12/09/2026
This is a very interesting read and you don’t need to be surrounded by agricultural land for this to still have an impact!
Airborne drift and water infiltration need thinking about
The nastiest laminitis cases I’ve worked on have I believe been driven by a chemical assault but that is only my belief and unsubstantiated
Glyphosate causes insulin resistance and metabolic disorders, disrupts the gut microbiome and the effects can be heritable.
(Please note, I am not saying it is the ONLY cause)
Last year I made a post about laminitis that was quite popular. In the post, one of the points I mentioned was the potential roll of the use of herbicides/pesticides in the widespread development of metabolic disorders in our horses for the past few decades.
I want to elaborate on that point, because it's something that people often roll their eyes thinking I'm part of the tinfoil hat brigade.
But my inital statement is not opinion, it is not speculation and it is not even surprising. It is being proven in scientific studies. Wide spread use of Glyphosate is altering our metabolisms, our immune systems and our DNA.
But don't take my word for it.
A study done in 2025 entiled ' Prenatal exposure to dietary levels of glyphosate disrupts metabolic, immune, and behavioral markers across generations in mice' by Barnett JA, Josephson JK, Yuzbashian E, et al.
States:
"Prenatal glyphosate reshapes gut, metabolism and behaviour across multiple mouse generations
Harmful effects arise at 0.01mg/kg/day, a dose far beneath current safety limits.
Gut barrier damage, mucin loss and inflammation persist into the F2 generation.
Glyphosate-linked microbiome shifts disrupt endocrine and tryptophan pathways.
Dose- and generation-based host-microbe rewiring suggests heritable gut-brain-immune dysfunction "
Another study done in 2022,
'Impact of Glyphosate on the Development of Insulin Resistance in Experimental Diabetic Rats' by Monisha Prasad et al states:
"Glyphosate aggravated ROS, altered antioxidant activity, disrupted the glucose homeostasis, altered insulin action in liver via NFκB signaling in liver. As the primary organ for metabolism and detoxification, the liver is affected by oxidative stress caused by glyphosate, which could change crucial regulatory pathways including insulin signalling and JNK, resulting in insulin resistance and inflammation."
There are many more studies out there, and of course, unfortunately they have not been done on horses by if you are curious, The Humble Hoof Podcast did an episode with Elizabeth Hilborn where she discusses the devestating impact the use of pesticides had on her own farm and the animals that lived there and the book she wrote about it called "Restoring Eden". I immediately read the book and it really made me realize what I was noticing in so many horses, and ourselves!
I got into hoofcare because I wanted to know the "Why?" behind so many common hoof problems. When I would ask why, I would only be given answers that were bandaids, not solutions, and definitely not prevention. That spurred my deep dive into all things hoof. That was over 22 years ago, and a lot of things have changed in the world around us, and wide spread use of Glyphosate is one of those things.
I don't know what the solution is now, as it is now so intertwined in all aspects of the food we eat and feed. The desire to have "w**d free" monocrops, roundup ready alfalfa, canola, corn. Oats, wheat and straw etc sprayed for uniformed drying. Our commercial feeds, our hay, our water sources etc are all affected.
I have seen more and more cases where people are feeding hay that should be deemed safe in sugar content, they aren't getting any grass etc and yet they still are metabolic and will tip over the edge into a lamintic episode with even the slightest insult. Horses under the age of 10 being diagnosed with PPID due to sky high acth levels. These things are not normal.
We need to be aware of what could be causing the dramatic uptick in cases of insulin resistance, EMS and other gut microbiome diseases we are seeing so we can stop only treating the symptoms by restricting our horses diets to manage disorders that the very feed we are trying to help them with, may be creating. Yes, there is a web of contributing factors that lead to laminitis, but we are fighting a losing battle if we aren't addressing what may be sending our bodies and the bodies of our horses into this dysfunction in the first place.
So what can we do?
Links to studies etc in the comments
Photo of stretched lamina present in a laminitic miniature horse
