Monsanto’s Carcinogenic Glyphosate Is In Large Number Of Children’s Cereals
According to a new study conducted by the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG), a large number of consumer products, including children’s cereal, contain the carcinogen Glyphosate. Glyphosate is, of course, the chemical that was recently found to cause cancer and other health problems. Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, which has been slowly getting banned all over the world this year. The study reported that 31 out of 45 of the products that were tested contained levels of the chemical that are potentially unsafe.
These products ranged from snack foods and granola bars to children’s cereal. “We’re very concerned that consumers are eating more glyphosate than they know,” Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs at EWG told CBS News.
Some of the companies named in the study have responded to the accusations, claiming that their products may contain Glyphosate, but not enough to actually cause any harm. General Mills, the company behind many of the cereals tested in the study, issued the following statement in response:
Our products are safe and without question they meet regulatory safety levels. The EPA has researched this issue and has set rules that we follow as do farmers who grow crops including wheat and oats. We continue to work closely with farmers, our suppliers and conservation organizations to minimize the use of pesticides on the crops and ingredients we use in our foods.
Quaker, who was also named in the study, had this to say:
We proudly stand by the safety and quality of our Quaker products. Producing healthy, wholesome food is Quaker’s number one priority, and we’ve been doing that for more than 140 years. Quaker does not add glyphosate during any part of the milling process. Glyphosate is commonly used by farmers across the industry who apply it pre-harvest. Once the oats are transported to us, we put them through our rigorous process that thoroughly cleanses them (de-hulled, cleaned, roasted and flaked). Any levels of glyphosate that may remain are significantly below any regulatory limits and well within compliance of the safety standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as safe for human consumption. Quaker continually evaluates our product portfolio to ensure the highest quality and safety standards for our consumers. While our products comply with all safety and regulatory requirements, we are happy to be part of the discussion and are interested in collaborating with industry peers, regulators and other interested parties on glyphosate.
Monsanto even issued a statement of their own, telling CBS that “glyphosate does not cause cancer” and “has a more than 40-year history of safe use.” The statement went on to say that, “even at the highest level reported… an adult would have to eat 118 pounds of the food item every day for the rest of their life in order to reach the EPA’s limit” for glyphosate residues.
It may be very true that the researchers who conducted the study were using a lower threshold than the EPA does to determine the toxicity, but scientists disagree about what the safe level actually is, with many thinking that the official standard is dangerously high.
Furthermore, the EPA has been caught tampering with these threshold levels in pesticides before. In 2013, as a fresh wave of studies showing the dangers of the chemical were being released, the EPA actually raised the accepted levels.
A 2015 report from the Chicago Tribune revealed that the EPA intentionally obfuscated data and changed their own standards so they could allow an unsafe chemical made by DOW to get an acceptable rating.
After the EPA approved the chemical, a number of environmental groups including the Center for Food Safety and Earthjustice quickly sued the agency, forcing them to retract their approval several months later. When the EPA finally reversed their decision in 2015, they claimed that “new information” surfaced to make them change their minds, however, according to the Tribune’s report and the accusations of many activists, the EPA knew all along and were colluding with DOW to approve a substance that was proven to be harmful. The chemical in question was a new herbicide that combined 2,4-D and glyphosate. According to the Tribune’s report,
EPA now says it is safe to allow 41 times more 2,4-D into the American diet [than previously allowed for decades]. To reach that conclusion . . . the agency’s scientists changed their analysis of a pivotal rat study by Dow, tossing aside signs of kidney trouble that Dow researchers said were caused by 2,4-D.
The report went on to describe how the EPA received test results from DOW that proved their product was below the EPA’s standards, so they tampered with the study so it would pass. As The Free Thought Project reported last week, a landmark case against Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller concluded in San Francisco in which a jury awarded $289 million in damages to a former school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, concluding that Roundup gave him terminal cancer.
Congratulations, your post has been selected to be included in my weekly Sustainability Curation Digest for the Minnow Support Project.
Host of The Alternative Lifestyle Show on MSP Waves Radio.
Founder of the A Dollar A Day charitable giving project.
Is there any company out there more evil than Monsanto? NOPE! Welll....maybe Halliburton.
I hope the Rock is OK. ;) This is potentially pretty huge, a jury has a pretty low standard of evidence in a civil case but with that case we already have advertisements for anyone who used roundup in any capacity and then contracted certain cancers. If the lawyers can expand the class to anyone who ate an oat product from a major manufacturer then this suit could be bigger than smoking or asbestos. on the other hand, how many people can we feed and how long will our soil last if we eliminate no-till farming?
I recommend everyone read the labels of what you consume. Remember the old adage, "you become what you eat." Growing children are especially susceptible.
My son sat on some city park grass a few years ago during summer and immediately had to go to the doc-in-the-box because he broke out in a rash. The money Mr. Johnson will receive is too late to help him by all reports. I pray others learn from him.
If at the current EPA safe levels it takes eating more than 100 pounds of cereal (or whatever) a day for a lifetime to exceed those levels then the EPAs allowance can't be dangerously high. What is the truth? At what point does it really become dangerous? Every substance on Earth causes death in sufficient quantity after all. While it is good to be aware of this and this awareness will hopefully lead to even safer products, should anyone really worry about eating a bowl of Cheerios? It seems like everyone in the world either has cancer, has had cancer, or knows someone who did. I lost my wife to breast cancer less than a year ago and she was only 42. It certainly seems to be a disease that is more common than it once was. It becomes easy to worry about every story like this where there are trace amounts of something known to cause cancer when exposed to vast amounts in some food or other product. But sometimes I wonder if the worry causes more health problems than the trace amounts of a weedkiller in grains.
I'm not sure that there is much value in comparing a person who is exposed to Roundup directly on a daily basis to someone who is exposed to a few parts per billion in their Cheerios. Nor can anyone say definitively what caused cancer in an individual person (at least in the vast majority of cases).
I just bought a box of Pumpkin Spice Cheerios the other day... I'll just go sit over here in a corner and worry about whether I should eat them or not. Or perhaps throw them away and feel guilty about the starving children of the world...
Curated for #informationwar (by @wakeupnd)
Our purpose is to encourage posts discussing Information War, Propaganda, Disinformation and other false narratives. We currently have over 8,000 Steem Power and 20+ people following the curation trail to support our mission.
Join our discord and chat with 250+ fellow Informationwar Activists.
Join our brand new reddit! and start sharing your Steemit posts directly to The_IW, via the share button on your Steemit post!!!
Connect with fellow Informationwar writers in our Roll Call! InformationWar - Leadership/Contributing Writers/Supporters: Roll Call
Ways you can help the @informationwar
Curated for #informationwar (by @commonlaw)
Our purpose is to encourage posts discussing Information War, Propaganda, Disinformation and other false narratives. We currently have over 8,000 Steem Power and 20+ people following the curation trail to support our mission.
Join our discord and chat with 200+ fellow Informationwar Activists.
Join our brand new reddit! and start sharing your Steemit posts directly to The_IW!
Connect with fellow Informationwar writers in our Roll Call! InformationWar - Contributing Writers/Supporters: Roll Call Pt 11
Ways you can help the @informationwar
howdy there johnvibes..man..these guys suck. mepatriot calls them Monsatan and I think it fits pretty well! I heard other reports as well that said it was in all our food.