Cheerios, Nature Valley cereals contain Roundup ingredient, 19 others study finds

Twenty-one oat-based cereal and snack products popular with children contain traces of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weed killer Roundup, according to tests from the Environmental Working Group. EWG said the tests found glyphosate levels above what it considers safe for children in all but four of the products.

The 21 products that were tested are made by General Mills, including six varieties of Cheerios and 14 of General Mills' Nature Valley products, such as Nature Valley granola bars.
General Mills said food safety is a "top priority" for the company, which said it's working to minimize the use of pesticides on the ingredients it uses. "Most crops grown in fields use some form of pesticides and trace amounts are found in the majority of food we all eat," the company said in an emailed statement. "Experts at the FDA and EPA determine the safe levels for food products," which it adheres to, as well as farmers that grow the crops, it added.

The report is the latest from the EWG to detect traces of glyphosate in cereals. The environmental advocacy group found traces of the chemical in dozens of Cheerios and Quaker brand products in October. Glyphosate has been at the center of several high-profile lawsuits alleging the chemical causes cancer. A California jury awarded a couple $2 billion in punitive damages after concluding that sustained exposure to Monsanto's popular Roundup weed killer led to their cancer diagnoses. Monsanto is now owned by Bayer.
Highest glyphosate levels

The two highest levels of glyphosate were detected in Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch and Cheerios, at 833 parts per billion and 729 parts per billion, respectively, the group said. It considers anything over 160 parts per billion to be unsafe for children.

However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a far higher threshold for glyphosate content, ranging from 0.1 to 310 parts per million, rather than per billion.
Even though several juries have found in favor of cancer patients who claim their illness is linked to glyphosate exposure, there are conflicting scientific studies. The World Health Organization's cancer agency has said the weedkiller is "possibly carcinogenic to humans," but other organizations have said they believe the link is unlikely.
Glyphosate and oats

Glyphosate is sprayed on oats to dry out the crop, making it easier to harvest, the EWG said. The group said the practice increases the chances the chemical will end up in children's cereal.
"The only way to quickly remove this cancer-causing weedkiller from foods marketed to children is for companies like General Mills and Quaker to use oats from farmers who do not use glyphosate as a desiccant," it said in the report.
The four products that tested below the EWG's threshold of 160 parts per billion are:
Honey Nut Cheerios
Nature Valley Fruit & Nut Chewy Trail Mix Granola Bars, Dark Chocolate & Nut
Nature Valley Sweet & Salty Nut granola bars, Cashew
Nature Valley Soft-Baked Oatmeal Squares, Cinnamon Brown Sugar

1. Glysophate isn't a pesticide.

2.  If the the farmers are using glysophate to dessicate the oat crops, isn't that an off-label use for the product?  If so, the farmers should be held responsible for the misuse of the product, not Monsanto.

sh1tski. I had a bowl of oatmeal this morning.

Is EWG a legit group, or one of those agenda-driven outfits?

They should put that shit in more food items - Cheerios are fuggin' gooooood.

The poison is the dosage. Every breath you take contains toxic, life-ending material. Every glass of water. Every piece of fruit.

Fuck the sensationalist health blog media and the single digit-IQ retards that can't wrap their head around this.

Seems like BS when they are taking parts per billion the amount is so very small. I am sure on the parts per billion there are a lot of other bad things.

They just made up those own “safe” levels.

The reporter fails to convert to alike units, probably intentionally.  A billion is one thousand millions.  The environmentalists found 833 parts per billion, the EPA sets a limit of up to 310,000 parts per billion.  The detected glysophate is 0.4% of the EPA limit.

The group screened against a limit of their choosing that is 1000 times less than the number the EPA determined to be safe.

For reference:

Attached File

Not really concerned. Ate a NV granola bar yesterday. "Everybody gotta die someday Red".

Environmental working group is the Brady anti gun kook group equivalent in the agriculture world

As I suspected.

Hell, oxygen is keeping us alive and slowly killing us at the same time.  I love the taste of glyphosate in the morning.  ZFG.

One ppm is about one drop in a 55 gallon drum.

That's the illustration that always sticks in my head.

How soon before the lawyers file a massive class action. Sign me up for a nickel or a coupon for more roundup cereal.

"Traces".

Whenever I see that and dig into it, turns out they are measuring at the limits of the detection technology.

Now days, parts per billion are common.

ETA: Having read the article, it is a very blatant hit-piece.

Try to feed the world without glysophate and similar.

I dare ya to try.

Bring back DDT!

They have found DDT in the tissues of penguins around Antarctica. No thanks.

EWG is Full of It

The irony of course is that crying wolf does more to harm their cause more than anything.  Credibility is everything in the enviro-business, screw that up, and no one will believe a thing you say.

Who is “they”?

Interesting that it was lower in Honey Nut Cheerios because they plant Roundup Ready genetically modified peanuts these days which allow farmers to spray the crop for weed control without killing the crop.

When 'Salon' calls them out for scare tactics and half baked facts presented as dogma, that's telling.

monsanto developed some products which contain glyphosate and other substances specifically to speed up harvest by desiccating them, especially in regions where harvest time is comparatively short and farmers want to utilize their straight cut harvest equipment rather than using a swather to cut the crop down if it is not quite fully mature and dry.  desiccation by spraying cereal grains and other crops is standard practice in my region, and in most if not all regions of the prairie provinces in Canada.  here is how glyphosate finds its way into our foods.  under perfect conditions grain crops all germinate evenly and mature evenly and most farmers won't spray the crop in the fall because the expense isn't justifiable.  unfortunately, perfect conditions rarely happen so farmers spray their crops so they can harvest an unevenly mature crop quicker and farm more acres.  this situation becomes less than ideal when seed germination becomes very uneven.  some seeds have germinate a month before and some seeds are still waiting to sprout because they ended up in dry soil.  at some point in the growing season rainfall will occur and those seeds will start to grow weeks behind the early germinating seeds.  this is how it becomes a problem at harvest.  the farmer cannot wait and sprays the crop, the early germinating crop is already dry but the late germinating crop is still sending nutrients up to the kernels in the head of the plant.  the glyphosate does kill the plant, but not before some of it ends up in the kernels.  the greater the percentage of green immature crop, the higher the level of herbicide residue.  FWIW,  Richardson Milling and other processors will not accept desiccated oats, so I suspect some end users like Quaker and others are buying offshore cereal grains because they are cheaper, without domestic restriction of chemical residue.

Well, that would explain why I don't have any weeds growing on me. I was wondering about this just a couple days ago.

Environmental Wacko Group

I would not be surprised if they are secretly  funded by the American Bar Association, since they have the most to gain from junk science.

Eat bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches for breffix instead.  Problem solved.

Roundup contains water. Stop drinking water now.  it's only logical.

Interesting, thank you for your insights on this.

The Virginia Institute of Marine Science, at least.

Lol!!  Ban glyphosate I dare you!!  Then we can all go back to Paraquat!   We’ll see how they like that in their cereal


Posted from the cab of my sprayer.  And no I’m not spraying glyphosate this morning. I’m spraying Azoxystrobin and Propiconazole
Attached File

WARNING: The State of California contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

FDA and Monsanto have had a fairly close relationship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_R._Taylor

It’s a conspiracy!

What do you use glyphosate for?  
What purpose is that you are spraying now for?

I'm just curious.  @dieselman

Yeah well, people often say traces don't matter, it's only a PPM, or a few hundred PPM, or in this case a little less than a PPM.

1 PPM of chlorine, or copper, is the difference between a swimming pool and a swamp. Traces can have massive effects. I don't think there's evidence for that with Roundup though.

Using roundup to finish grains has been standard practice for decades, it's probably not the greatest idea. It's a little disingenuous to say it's just drying it out, the stress response of any plant near death is to produce viable seeds. By spraying with roundup you force the plant to put the last of its energy into its seed/grain, and of course it's going to carry some of the roundup with it.

Someone else got the Cheerios, he may be taking care of the Count Chocula.

and me farting without the bathroom fan on is killing me too

I would use glyphosate to kill off weeds or crop in a field to allow for better tillage.  What I’m spraying today is fungicide to combat stem rust

I wonder what is really behind this because it sure as hell isn't a bunch of people who are just worried about the health of others. There is some political motivation behind this all out assault on glyphosate.

It is well coordinated and extremely well funded. Something real shady is going on but we won't know the truth until years after they get the ban they want and write books bragging about why they really did it.

Honey Nut Cheerios were on sale the other day.

I bought 4 boxes

Who eats cheerios? You could put an entire box in a blender and you would have what, one cup of cereal dust?

Abound and tilt?

Secret Ingredient. Now China knows.

310 ppm seems like a pretty high threshold.  To put things in perspective, that's 3 times higher than the bitter alpha acid content in the most face-puckering IPA.

You sir are correct. The organic stuff is BS. You might  can do it in a small raised bed, but you can’t feed the world without insecticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.  Among other things.