02
May
FDA Scientists Find Glyphosate in Common Foods, Internal Emails Show
(Beyond Pesticides, May 2, 2018) Granola, cereal, and wheat crackers all contain “a fair amount” of glyphosate, the herbicide in Monsanto’s popular Roundup, according to internal emails from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Although the results of these tests have not been formally released, FDA had stated it will be conducting tests for glyphosate in food. Previous reports have detailed the presence of glyphosate, the chemical classified as a “probable carcinogen,” in a wide range of foods and in people’s bodies.
Internal emails obtained by The Guardian through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveal communication between FDA scientists regarding glyphosate residues in common foods. One email, dated January 2017, detail one scientist’s results from foods taken from his own home.
“I have brought wheat crackers, granola cereal and cornmeal from home and there’s a fair amount in all of them,” FDA chemist Richard Thompson wrote to colleagues in the email last year regarding glyphosate. He further went on to write that broccoli was the only food he had “on hand” that he found to be glyphosate-free.
According to The Guardian, another FDA chemist Narong Chamkasem separately found “over-the-tolerance” levels of glyphosate in corn, detected at 6.5 parts per million, an FDA email states. The legal limit is 5.0 ppm. A level above what is currently allowed would normally be reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but an FDA supervisor wrote to an EPA official that the corn was not considered an “official sample”.
The FDA is charged with monitoring and testing food samples for pesticide residues for residue levels. However, despite glyphosate being the most widely used herbicide in the U.S., used on over 100 food crops, the agency only recently announced it would test for glyphosate under mounting public pressure to do so. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) decided to abandon its plans for testing the U.S. food supply for glyphosate residues. USDA had previously tested soybeans for glyphosate residue in 2011, finding that 90% of samples contained residues between 0.26 ppm and 18.5 ppm, barely under the allowed food tolerance level of 20 ppm. The federal government’s pesticide monitoring program, which is run jointly by USDA, FDA, and EPA, was criticized by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2014 for its failure to test for the widely used herbicide.
A report by Food Democracy Now! and the Detox Project, Glyphosate: Unsafe on Any Plate, found high levels of glyphosate contamination in popular American food brands, such as Cheerios, Doritos, Oreos, Goldfish and Ritz Crackers, and Stacy’s Pita Chips. According to the report, the levels found in these products are above the levels associated with organ damage (above 0.1 parts per billion(ppb)). Among 29 different foods tested, the highest levels detected were found in General Mills’ Original Cheerios, at 1,125.3 ppb. Stacy’s Simply Naked Pita Chips were the next highest, at 812.53 ppb. Other reports of the widespread presence of glyphosate residues find the chemical in breast milk, in German beers, feminine hygiene products, and bread, as well as in nearly 100% of Germans tested.
The Guardian details that along with glyphosate, the agency has been trying to measure residues of the herbicides 2,4-D and dicamba because of projected increased use of these weedkillers on new genetically engineered (GE) crops. The FDA spokesman said that the agency has “expanded capacity” for testing foods for those herbicides this year. The official findings should be released later this year or early in 2019 as part of its 2016 annual residue report.
Glyphosate became a focus of media attention following the 2015 World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classification of glyphosate as a “probable human carcinogen.” Since then, Monsanto has been hard at work trying to undermine findings that show its flagship product, glyphosate, is anything other than “safe.” However, its attempts to unduly influence and undermine scientific research and government review of its product has been disclosed widely in the press. EPA recently closed the public comment period for the human health and ecological assessments for glyphosate. On April 30, 2018, the day the comment period ended, public interest, food safety, and environmental organizations delivered over 165,000 public comments to EPA, urging the agency to ban glyphosate.
While federal oversight and regulation lag behind, environmental groups, like Beyond Pesticides, are urging localities to restrict or ban the use of glyphosate and other unnecessary toxic pesticides. Beyond Pesticides promotes these actions and many more through the Tools for Change webpage. This page is designed to help activists and other concerned citizens organize around a variety of pesticide issues on the local, state, and national level. Learn how to organize a campaign and talk to your neighbors about pesticides with our factsheets.
Consumers can also avoid glyphosate exposure by buying and supporting organic food and agriculture. Beyond Pesticides has long promoted the importance of organic in a sustainable food system, and works to promote the widespread transition of conventional farmland to organic production. Utilizing ecological pest management strategies, organic practices, and solutions that are not chemical-intensive is the most appropriate and long-term solution to managing unwanted plants, or weeds.
To find out more about the work Beyond Pesticides is doing on organic integrity and actions you can take, check out Keeping Organic Strong, or see all the reasons to go organic, visit Eating with a Conscience.
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
Source: The Guardian
