, and a wild cat was eating out the flesh of the belly. It is possible that the feral cat had killed the pigeon as it sat above on the overhanging branch of a tree, but it is also possible that this bird had been poisoned by 1080 before the cat got to it.

About three years ago, in Te Aroha, I walked with a friend a good way up Te Aroha mountain, which is in the Waikato. A notice was at the bottom of the hill, announcing that 1080 had been dropped, and this advised that one should not take a dog into the area.  We got half way up the mountain in complete silence.  Not one bird to be seen, and not one bird sound.  We were about an hour or two doing the walk, and no birds were to be seen the whole time.

My neighbour tells me that the council have been dropping a lot of 1080 around Dunedin’s parks and reserves.  All I can find about recent 1080 drops around Dunedin is this article:

Silverstream Pest Control – Dunedin City Council

www.dunedin.govt.nz › Facilities › Walking tracks

Aug 17, 2017 – The Dunedin City Council has agreed to a request from OSPRI to undertake a pest control operation using 1080 on council land in the …

On the 10th October, 2017, which I remember well, because it was my grandson’s birthday, we all felt ill at my family’s house.  They live at Sawyer’s Bay, which has a good-size reserve and water-catchment area at the top of the hill.  I suspect that the cause of their sickness was because the 1080 pesticide was dropped here too.

On the previous Saturday, 7th October, 2017, I had felt so ill I was having doubts about going to the birthday party, thinking I might have to have a visit to hospital for life support. That day my neighbour’s cat, a very healthy, young, gregarious male, vomitted up his food at my house.  He did the same thing on the following day, and again, vomitted up his food on the third day in a row.  He has never ever been ill during the time I have been here – 1 1/2 years.  He was ill at the very same time, on the very same days when I felt sudden nausea and thought I would collapse because of some unknown toxic poisoning.  My daughter and my grandson were also feeling very ill at the same time.

Earlier in the year, on New Year’s Eve, I had a similar experience of weakness which was combined with memory loss.  I had seen workers spraying herbicide along the motorway as I travelled on the bus to Mosgiel and back.  On that occasion, my neighbour called the ambulance to take me to hospital.  Many tests were done, and they declared that nothing was wrong with me physically.  A brain scan was done also, and that showed nothing wrong other than the slight deterioration which comes with age. After this sudden episode of debilitation,  I discovered that all the country roads in the surrounding district had been sprayed with toxic herbicide.  I assumed it was RoundUp, which the World Health Organization now suspect as a major cause of cancer, but I think the council’s contractors have changed the type of spray being used.  It is no better for the health, though, than the more common RoundUp.

1080 is yet another poison which is being used widely in our environment, to the detriment of health of all living creatures.  Many of my friends and school-mates have died in recent years, mostly of cancer, before reaching 65. Life expectancy is lessening in New Zealand for even well-off people, mainly because of the poisons in our air, food and water.