"We need to rapidly shift our food system away from dependence on harmful pesticides and toward organic farming methods that work with nature rather than against it."
The same antibiotics that are used to treat humans and animals for bacterial infections. We already ingest many antibiotics through our food if we are not careful, because of the antibiotics given to livestock, meat especially, but also eggs, farmed fish, milk, and cheese.
Most abundant were plastic microfibers (most often blue or black in color), but fragments and microbeads were also detected, albeit in lesser quantities. Microfibers come from many sources, including shedding from synthetic fabrics, wear from automotive tires and degradation of cigarette filters and fishing nets and ropes.
The report marked the agency's launch of testing for the weed killer glyphosate in foods. The Government Accountability Office said in 2014 that both the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture should start regularly testing foods for glyphosate. The FDA did only limited tests looking for glyphosate residues, however, sampling corn and soy and milk and eggs for the weed killer, the agency said. No residues of glyphosate were found in milk or eggs, but residues were found in 63.1 percent of the corn samples and 67 percent of the soybean samples, according to FDA data.
Studies that suggest that the microbiome can influence human health or disease are often challenged because it is hard to distinguish between cause and effect. In this case, it’s unclear whether changes in the microbiome are directly contributing to the high incidence of obesity in U.S. immigrants. It may be some time before we fully understand whether a less diverse microbiome leads to obesity, or if obesity leads to a less diverse microbiome.
