Activists sound alarm
Monsanto rejects activist group’s data on chemical
An environmental research and advocacy group has found traces of a controversial herbicide in Cheerios, Quaker Oats and other breakfast foods that it says could increase cancer risk for children.
The report comes amid long-standing debate about the safety of the chemical glyphosate, which federal regulators maintain is not likely to cause cancer.
In its report released Wednesday, the Environmental Working Group said that it tested 45 samples of breakfast foods made from oats grown in fields sprayed with herbicides. Then, using a strict standard the group developed, it found elevated levels of glyphosate in 31 of them.
“There are levels above what we could consider safe in very popular breakfast foods,” said Alexis Temkin, the group’s toxicologist.
The findings by the group, which has opposed the use of pesticides that may end up in food, were reported widely. But the question of whether glyphosate is safe is not so simple. In fact, it is central to a raging international debate about the chemical that has spawned thousands of lawsuits, allegations of faulty research supporting and opposing the chemical and a vigorous defense of the herbicide from Monsanto, the company that helped develop it 40 years ago.
Scott Partridge, a vice president at Monsanto, said Wednesday that hundreds of studies had validated the safety of glyphosate. He said the Environmental Working Group “are fear mongering. They distort science.”
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer declared glyphosate a probable carcinogen in 2015.
Last week, a California jury found that Monsanto had failed to warn a school groundskeeper of the cancer risks posed by its weedkiller, Roundup, of which glyphosate is an active ingredient.
Quaker Oats and General Mills, which makes Cheerios, said that their products were safe and met federal standards.