From Roundup to Regeneration: Kelly Ryerson on Agrochemicals, Chronic Illness & How to Fight Back
Welcome back to the Better For You podcast presented by AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens. I'm your host, Melanie Griffin, and I'm here to help you master a healthier, more vibrant, and energized life as we age together. Visit amac.us/active to learn more about the resources we've made available to you for free. That's amac.usactive. Let's start the show.
Speaker 1:Well, back to the Better For You podcast. Friends. I am so excited to bring you today's guest, Kelly Ryerson. She works at the intersection of agriculture and health. She regularly collaborates with regenerative farmers, scientists, policymakers and media to address agrochemical damage to our soil and to our bodies.
Speaker 1:She's the co executive director of American Regeneration and also founded the news site Glyphosate Facts. Kelly has contributed to numerous podcasts, publications and documentaries, including the recent award winning documentary Common Ground, I watched earlier this week. Excited to talk a little bit about that. She's an ambassador for the Rodale Institute. She has a BA from Dartmouth College, an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, and has completed training in integrative health coaching at Duke Integrative Medicine.
Speaker 1:Kelly, thank you so much for being here with us on the Better For You cast. We are really looking forward to learning from you today. We're thrilled to have you on as a guest.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. I can't wait.
Speaker 1:Well, me too. I've been looking forward to this conversation. I wanted to kick us off with just asking you kind of about this intersection of agriculture and health. It's not a common career path, so curious how you got started there. What first opened your eyes to the connection between farming practices and chronic illness and your mission.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is certainly not a path that I was ever really calculating for myself. I actually I started my career in finance and investment banking and private equity and, and you know, got married, had two kids, and after my second one was about two years old, I started getting all kinds of just physical problems and it was really, it took me by surprise. I'd typically been very healthy through my life, I just, just things were not lining up and this is something that's very common now, I think, with a lot of people where you have just a lot of symptoms throughout your body that don't necessarily make sense in a traditional way of like, you know, this is a specific disease or this is what's causing it. And I became quite a medical mystery. So it was things like having major digestive problems, feeling kind of nauseous and, and like intestinal problems.
Speaker 2:And then it was rashes and then it was sinus problems and then my eyesight wasn't great and then it was migraines, and it was just this layering on, and neuropathy actually was a big one where I just really couldn't feel my hands. Sometimes they tingle. And I saw 20 different specialists, and each one, each doctor has a different specialty as we all know, and so you know I'm seeing the GI doctor, I'm seeing the endocrinologist, I'm seeing the ENT, and no one could tell me why my body was having so many problems all around. And instead the response was, You are a new mom and it seems like you are very stressed out, and you know this is very typical for moms, and so they started layering medications on me. So at one point I was on two different benzodiazepine and then a steroid and gabapentin and I'm just being layered with these things and no one can tell me what is wrong with my body.
Speaker 2:So things continued to get really bad obviously because that wasn't the root problem. I wasn't crazy And finally I actually moved in with my parents who took care of me and my kids. My husband was commuting back and forth to work and I landed in the ER because I just couldn't walk anymore. Like my legs were giving out. That's how little function I had left and the doctors are still telling me that I'm crazy, okay?
Speaker 2:And so I go to the ER, I have this two hour MRI, and I just start praying like crazy in this MRI and I thought, I, if this comes back clean, then I am going to bargaining with God. I will do whatever I can to help alleviate pain and suffering in this world and get to the bottom of whatever these chronic diseases are, and because I was pretty sure at that point either cancer or MS was going to come out of that MRI, and so when I waited for my results, I was sitting with my husband and the doctor came in and said, It s totally clean. Your grandma was clean. We don know what s wrong with you, but it s nothing that s happening in your body. Was like, Okay, I just know God intervened right there because this does not make sense given I can t walk.
Speaker 2:And so I actually went to see a psychiatrist at that, shortly after that, and, he had intake blood work, and the blood work for the very first time of any of these doctors who I saw through the Stanford hospitals, by the way, the first time he did a test of my vitamin levels. Okay, so just basic vitamin levels. My vitamin levels came back so abysmal that I realized I had scurvy. I had the ongoing of beriberi disease because my thiamine and my vitamin C were so low. I had a D of zero when it should be 80.
Speaker 2:I had B12 that was 50 and it should be a minimum of 500. I mean, was so malnourished and no one had ever thought to ask this, and so I was really hybriety and I went back to my GP who was Harvard and Stanford trained and I said, look, I got these results, and she said, you know what, I think that vitamins are really overrated. I don't think that that would be the basis of your problem. I'm like, oh my gosh, I am so done here. If truly, like, I only had high school biology, but I will tell you that I know that these things are really important to functioning, right?
Speaker 2:That's why God put them there. So I started supplementing and started getting better. I changed my diet, saw a new doctor and she said, You need to try giving up gluten because tons of people are having luck giving up gluten. And so I'm like, really? Because I actually found people that didn't tolerate gluten just out of gluten, non celiac gluten sensitivity would be a little annoying, and I'm sure like a lot of people that, you know, have those friends or, you know, they see the listing on the menus, like, well, that seems overstated, like some sort of health trend.
Speaker 2:Well, in my case, was not, and it was absolutely blaming me, and so I didn't have celiac disease. I had non celiac gluten sensitivity, And so I started sticking with that. It got so much better. And so my sister actually at the time was diagnosed with celiac disease, which was interesting. So we both were kind of going down the gutter on these things.
Speaker 2:And so we went to a conference at Columbia University where they have an excellent celiac center and they were doing a conference on trying to understand some of the science behind non celiac gluten sensitivity, which was me. And so I went and I was with all the doctors and scientists and one of the scientists said, Oh, we think, you know, something might be going on. It might not even be the gluten. There might be something else with the grain that's causing a problem. And so I thought, Well, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:And I've never really thought about farming one way or the other. But I went to the microphone and I said, Well, is anything sprayed on the farm, on the grain, on the wheat? Could that have something to do with this? The doctors and the scientists looked at me and they're like, No, I don't think so. And so I was like, okay.
Speaker 2:You know, I went and sat back down, and then someone from General Mills came and found me after that talk and said, yeah, so Roundup, the weed killer, is sprayed on our grains right before harvest. And so I'm like, you're telling me that that Roundup that I see at Home Depot sold in the gardening section to kill weeds is sprayed directly on my grains, and I am eating it. Eating it. And I was blown away, and so I started a deep dive on this and the more that I learned about not only glyphosate, I'm glyphosate girl, glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, The more I was learning about this toxin, I was like, oh my gosh, this is one of the key reasons why so many of us are so sick and inflamed, because the science, the body of science behind how detrimental this chemical is and yet it's so pervasive in our food system, it's just outrageous.
Speaker 1:I got chills all over. First of all, what a story, what you've what you had to go through to to get here, and that promise that you made to God to like, I'm going and you really are delivering on that in your life and your life's work now. I just have such a similar story. It wasn't quite so much, but the unexplained symptoms, the multiple doctor visits, the different rounds of steroids, biopsies, tests, specialists, you know, and really at the end of the day, changing my lifestyle, my food, what I was eating, sleep, you know, those types of things really were the things that ended up alleviating my symptoms and just really having just compassion for that story. And it's shocking too to hear about the Roundup.
Speaker 1:And I want to talk about that specifically in a little bit more detail. But the, you know, the the weed killers and the other harmful pesticides and toxins that are being injected into our food supply and then we're consuming that and just common sense tells us that that can't be that can't be good for our bodies. And I originally, Kelly was introduced to you to you to your work through the MAHA report. So as part of the Make America Healthy Again initiative, you are were a contributing author to some of the media that was coming out through their media hub. And you recently wrote an article that was talking about the majority.
Speaker 1:I live in Texas, but a majority of Texas Republicans supporting banning harmful pesticides. And that really caught my attention. And it, you know, I wanted to learn more like glyphosate specifically, like that's the big one. That's the one that you mentioned. Can you tell us like, why is it so concerning?
Speaker 1:Why should everyday Americans like this is this is something that impacts all ages like everyone, right? Why should we be so concerned about this? They're not just agricultural issues, but these are truly health issues. So what are those health impacts that our audience should be aware of?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, there are so many different things that glyphosate does in the body, but just to go back a little bit, this is a chemical that was introduced into the American food system in 1974, and so it was really popular because it wasn't all that expensive and it was extremely effective at killing weeds. And some previous types of pesticides were actually even more toxic than glyphosate, and so farmers were really happy to just use it. And it was used sort of it was used quite a bit, but nowhere near the extent to the amount of use that started in the 1990s, because Monsanto, who's the manufacturer of Roundup and glyphosate, they were losing patent on this blockbuster product in 2000, so they realized they needed a way to keep on selling Roundup, and so they developed the GMO seeds. GMOs are genetically modified seeds, and this is what's crazy. Okay.
Speaker 2:So like I'm I actually once again was suspicious of people that said GMOs are bad because I was I'm not particularly anti technology, and I I thought, well, I don't know. Maybe if they're helpful in feeding people, maybe they're fine. I never really thought much about it. When I learned this, it changed everything. The reason why these GMOs were developed were to be resistant to the effects of Roundup.
Speaker 2:So they're called Roundup Ready Corn, Roundup Ready Soy. This is over 50% of what we grow in this country now, and they were developed so that you could spray as much Roundup on these crops, and it would kill everything in the soil except for the crop you're growing. The soy or the corn still grows, but everything else dies. So that was the reason why they introduced these GMOs, and which is outrageous. So there's so many problems with this chemical and that just made it even that much more saturated.
Speaker 2:And one of the big ones, which probably people are aware of, is the connection with cancer. These have been huge lawsuits that have been taking place since 2018, and I got to know this very specifically because in 2018, the first cancer roundup trial was beginning in San Francisco, and I lived on the outskirts of San Francisco. I decided that I was going to go and check out what was likely going to be a protest of some kind against Monsanto, the manufacturer, because this is the most notorious chemical company of all time, and it just seemed like something that people get really upset about. And so I went up and there was no one there protesting, and so I walked right into the courtroom and sat right next to RFK Jr, because he was the lawyer who was suing Monsanto, and so, I got to know him really well during that time, and what was uncovered in those cases is extent to which Monsanto absolutely knows glyphosate to be a carcinogen, that they manipulated the EPA to make sure that it stayed on the market, all these really shady things that have gone on between the government and the chemical companies to make sure that this product stays on the market.
Speaker 2:And this became, and today is, the most used pesticide of all time around the globe. It is in our air. It's in our rain. It's in our water. It's in our food, it's in our personal products like tampons, anything cotton, it's there.
Speaker 2:It's found in our blood, our urine, our feces, our semen. That's one that I tested, and so now we cannot avoid this chemical that has also been called a probable human carcinogen. So in that framework, you have the big cancer problem, and it's not just non Hodgkin lymphoma, is what these cases are about. Also it's connected to breast cancer and a variety of other types of cancers, blood cancers, but it goes far beyond that. So and this is where where some of the things like your health issues and my health issues are coming down to because it is an it is extremely disruptive to the microbiome, and the microbiome, as we've learned over time, is a population of millions and millions of bacteria that is in our gut, and it turns out that that dictates a lot of what our health is because it's just a very important component to the human body functioning.
Speaker 2:Glyphosate works as an antibiotic. So when we eat it, it actually selectively kills the good gut bacteria that we have in our gut. And this is the worst kind of antibiotic because it actually lets the bad gut bacteria proliferate. It only kills the good gut bacteria. So now we have this situation where we have bad gut bacteria out of proportion with the good in our gut.
Speaker 2:Everything becomes inflamed, and this is exactly opening up to the autoimmune crisis and a wide variety of different conditions that stem from problems in the gut. And glyphosate's an enormous part of it, and to the point as well that these the bacteria that's killed in our in our microbiome by glyphosate also happens to be the bacteria that is upstream from creating serotonin, so the mood stabilizer, the happy feelings that we get from serotonin. And then you look and you see how many people now are in antidepressants because, you know, their functioning in terms of serotonin production is significantly hampered. I mean, there are other things that impact that too as well, of course, but it's not helpful having an antibiotic go and kill the bacteria that then is supposed to be creating your serotonin. So the and and I could keep going on because the the other really, really big thing, and I I think that this is why I'm really happy that Republicans are picking up on this subject so much, is it is an extreme endocrine disruptor, so that means it really messes with hormones.
Speaker 2:Now I had brought this multiple times to the EPA because they are supposed to be checking for hormone disruption with any of these chemicals, and they simply don't because they are totally owned by the chemical industry. So I just I had mentioned semen. I we have this fertility crisis in the country, and semen levels have crashed, 50% since actually the nineteen seventies, which is kind of weird to me because that's around the time that Roundup was introduced into the market. So I started wondering, okay, we have this crash. I wonder if it can cross the blood testis barrier when people are eating it.
Speaker 2:Can it get into the semen? Because there are studies that show that it kills sperm if you have that in a petri dish. So I had four guys send in samples, and all four came back for high levels of glyphosate, and I was like, oh my gosh, I need to tell the world about this. This is obviously a big problem in fertility, and so I told the EPA this and they dismissed it. A bigger study came out of France where French farmers who were having trouble conceiving, it turned out that they had really high levels of glyphosate in their semen.
Speaker 2:Wow. And so it's just such an obvious thing, and instead of us deciding that we're going to get to the root cause of the infertility crisis and address these chemicals finally, what instead is happening is the IVF industry is stepping in, and they stand to make billions and billions of dollars, and it's just as going up as we pollute ourselves more. And so one of the things that I've been working on is in with the different Republican group groups is how can we get this chemical exposure and these endocrine disruptors, it's not just glyphosate, it's a lot of chemicals, into the conversation, into the pro life conversation. Because truly, we are really limiting our ability to reproduce when we're killing from the get go, and this also impacts women's bodies. It's so endocrine disrupting that there's a study that came out of Mount Sinai Hospital by Doctor.
Speaker 2:Shana Swan, who wrote the book Countdown, and she's talking about this fertility crisis and the change in our genitalia as a result of the exposure to things like plastics and pesticides. So what she found is she studied second trimester women the levels of glyphosate that are in their urine, And she then went and she measured the distance between the anus and the vagina of the baby girls because it can be a measure of whether or not, mom has been impacted by endocrine disrupting chemicals. So what she found so it's called the AGD, that distance she found that the higher the levels of glyphosate in the urine, the longer that distance became in the baby girl fetuses between the vagina and the anus, which is a masculinization of the girl. So I really oh my every every woman, every person who eats now, even if you're eating organically, which is a way to decrease your exposure, but we're all exposed. Like everyone's going to come back positive for glyphosate in their urine or hair, and so what are we doing impacting the hormones of the babies that are growing?
Speaker 2:This is insanity. There's a second most used pesticide herbicide called atrazine that famously Alex Jones was talking about years ago for turning the frogs gay, because there was a study at Berkeley by a scientist who I've met and interviewed who found that when his frogs were exposed to these low levels of atrazine, which is the second most used weed killer after glyphosate, that the males effectively turned into females. Like the genitalia actually changed where ovaries were forming from these low levels of exposure. Syngenta, which is another chemical company, was outraged by this, and they threatened him, and it was a scary thing. He threatened his families and don't release these results.
Speaker 2:Well, released the study, and it created a splash, but the chemical company said, oh, nothing to see here. You know, that's just frogs. Well, I am telling you, this chemical is in the drinking water all over the country, and Texas is a big place where this is a big problem. I just had a meeting last week with a senator there. I like, You've got to get this out of your drinking water because it is so severely endocrine disrupting that it is creating penis malformations in our baby boys where it s connected with a situation where the urinary hole is on the side of the penis instead of the end, and we have this other epidemic of just distorted genitalia in our baby boys.
Speaker 2:I m just like, I know why. I know why. Like a lot of us know why they are working in this. We re like, you re crazy. What are we doing to ourselves?
Speaker 2:We re completely sabotaging our ability to reproduce. And I think this is God coming and saying, you've polluted so much, you don't get to have kids anymore. You're done until you shape up.
Speaker 1:That is mind blowing, seriously. I mean, it is. It's it's, like, unbelievable, but at the same time, it's such common sense. Like hearing what's happening, it's unbelievable. That we're not, yeah, like we're not connecting the dots between this.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's just infuriating on many levels too. And you you mentioned the non Hodgkin's lymphoma. Tell us a little bit more about I heard too. It may have been the common ground documentary I was looking watching about the Okay, so the roundup, the glyphosate causing this cancer and then the company that now owns the products, the Roundup, is also creating the drug that cures the cancer. That am I articulating that accurately?
Speaker 1:And wow, if so, that seems like such a scam too.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, this corporate corruption oh my gosh, the business model just keeps giving and giving with outrage. This should have never also never been allowed in this country because it's such a conflict of interest. What happened is Monsanto, you know, the big chemical company, who, by the way, also is behind DDT and Agent Orange and PCBs, so like the very worst chemicals, some of which you know the DDT persists today.
Speaker 1:I lost my dad to Agent Orange cancer from Agent Orange from Vietnam. Yes, is. That's that hits my heart. Yeah, big time.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry. And, you know and I just was recently looking into this because I wondered whether or not they have been found liable or anything. And, you know, to this day, they don't admit that it was a problem, and that's sickening. And they had they paid sort of a minimal amount to veterans who were suffering from situations.
Speaker 2:Yep. Minimal. Yep.
Speaker 1:Yep. That is accurate.
Speaker 2:I am so sorry. That is just oh gosh, that is so unfair. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, yeah.
Speaker 2:So they so, I mean, obviously they are a notorious diabolical company. They had this litigation impending, and we know from internal documents that they were very well aware that there was a high likelihood that this cancer thing was going to come to fruition, where it was finally connected at large and there would be a lawsuit that it could disconnect Yep. With so they got off with an amazing deal. Bayer, the pharmaceutical company, came in and they had some, portfolio of some seeds, some GMO seeds and some pesticides, but they wanted to grow that side of the business in addition to pharma, which once again, just the fact that Bayer had all of that under one umbrella in the first place is a little strange to me with pharmaceuticals and chemicals, but this made them much larger. So they bought it and it was the same week that the first trial was beginning, and so they basically got off with millions and millions, I think it was a 63, I think it's $63,000,000, or billion dollar price tag on on buying Monsanto, and it is just wild what happened after that, because there has been such an enormous, enormous loss in value in the stock price since that acquisition Bayer made.
Speaker 2:They've lost over 70% of their share price because of this litigation that is never ending, and they absolutely refuse to admit that this causes cancer. The only thing that they need to do is put a label on it, because I heard the judge say this, that they just need to put a label on glyphosate products that says some studies show that this might be connected to cancer, and then they'd be off the hook, but they will not do it. And instead, what's happening now and oh, and by the way, yes, so Bayer now manufactures this glyphosate and they have the treatment for it, their non Hodgkin's lymphoma treatment as well as a bunch of other cancer treatments. And what is so disgusting, and this is something that I'm fighting every day right now, is that because of that crash in stock price and the ongoing litigation, which is now the settlements are over $11,000,000,000 okay, Like crazy, and there's no end in sight because people are still using it and they're getting cancer. So what they have done, and they had this proposal, okay, this is how we're going to deal with the litigation.
Speaker 2:We are going to take away everyone's right to sue. So how does a company do this? This German company, Bayer, has come in with millions and millions of dollars, and they are lobbying the government and states to pass a liability shield so that people can no longer sue chemical manufacturers when they get sick from exposure to their chemicals. What? Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:So that sounds insane, and that sounds like something that could never pass because that is so diabolical and so bad taking our rights away to sue and also then the incentives for chemical companies to ever be safe about
Speaker 1:anything No are consequence. Yeah, right. Exactly.
Speaker 2:So they so I'm looking at this. I'm like, that's pretty funny that that's one of their things. That will never happen. Oh my gosh. So fast forward a year later, Georgia and North Dakota have passed state liability shields where they will protect the chemical companies instead
Speaker 1:of people.
Speaker 2:If you live in those states now, you can't sue when you get cancer or you get Parkinson's from paraquat exposure or any of these things. You can't sue So then what do they do? They're like, this is really expensive to do on a state by state level, so we're just going to try and pass it federally. So they go up to the spending bill, the same one that right now has closed down the government, because they can't agree. They go to the they find enough Republicans primarily this is Republicans.
Speaker 2:There are some Democrats, it's mostly Republicans, that slide it into the spending bill so that you will no longer be able to sue if you get sick from chemical exposure. They they now have put it into the new farm bill that's up for they they are and this is the thing that I just think is a huge disconnect. The existing, not all, like you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, MTG, who's fantastic there, and she's really fighting for our health rights. The fact that so many Republican congresspeople are willing to sacrifice our health and our freedom to sue on behalf of chemical corporations means their time is done, because they have not woken up to the fact that the constituents are sick of being sick. They want their rights back.
Speaker 2:They want to be able to procreate. They don't want cancer. They don't want Parkinson's. They don't want these issues anymore, and that message hasn't gotten to most of the Republican congresspeople yet. And so I've been going to these offices trying to explain it, and it's like there's this there's a mental disconnect.
Speaker 2:And by the way, I'm I'm railing right now on Republicans, but Democrats, even when they're in power, make very little change on this. They too are owned by the chemical companies, and so, you know, there are all kinds of things that a Democrat could do when they have majority, and they say that they're so, you know, into protecting our rights and and the environment, yet they've allowed this to happen too. Right. So right. But I think I just hold more personal hope right now because of that in the Republican constituency because of just the passion around this right to life and this right for families and the right to health and and all of that.
Speaker 2:And so I'm hoping, and this is why I ran this poll in Texas that found that overwhelmingly it was important to Texan Republicans in the twenty twenty six election that those candidates support the ban or limitation of toxic pesticides. That is astounding, because the narrative has been, Oh, only Democrats, like, are anti chemical. Oh, no. That is a lie. That is not true.
Speaker 2:No one wants to be exposed to something that kills right side, and so I just am really hopeful that in the upcoming cycles that you know we're gonna call we're gonna say you're gonna lose your seat that you've had for you know twenty plus years because you're not waking up to what the constituents want.
Speaker 1:And, and didn't you say in your article, it was almost, it was almost 80% of, the respondents. Yes. Yeah. Seven and a half. Yeah, I mean, landslide response.
Speaker 2:A total landslide, and this makes a lot of sense because it was funny when I had my Instagram account like this April, and typically like I don't know actually most of my followers were moms and grandmas who were really worried about the future of being, you know, our lives because this is a very maternal kind of thing to be really concerned about. And, and I noticed starting in about 2000 that I was getting a lot more, Christian followers, and I thought, this is interesting, you know, with talking about Bible verse and and everything, and I was like, oh, I'm so excited because I just think that I I think that if this message can be brought to the church, to the churches and to communities and to conservative communities, I think it's game over for the chemical companies. And I think that's funny, because I think that they have long enjoyed this lie that conservatives don't mind chemicals, and that's just not true. So it's just a really crazy time right now, I think, in the conservative movement, and I've seen the Heritage Foundation. I did an event with them agriculture and how we can heal our soils and heal our bodies, and they are really getting on board as well.
Speaker 2:They can see that all their supporters at the Heritage Foundation are tired of being sick, And so it's a cool time.
Speaker 1:I love hearing that. I really do. And I agree with you. Believe that we are entering into a spiritual reckoning. Like this is a spiritual issue at its core.
Speaker 1:I wonder if you have thoughts around what, like, what can our listeners do now to voice their opinion? You know, the AMAC members, I will say, are, have really the the passion and the power to lead like grassroots change. What can they do about this, in their different, you know, different states or all across the country? What are some action steps?
Speaker 2:Yes, certainly. And what's exciting is I think MAHA has really brought a lot more opportunities to really impact certain things. And so for example, we I usually collaborate with MAHA Action, which is an organization, that basically runs media hub and runs a newsletter, and we try and all collect there. I oftentimes collaborate with them on different calls to action around making sure, for example, this pesticide liability shield. It is extremely impactful.
Speaker 2:I'll usually put out when we have a big push, probably actually, when the government comes back into session, we'll have another big push. But really picking up the phones and calling the list that I provide of congresspeople to talk about why you don't want something like a pesticide liability shield, and leaving things like, you know, I lost my dad to cancer. I, you know, in my husband's case, I always tell this story when I'm there. My husband lost both of his parents from he's in rural North Carolina. Lost both of his parents within three months of each other, one to horrible ALS like neurodegenerative disease and the other to cancer.
Speaker 2:Well, had been exposed to the tobacco fields that still had residual pesticides like their entire life, and it was way too early. And so, you know, telling those kinds of stories that are your personal stories, even if it's just like when you call, by the way, because people get nervous. I was nervous the first time I was calling, so I'm like, I don't know this subject inside and out. What if they ask me details or whatever? It's not like that.
Speaker 2:Like, it's usually, someone pretty young that's working in the office that's required to write down what you say so you won't be quizzed on anything so you don't scientist
Speaker 1:or a regenerative farmer
Speaker 2:none of it you really don't need to know much except whatever the and I put it out very clearly what the actual issue is and that's the extent to which you know but I also provide scripts that you can read so you don't feel too nervous to call and that is really the most impactful thing you can do and I know a lot of people want to email because they get nervous on the phone and so there are ways to do that too but really it's the phone calls that bother them enough.
Speaker 1:Okay good
Speaker 2:to know. And so I would suggest so you can go to, stoppoison.org. Okay. So this is a website, and you can sign up with me and I will put you on the list and I'll I don't flood you at all with things. Once again, it's like maybe at most once or twice a month with specific action items that you can then go do and phone numbers to call.
Speaker 2:And we expect that the pesticide liability shield is also going to pick up again at the state level. And so in that case, I would only contact you if your state, is involved.
Speaker 1:Got it. Got it. Okay.
Speaker 2:So those are the things. And then right now, actually, we're dealing with an EPA that did not is not MAHA at all, and it's to the point that I've been trying to get to Trump directly because I just am really confused what's going on there. It has been abysmal, like really bad. I think this might be the worst EPA of all time. They're just waving in these really toxic things, and, you know, it's out of the EPA doesn't fall under RFK, so, so it's out of his purview, And this is very disappointing.
Speaker 2:So right now there's something called the Toxic, Substance Controls Act. And this is an act that was passed in order to regulate how many basically endocrine disruptors, so these hormone disruptors come on the market in various forms. So it's not pesticide. It's actually like personal products or it's, you know, that's where the makeup and the talk those kinds of toxic things fall under. Right now, the EPA that is stacked with chemical industry lobbyists are trying to change the rule to just accelerate all these chemicals through, so we will be exposed even to more hormone disruptors.
Speaker 2:And, you know, no one wants this, and it is so horrifying to think that things that they know are going to impact testosterone and estrogen are going to be waved through with excitement, so that's another example. So like this week we had a big call to action where we had to submit comments to the EPA and we're trying to flood it right now, but that will be over, like today. So but there are more things like that that come down the line. And truly, like every single call or every single thing, don't feel like it doesn't make a difference because it does. Like for sure it does.
Speaker 2:And I always was kind of like maybe it doesn't. I don't know what's my voice mean. Actually, it means tons. So any help would be great.
Speaker 1:That's so encouraging. Like Kelly, we would love to have we're talking about this before we started recording the episode, but we would love to bring you on and talk more about this in a webinar format to reach more of our members and really help them understand what's going on. And I really appreciate the action steps that here's how what you need to do, get on the phone, how we can get involved. And you're right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Nobody wants this. So this is this is something that's really critical for, you know, our future health, future generations, the future of America. Tell our audience how they can connect with you personally. You mentioned glyphosate girl. Is that your handle on social?
Speaker 2:Yes, so glyphosate girl is in that's G L Y P H osate. Might not be on the tip of your tongue. That's why I'm just I'll
Speaker 1:put this in the show notes. Yeah, so people can click.
Speaker 2:And and I also have the website glyphosatefacts.com, and you can go there and just get some very basic information on glyphosate if you're more interested in that. And then my other organization is called American Regeneration, and this is mahal leaning organization. We're trying to revamp the farming system and we have amazing regenerative farmers on our team and so you can reach me there as well. Email is on that website.
Speaker 1:Amazing and also I will so I'll link out all of that in the show notes for our listeners. And then also the documentary that you were involved in Common Ground, I believe is on Prime Video. So we can link out to that as well. And Kelly, thank you so much for being with us and helping teach us about this very, very important topic. This is really just very eye opening, really valuable conversation.
Speaker 1:Thank you for the work that you're doing and your commitment to this. I can just feel your energy and passion through the screen and through your voice. And I just am so as a mom and I'm just grateful for it. I'm grateful that that that God is speaking through you and using your voice. And thank you for that.
Speaker 1:Thank you for being with us. And we hope to see you back very soon. Thanks for joining me on the better for you podcast. Don't forget to subscribe, share this episode with your friends and write a review. New episodes will drop every other Monday morning.
Speaker 1:I'll do my best to provide the information and practical advice that is better for you. Visit amac.us/active and submit feedback or questions and I'll weave those in on future episodes. Let's make this journey together towards a year where we love and care for ourselves like never before.
