Attorney Who Took on Monsanto and Won, Now Suing Baby Food Makers Over Heavy Metals
The latest episode of CHD.TV’s “The Empower Hour” featured host Zen Honeycutt’s interview with lawyer Brent Wisner of Baum Hedlund Law. Wisner made history serving on the first three Monsanto trials, achieving multiple verdicts totaling $2.4 billion by convincing juries that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides cause cancer.
Wisner shared the latest on the Monsanto Papers, which his legal team declassified and published during the Monsanto trials. The papers revealed Monsanto’s scientific manipulation of the truth on the safety of Roundup weedkiller.
Bayer, the company that makes Roundup, still claims the product is “as safe as table salt,” according to Honeycutt.
Wisner described how the trial went from Monsanto controlling the entire narrative to his firm winning the fight.
He said:
“Monsanto was controlling most of the mainstream media. They were controlling the politicians. They were controlling the regulators, and there was this refrain evolving in the mainstream media that in fact we were a bunch of predatory trial lawyers making up stuff …
“The problem was we were sitting on these documents. Hundreds of emails and internal studies that showed they knew it caused cancer and they actively attacked scientists and actively attacked people who had the nerve to say something about it. We couldn’t show it to anybody because it was confidential under the protective order.”
Wisner described what he learned from reading the Monsanto Papers about a program called “Freedom to Operate,” which paid employees to find product dissenters and “eliminate them.”
“I don’t mean in the sort of casual, black propaganda kind of way, I mean attack their funding,” said Wisner. Honeycutt’s nonprofit, Moms Across America, was one of many organizations targeted by Freedom to Operate.
Wisner’s latest trial challenges baby food companies for using “1,000 to 10,000 times” the allowed safe level of heavy metals permitted in their products.
He said:
“These farms that grow the food that makes its way into baby food use lots of pesticides and fertilizers which all have very high levels of heavy metals in them. That then gets translated into there being exceedingly high levels of arsenic, mercury, cadmium and lead in basically all the baby food manufacturers.”
Baum Hedlund is reaching out to parents of children with autism who have been exposed to heavy metals in baby food for a case against big food companies, such as Walmart and Gerber.
“What we know is that heavy metals — when you expose them to a baby whose brain is developing — significantly increases their risk of developing autism and other neurological disorders,” Wisner said.
He offered a message of comfort to parents who may feel guilty about feeding their children food that contained neurotoxic metals.
“It’s really easy to internalize that guilt,” he said. “The simple fact is, it’s not your fault. It is the fault of these manufacturers … The companies did this. They took that choice away from you and we need to do something about it.”
Also in this episode, Carol Grieve of Food Integrity Now provided a roundup of the latest food news, including a push to independently study glyphosate in Europe, and an update on Bayer’s decision to withdraw from the national class action litigation process.
Honeycutt and Grieve shared a recorded discussion with Massachusetts Institute of Technology Senior Research Scientist Stephanie Seneff and others on the question, “Can we detox from glyphosate?”
Seneff said enzymes contained in apple cider vinegar and fermented foods, such as sauerkraut, may be promising as a solution.
“What happens in the soil, happens in the gut,” Grieve said.
Honeycutt presented nine years’ worth of research on glyphosate for the “We’re Not Buying it,” segment of her show. Her research found Roundup harms the endocrine system, the gut and immune system, and causes liver and kidney disease, cancer, miscarriages, developmental delays, shortened gestations, birth defects, damage to the testes and androgenizing effects.
She featured a video clip of French molecular biologist Gilles-Éric Séralini discussing his studies that found heavy metals, such as arsenic, in Roundup.
Séralini’s studies looked for the “hidden poisons” that make Roundup so harmful when combined with glyphosate. “We found a lot of heavy metals coming from the petroleum residues,” he said.
Honeycutt left the audience with tips on how to avoid glyphosate harm, including using alternative weedkillers, making your own baby food and eating organic.
Watch this week’s episode here:
Tune in every Friday at 9 a.m. PT / Noon ET to watch a new episode of “The Empower Hour” on CHD.TV.
Next up: Honeycutt will interview Lisa Jendza, co-founder of Freedom Kitchen, a “food ministry” that develops new and healthy food programs, increases education through health coaches and offers funding to help members scale their operations.
“The Empower Hour” is hosted by Zen Honeycutt. Each week Honeycutt invites you to become part of the solution and a partner in building healthy communities using the time-tested tools of nutrition, detoxification and healthy lifestyle choices. Honeycutt is the author of “Unstoppable: Transforming Sickness and Struggle into Triumph,” and founding director of Moms Across America, a nonprofit raising awareness about GMOs and related pesticides in our food, and Moms Across the World, a collaborative effort of moms and supporters around the world. She is committed to educating and empowering mothers and others with actions and solutions to create healthy communities. Step out of the fear and into your personal power.
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