The humble hedgehog is the gardener’s best friend. They will chew up dozens of snails and slugs as they go about their wanderings of a night. They make the use of poisonous slug pellets unnecessary, which is a good thing, as slug pellets are very toxic things and will poison not only the slugs in your garden, but also hedgehogs and birds which might eat the slugs. Slug pellets could also possibly affect the person distributing the poison, and eventually, the slug poison will reach waterways, contributing to the chemical hazards of our environment.
In my experience, commercial slug pellets are hazardous to the health: even a neighbour’s slug poison will affect sensitive people, as the vapours, which are emitted for weeks after laying on the ground, and which are deleterious to the immune system, will drift on the air. These fumes have a very corrosive action on the nervous system and will give you candida type illnesses.
I recently saw an article in a local Dunedin newspaper which was promoting the trapping of hedgehogs, with bait and traps being provided. “Do your bit for the community – put a trap down to help eradicate hedgehogs’ was the message.
My guess is that something like 1080, or brodifacoum, is in the bait.
Since reading that article about a month ago, which encouraged householders to get on board with the campaign to eradicate hedgehogs, a friend in Sawyer’s Bay, Port Chalmers, has found several dead hedgehogs in her garden. This is the first time since they moved there, 6-7 years ago, that she has found dead hedgehogs in her garden. My friend’s garden is an organic paradise, friend to hedgehogs and birds alike.
Where does this desire to kill harmless creatures come from? New Zealand does have a culture of violence and abuse which ranges down the whole social system, and over-reaches onto environment issues. The old pioneering ‘die-hard’ attitude makes New Zealand an easy target for pesticide companies to manipulate us as a nation into boosting their sales. Much advertising money is spent ensuring that government agencies, and others such as Forest and Bird Society, swallow the bait and support pest eradication campaigns engineered by these big profiteers, the chemical giants. For years now, Forest and Bird Society have supported the 1080 and brodifacoum poisoning of parks and forests nationwide, something which I find very bewildering, since these chemicals are KNOWN to kill the very birds they endeavour to protect. The poison gets into our waterways, which is another problem, as then fish get contaminated too.
A couple of years ago, after 1080 warnings came that parks and reserves were to be ‘treated’ with 1080 in my area, I found within the week, one dead seagull and one dead duck on the rugby field near the reserve, and a wood pigeon dead just up and road, 100 yards away. When I walked up Te Aroha mountain 4-5 years ago, there was not one bird to be seen or heard. We were warned at the bottom of the walk that 1080 had been distributed. All was still and silent.
And now, these chemical giants, through the support of government agencies, are brain-washing the public into believing that they are helping their communities by laying poison, supplied by the authorities, to kill pests, even hedgehogs, in their own gardens.
One rationale given by NZ environment ‘authorities’ is that hedgehogs eat kiwi eggs, which is why we should kill all hedgehogs, they say. But seriously, where can you find a kiwi egg around cities and towns, or even in the country? I have never ever seen a kiwi in the bush. Massey University say that dogs are the worst threat to kiwi. But do we then eradicate all dogs because of the kiwi cause? How ridiculous is that?
Sure, hedgehogs could be baited near sanctuaries such as the Orokanui Reserve in Dunedin, which would protect any kiwi living there. They do that anyway, with special pest-proof fences and the like. But it is surely not necessary to kill all hedgehogs all over New Zealand?
Now that glyphosate products such as RoundUp are on the way out, having been proven to be cancer-causing, the chemical giants are looking to hook the public into a new devious scheme. After all, they have been advertising glyphosate-RoundUp for 30 years or more as a ‘biodegradable’ product, something which was proven to be a lie. In a court case 2-3 years ago, Monsanto was ordered to remove the biodegradable claim from all their packaging and marketing.
Meanwhile, all the farmers I know argued with me, convinced that RoundUp was perfectly safe, because they believed Monsanto’s claim. I always knew this herbicide was very toxic, as it affected me badly when I came into contact with it, or smelt it after it had been sprayed. Candida sickness was always the result, with dizziness, poor memory, bone pains, blurry vision, and other symptoms. So – 30 years ago, I was arguing the point to no avail about glyphosate-RoundUp being hazardous to the health.
And yet, even now, despite many countries having banned glyphosate, in New Zealand we STILL have to put up with RoundUp or similar herbicides being widely sprayed on agriculture land, on almost all roadsides, all over the railway system, and around parks and reserves.
Bees have been very scarce this year. On an average day, I might see one or two bees in my garden. There was just one day when I counted around 30 bees. But then, they disappeared. Herbicides such as glyphosate, still being used in NZ, is a bee-killer as well as a weedkiller. ( Microwaves from cell-phone towers and other transmitters are also hazardous to bees and all living creatures – we should beware of smart meters on electricity boxes, cell-phone transmitters, and certainly, the new 5G roll-out coming soon)
I witnessed, about 8 weeks ago, a group of young men in a marshy area just south of Palmerston, spraying what was probably RoundUp all over the marsh, which is connected to the estuary. No poison, glyphosate-RoundUp, or anything else, should ever be put near waterways, and certainly not actually IN them.
It is surely time to ban all toxic herbicides, pesticides and insecticides. We are a now a dying planet and should be respecting and caring for all forms of life.
Tag: herbicides
Food Glyphosate Levels From RoundUp Increased 500 Times Since 1994
Environment and Health
RoundUp, which contains glyphosate, is not biodegradable. Interesting, I think, that Monsanto had to be taken to court a couple of years ago, to get them to remove their false claim of ‘biodegradable’ from the packaging of their RoundUp weedkiller.
RoundUp weedkiller, and Monsanto’s related RoundUp Ready seeds and plants, are a multi-billion dollar industry. For over 20 years, they have marketed their RoundUp weedkiller as ‘biodegradable’, happily duping farmers, agriculturalists, city councils, governments, and the general public about the safety of RoundUp, which contains glyphosate, an ingredient which WHO, World Health Organization, last year declared is a ‘probable cause of cancer’.
Some organic farmers use RoundUp, which misleads people into thinking RoundUp must be OK. But RoundUp and glyphosate are not safe, and should never be used in the organic industry, if at all. How can this be, that organic producers can use glyphosate weedkiller? Well – Monsanto has cleverly convinced governments everywhere that a small amount of glyphosate is acceptable, which is why some organic farmers can call their stuff organic: as long as they make sure that they are within the so-called ‘safe’ range, then they can call their stuff organic, when in fact it is not at all.
I heard the tail end of a documentary on Radio New Zealand about a month ago. They reported that German scientists have found that levels of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller called RoundUp, have increased 500 times since 1994,
1994 was the year that Monsanto introduced their ‘RoundUp Ready’, genetically modified seeds, to the agriculture industry. RoundUp Ready seeds are patented seeds, which means you have to buy them, and these patented seeds are designed to withstand any amount of glyphosate-containing RoundUp. This means that the farmer, or grower, can spray any amount of glyphosate-containing weedkiller over these genetically modified seeds, or growing plants, and the weedkiller will not kill the genetically modified seeds or plants, but it will kill everything else that grows around the RoundUp Ready plants.
So the plant keeps on growing, whilst any amount of glyphosate weedkiller, known as RoundUp, or – new name change to dupe the public -G360, which still contains glyphosate, is sprayed on regularly to kill the weeds. This glyphosate-containing weedkiller is absorbed into the plant. As the plant keeps on growing, it absorbs some of the glyphosate weedkiller each time a spraying occurs. Then WE GET TO EAT IT.
So, no wonder that glyphosate levels in our food is up 500 times since 1994, when RoundUp Ready seeds were first marketed by Monsanto.
And no wonder that asthma and other breathing problems, plus eczema, arthritis, candida related sicknesses such as cancer, depression and nervous diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and parkinsons, are all increasing rapidly.
I am currently living in the wild west of New Zealand spraying culture in Dunedin. Hundreds of miles of country roads are sprayed regularly with tonnes and tonnes of weedkiller. Maybe the council is not using glyphosate anymore, I do not know, but the effect on our health is still disastrous. Last year, I took photos of one of the town’s water reservoirs, which had been sprayed right around with weedkiller, with the adjoining road heavily polluted with sprayed, dead grass which you could see for miles down the road.
Dunedin is a very small city, so the country is very close to us, no matter where you live here.
It is obvous that my grandsons are being affected by the spraying. Each time a massive spraying occurs, they succumb to asthma-like illness. I notice that many old people get pneumonia, severe flu, or other illnesses after sprayings occur.
1080 pesticide is another problem to our health. This affects the nervous system very dramatically, which is not a surprise, since it kills wildlife by destroying their nervous systems. Large areas of land have been poisoned with 1080 in Dunedin over the past few months, which I am sure caused much lung disease, depression and heart troubles in our community. I became very ill with a mysterious nervous condition, resulting in extreme weakness, when the nature reserve only a few doors down was dosed with 1080 recently.
It is such a shame that New Zealand ‘Forest And Bird Society’, and, I think, even the ‘Green Party’, endorse the use of 1080 pesticide. They have no idea about the damage being done to all wildlife, and our water and food chain, through use of 1080, but keep a romantic idea of preserving the native bush and birds without any sense of reality.
Brodifacoum Pesticide Killing Birds In New Zealand
Toxic Chemicals:
New Zealand Parklands Being Poisoned
This article was first published in 2010. I removed it to another website, but decided to republished it on this website, since I have been writing lately about the effects of poison drops in the Kaikorai Valley area, Dunedin. I know the local council have supported the use of 1080 drops in the past few months, and have suspected that sudden faintness, bone pains, general debilitation and sick pets is the result of these 1080 drops. I do not know whether the council here is using brodifacoum, but this is another deadly poison, and, like 1080, gets into our water and our food eventually.
Our ‘clean, green’ image, promoted by Tourism New Zealand, and one which many Kiwis fondly relate to, is a fallacy.
New Zealand has a history of rampant chemical abuse which goes back to the days of DDT, which is still in our soils. Then followed the herbicides 2,4D, and 245T, which was used here long after it was banned in the rest of the educated world.
Sadly, not much has changed: Here we are in the 21st century, with the new super Auckland City Council in charge of us up here at Orewa, in the Whangaparoa, ex-Rodney Council region. This new council of Auckland City has approved a massive drop of Brodifacoum – 30 tonnes of the stuff, to be exact – to be aerially dropped over the region of the Shakespear Sanctuary.
This is not really a surprise either, considering the compliance of the Auckland City Council over the aerial poisoning of Auckland, which took place around 2002-2005. This poisoning, done to get rid of the elusive apple moth, we were told, was, I believe, a crime against humanity. They carried on with their campaign, spraying a deluge of apple moth spray over much of Auckland, until finally, Victoria University in Wellington proved that the spray WAS damaging the health of Aucklanders. This was the moment when they were forced to stop their campaign.
Why couldn’t our own university in Auckland tackle the problem? Well, the answer is that it was a politically sensitive issue: The Auckland newspaper, “The New Zealand Herald”, was actually supporting the spraying programme by refusing to publish our on-going objections to the spray. The same newspaper blatantly ran full page advertisements to support the campaign, driven by MAF, as if the apple moth poison, and these seriously ‘concerned’ people, were seriously going to make our lives better.
The University of Auckland did nothing to come to our aid, when all the time, they had the records of student health over the period, which would have indicated the increased health problems suffered by students subjected to this poison.
Well, the Brodifacoum drop on Shakespear Park will hopefully not be on the scale of the apple moth poisoning, but it surely is a danger to all life, all the same. And it is a shame that people on the Whangaparoa Peninsula have not banded together, to make as loud a noise a possible, to try to stop the poisoning.
It seems most people on the whangaparaoa Peninsula are not even aware of the proposed Brodifacoum drop, or, if they are, they have been seduced into believing that it will not harm them. Either that, or they just don’t care.
I have seen only one letter in our local paper, “The Rodney Times”, which objected to the Brodifacoum drop. I made a response to this letter, to endorse the writer’s objections to the use of Brodifacoum, but my letter has not been published.
Merrilyn’s new book is available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.ca/Cancer-And-Good-Health-Notebook-ebook/dp/B01DHMH6DG
Poison Free New Zealand: I find it interesting that most of the submissions against the spray, which were presented at a council meeting in December, 2010, come from many different places over New Zealand. I think the organization Poison Free New Zealand, and its co-ordinator Paul Cohen, are conjointly responsible for these far-reaching submissions.
The New Zealand Deer-Stalker ‘s Association has also spoken out strongly against the use of the poison Brodifacoum.
One submission against the Brodifacoum drop even comes from a Kiwi who is living in France. However, there is a single voice which speaks out against the spray, which comes from the Whangaparoa Peninsula itself.
The major concerns of the people who oppose the aerial Brodifacoum drop are that:
Brodifacoum poses a major health risk to people, animals, birds and fish in the vicinity of the drop.
Brodifacoum poison is not selective, and will kill all creatures which ingest it.
Brodifacoum also poses a threat to the wider environment, as Brodifacoum, like DDT, gets into the food chain. It does not break down easily.
Brodifacoum is a rodenticide which is a common ingredient in rat and mice poisons.
Brodifacoum causes internal haemorrhages, and these haemorrhages cause death because of resultant heart failure, or respiratory failure. These outcomes are well documented. (Kirkwood et al 1994)
One submission states that the American Bird Conservancy have cited several studies which indicate that secondary poisonings are common. A secondary poisoning is when poisoning occurs from eating flesh of an animal already contaminated with a poison, such as Brodifacoum.
The American Bird Conservancy believes that the poison Brodifacoum could be dispersed by insects which are not affected by Brodifacoum, but which harbour the pesticide within and outside their bodies. Thus insects could be carriers of the poisoned bait.
In the New Zealand Herald today and yesterday, we have been given beautiful posters of the birds of the Hauraki Gulf. This can’t be concidence, methinks. The Brodifacoum drop is about to begin:
The promotions of council so far have failed to tell us about the poisoning due to happen at Shakespear Park. Their intentions to drop 30 tonnes of Brodifacoum is being played down, and instead of warnings about the imminent poisoning, we get given these lovely posters.
One advertisement I read on a local bus just over a week ago asked for donations to protect our Shakspear Park and its birds……It gave the impression that the Auckland City Council were doing everything to look after our precious park. No mention on this ad that they are about to poison the area with rodenticide which will harm the very birds that they say they are trying to protect.
Presumably, donations received to the Auckland City Council will actually be paying for this dreadful carnage.
One writer has said that Brodifacoum has been detected in a range of game animals further up the food chain, for example, in pigs and deer, and goats, which will make the eating of wild animals unsafe. This is one reason that the New Zealand Deer Stalker’s Association have objected to the Brodifacoum drop.
But Brodifacoum has also been found to affect bird life. The New Zealand native avian species affected is large: The list includes weka, moreportk, black billed gull, saddleback,and New Zealand robin. Imported species such as chaffinch, mynah, magpie and blackbird are also vulnerable. (Eason et al 2001)
After the Rangitoto drop of Brodifacoum, thousands of pilchards died, all in the same time frame. Our authorities have declared that there is no relationship to the poison used on Rangitoto, as they said they did not find significant amounts of Brodifacoum in the fish.
However, just because scientist cannot find traces of the poison, this is no proof that the fish have not suffered a toxic reaction: It is now an established fact that some species will have adverse reactions to some poisons from exposure to miniscule amounts which cannot even be detected: This has been shown with bees, in studies which have determined the cause of bee colony collapse disorder as being exposure to miniscule amounts of nicotinoid substances which did not even show up under scientific investigation.
The reality is that all birds, all animals in the area will be affected in the long term And so will people.
People who live in the area are likely to suffer sore, burning eyes, and skin rashes in some cases. But, since Brodifacoum gets into the food chain, the long-term and wide scope of its effect cannot be underestimated. Its effects will be far reaching.
The US EPA Rodenticide Mitigation Decision of May 2008 clearly classifies Brodifacoum as a ‘PERSISTENT ORGANIC COMPOUND’ (POC).
The effect of using Persistent Organic Compounds, according to this American report, is that they “bio-accumulate along terrestrial food chains”. It states that “repeated use of POC’s, including second generation anticoagulants, is unwise and discouraged”.
The effects of Brodifacoum have been equated to the effects of DDT,another POC which has a damaging effect on the health, and a long-lasting effect in the environment and the food chain.
(see US EPA Rodenticide Mitigation Decision, May, 2008)
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.