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More bad news for Quaker Oats. A random inspection from Taiwan's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) detected glyphosate in 10 out of 36 oatmeal products it tested, exceeding the country's legal limit. The 10 products, including those from the Quaker Oats brand, were found to have glyphosate residue levels between 0.1 parts per million (ppm) and 1.8ppm, the agency said, prompting a recall of nearly 62,000 kilograms of oatmeal.
New tests reveal popular cereals and snack foods could have potentially harmful levels of the same chemical found in weed killer. The chemical is called glyphosate, and some reports say it may cause cancer. Of the 21 General Mills products examined, the highest levels of glyphosate were found in Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch, which had more than five times what the advocacy group believes is a safe level.
Turmoil both in and outside courtrooms appears to be growing for Monsanto, a unit of German owner Bayer AG, as the company works to meet overlapping deadlines for appeal actions in the three Roundup cancer trials Monsanto has lost so far at the same time that the company must prepare for new trials at the end of this summer.
The weight of the litigation burden was laid out by a Monsanto/Bayer attorney in a recent California Court of Appeal filing seeking more time to file a brief in Monsanto’s appeal of the first case it lost last summer.
That plaintiff in that case, Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, was awarded $289 million by a San Francisco jury who determined that Johnson’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma was caused by his exposure to Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides. As part of the $289 million, the jury ordered $250 million in punitive damages after Johnson’s attorneys presented evidence that Monsanto suppressed the evidence of the risks of its herbicides.
About a century ago the American chestnut tree was attacked by the introduced fungal pathogen (Cryphonectria parasitica). This fungus drove the chestnut to functional extinction. Now, scientists at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF) claim to have created, through biotechnology, a resistant American chestnut variety.
Glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, was once hailed as a kind of miracle solution to the problem of weeds.
Today, glyphosate-based weedkillers like Monsanto’s Roundup are a disgraced product, associated with a shocking and increasing number of health and environmental problems.
Glyphosate has long been promoted as a fast-acting weedkiller, as effective in small gardens and lawns as it was in industrial corn and soy fields. Its use on farms dramatically increased with the introduction of herbicide-tolerant GMO crops. But glyphosate is also regularly sprayed on non-GMO crops—‘healthy’ foods such wheat, oats, maize and barley but also soya, rapeseed, sunflower seeds and chick peas—as a desiccant, used to dry out the crops in a uniform fashion, so they can be harvested all at once.
Glyphosate-based herbicides are also used to control weeds in parks, on city streets, roadsides, sidewalks and in playgrounds.
Austria is heading toward a likely ban of glyphosate this year after the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) backed the Social Democrats' drive to end usage of the controversial weedkiller. "There are enough studies that adequately demonstrate the risk that glyphosate poses to the environment and human health," the FPÖ's new party leader, Norbert Hofer, said Wednesday.
Monsanto's new owner, Bayer, has been slammed with judgments in the first three Roundup lawsuits to go to trial. The verdicts, which have sided with plaintiffs in all cases so far, have found not only that Roundup herbicide caused the plaintiffs' cancers but also that Monsanto engaged in malice, oppression or fraud in their attempts to cover up Roundup's toxicity.
There’s no reassuring way to say this: You’re being poisoned against your will.
Sure, you can take steps to minimize your exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller.
But given its widespread and reckless use in this country, you’d have to live in a bubble to protect yourself from a chemical so toxic it’s been banned or severely restricted in 17 other countries.
The United States allows the use of 85 pesticides that have been banned or are being phased out in the European Union, China or Brazil, according to a peer-reviewed study published today by the academic journal Environmental Health.
Parks are New Yorkers’ oasis. They’re where we escape the crowds, the din of traffic, and our often tiny apartments; where we play with our children, walk our pets, and relax in the sun. Parks should be a place where New Yorkers can relax and play without being exposed to dangerous chemicals. So why is a herbicide believed to cause cancer being sprayed in our parks?
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