‘Cancer-causing’ Weedkiller Found In Breakfast Cereals
Significant levels of the weedkilling chemical glyphosate have been found in an array of popular breakfast cereals, oats and snack bars marketed to US and UK children, two new studies found.
In the US tests revealed glyphosate, the active ingredient in the popular weedkiller brand Roundup, present in all but two of the 45 oat-derived products that were sampled by the Environmental Working Group, a public health organization.
Nearly three in four of the products exceeded what the EWG classes safe for children to consume. Products with some of the highest levels of glyphosate include granola, oats and snack bars made by leading industry names Quaker, Kellogg’s and General Mills, which makes Cheerios.
In April, internal emails obtained from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed that scientists have found glyphosate on a wide range of commonly consumed food, to the point that they were finding it difficult to identify a food without the chemical on it.
The FDA has yet to release any official results from this process. (The FDA have now released the list, but significantly they have excluded figures for oats and wheat, two crops that have Roundup sprayed on them pre-harvest.) The UK Guardian reported:
“There was no indication that the claims related to products sold outside the US.”
With this reassurance by the Guardian in mind, we purchased four oat-based cereals marketed for children from our local supermarket in Wales and sent them to a Health Research Institute in Fairfield, Iowa which is accredited to analyse foods for glyphosate and other pesticides.
Dr John Fagan told us they were ‘shockingly high levels’ and ‘to think they were being given to young children.’
His official report said:
“These results are consistently concerning. The levels consumed in a single daily helping of any one of these cereals, even the one with the lowest level of contamination, is sufficient to put the person’s glyphosate levels above the levels that cause fatty liver disease in rats (and likely in people). I have included results for two “organic” products from the US for comparison. The granola has some glyphosate in. Even more concerning is the “organic” rolled oats that have the highest glyphosate levels of any product tested here. What this means is that, at least in the USA, organic integrity is less than perfect, to say the least! We have seen evidence of cheating before, but this is the worst!”
We knew that some UK farmers had been spraying Roundup on cereals pre-harvest since 1980 in order to desiccate (dry) crops, at the suggestion of a scientist from Monsanto.
The amounts of Roundup sprayed by UK farmers on crops has gone from 226,762 kg in 1990 to 2,240,408 kg in 2016, a ten-fold increase, so residues have been building up in food.
A research study in 2017 by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the Dutch University of Wageningen and Rikilt laboratories, tested 317 EU soil samples of arable land. ‘Denmark, the UK and Portugal are the worst in this spectrum, with the highest detection frequency. All tested crops presented glyphosate and AMPA residues.’ The results from the UK will probably be the same in other European countries.
Séralini’s team in France has identified arsenic, chromium, cobalt, lead and nickel in chemical formulants of glyphosatebased herbicides (GBH). I understand that President Macron has suggested that farmers won’t be paid if they continue to use these.
That is why the people are so sick and the life expectancy in Britain is decreasing. Since 1974 we have been eating food poisoned with weedkiller, laced with heavy metals including arsenic, and other pesticides.
Below is evidence to show that the Westminster Government is colluding with corporations against the people:
Shockingly high levels of weedkiller found in four popular breakfast cereals marketed for British children. The pesticides regulatory authorities are governed by England. They are protecting the agrochemical industry.
Therefore, when they assure Scotland and Wales that Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides have no effects on human health and the environment, they are conveying messages from the European Glyphosate Task Force, the industry body.
Increasing incidence of cancer in children in Europe and competing risks
Extracts from the paper: “First, cancer incidence in children aged 0–14 years has gradually increased over the 1991– 2010 period.
Second, for all five cancer categories investigated, incidence increases were similar in all four regions.
Another contrast across European regions concerns the use of pesticides in agriculture. In 2014, the quantities of pesticide sales per capita were about three times greater in Spain, Italy, and France than in Sweden or the UK.
If increasing cancer incidence trends were due to pesticides, dissimilarities in incidence trends for leukaemia and lymphoma would be expected between European regions, which was not the case.”
The obvious explanation is that everyone in Europe is eating the same food with weed killer in it.
Wales-on-line has discovered that all Councils in Wales are spraying Glyphosate-based herbicides on weeds. These are poisoning the people and the environment with arsenic, chromium, cobalt, lead and nickel. That is why our nature reserve has been poisoned.
The results of our samples sent to the US Health Research Institute have shown that Roundup is present in all our food, starting with young children.
You can read the opinion of the Director of HRI…that these are shocking high levels and children’s health (and that of adults) will be affected for the rest of their lives.
The UK media is silent about the matter. Are they being paid by the Agrochemical Industry to support the Westminster Government?
The World Health Organization says glyphosate is ‘probably carcinogenic’ – cancer-causing – although there is debate over whether it causes cancer in reality.
The European legal limit for glyphosate in oats is 20,000 ppb, but the EWG says being legal does not necessarily make something safe.
Dr Rosemary Mason worked for decades as an NHS anaesthetist and was assistant editor of the medical journal, Anaesthesia.
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Mark A Palmer
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Cancer causing? Group 1: Carcinogenic to humans
Group 2A: Probably carcinogenic to humans
Group 2B: Possibly carcinogenic to humans
Group 3: Unclassifiable as to carcinogenicity in humans
Group 4: Probably not carcinogenic to humans
What does it take to be in each group that justifies your headline’s claim of glyphosate being cancer causing? A jury award?
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Alan Stewart
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Correct Mark. Also Co2 from fossil fuels will destroy civilization and all white people are racist.
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tom0mason
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“These are poisoning the people and the environment with arsenic, chromium, cobalt, lead and nickel.
There is no evidence what so ever that Glyphosate from whatever source has these materials in them. They could just as easily get into the grains via the usual agricultural (chromium steel blade in harvesters?) and processing systems, or even from the soils where the grains are grown.
On the subject of Glyphosate, there are quite a few alarmist reports about, one was by FoodBabe (dot)com which tried the same ideas of having all measurements written up in confusing ways.
There are many sources of less alarmist articles to choose from, a fact checking site (https://www.factcheck.org/2017/08/glyphosate-cause-cancer/ ) does a reasonable job and puts the measurement into better context.
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Boris Badenov
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Thank you, I was wondering exactly the same thing, they cite that they find something but not how much they’ve found. They’ll ban it for the same BS as DDT.
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Judy
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I agree and millions died of mosquito born Maleria.
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tom0mason
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Dr Rosemary Mason wrote …
“Increasing incidence of cancer in children in Europe and competing risks
Extracts from the paper: “First, cancer incidence in children aged 0–14 years has gradually increased over the 1991– 2010 period.
Second, for all five cancer categories investigated, incidence increases were similar in all four regions.”
Correlation does NOT equal causation!
There have been NO studies that conclusively prove that Glyphosate causes cancer in humans. International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer agency of WHO located in Lyon, France, did classify glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
The agency based its decision on “limited evidence for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate in humans” and “sufficient evidence for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate in experimental animals.” IARC also took into account “strong evidence” that “glyphosate or glyphosate-based formulations” can be “genotoxic,” which means it can damage genes. This damage may then lead to cancer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The European regulatory offices did themselves no good when they issued their initial EFSA findings using the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR). Within it many parts of it contained data from Monsanto, and many them believe this taints the report.
Since then the safety committee has had to issue a number of statements including …
Information from https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/glyphosate
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Judy
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We knew that some UK farmers had been spraying Roundup on cereals pre-harvest since 1980 in order to desiccate (dry) crops, at the suggestion of a scientist from Monsanto.
I think there is nothing wrong with product. The problem is the way the farmers are using it .
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Doug Harrison
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Farmers might use paraquat or diquat as a defoliant but never glyphosate as it is far more expensive and takes much longer to take effect. I will admit that it is possible that the mad EU has banned paraquat and diquat thus forcing farmers on to the greatly feared but harmless glyphosate.
Taking glyphosate out of the world’s agriculture system would ensure the starvation of millions.
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Judy
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Oops, I should have said the way the farmers are misusing Roundup
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Doreen Marian Hostetter
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This is for all of those roundup lovers above my comment. Stop by for a chat soon, I will have a nice glass of ice cold roundup waiting for you. I will even heat it up if you’re not a fan of chilled. The fact of the matter is… I do not want it in my food at all!! I was never given a choice. WHY? One says its the way farmers use it! WHAT farmers? Do you mean CORPORATION Judy? I don’t even need a study to tell me that many people are having stomach problems, all I need to do is try and buy some stomach relief for acid. The slots are empty! Try to get an appointment with a gastro Dr.? Hurry up and wait ten weeks! How do I know? Because I am one of the ones who suffer! I have never been one to eat out, always cooked balanced meals and not a junk food fan. Yet here we are. You grow up eating the same foods your parents and grandparents ate, I did, the difference is they didn’t consume weed killer! I would like to have a choice and can’t have that as well. It is all so secretive and shady, a company that answers to nobody. I grow as much as I can now with no weed killer just tips from my grandfather’s books. Whatever Monsanto has done to me, big pharma has a pill for it! I quit smoking 20 years ago and took up eating roundup! For what its worth, when I eat my own tasty nonpoisonous food, it tastes like food. Keep eating that poison, big pharma is waiting for you.
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Judy
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Well Doreen, I’d love to chat over a drink, but I must caution you. You are not meant to drink Roundup either warm or chilled. Also, the evidence indicates that stress and swallowed up anger can raise stomach and gastric acidity.
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richard
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You probably ingest more chemicals from your toothpaste in one day than cereal in a year.
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Ginny
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When the grand solar minimum takes further hold and the price of food skyrockets, no one will care about what’s in or on their food. Just that they can afford to eat. As we decend further into wilder weather swings and our civil society erodes on the basis of crop failures, people will truly learn what hard times are. We will be fighting for food in the future. I hope our descendants remember the golden age of plenty and learn from our fall.
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tom0mason
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Ginny,
You are very probably closer to the truth than many would like to know.
A rise of 1.5°C in global temperatures is mostly within the sphere of adaptation for most species even if it happens in 50 years — even if humans have to give some a helping hand. It would be easy for humans to adapt to.
A global cooling of 1.5°C would be a catastrophe. It would wipe out many species and millions (if not billions) of people. Apart from just the drop in temperature causing problems for humans, with severe cold, and the subsequent turbulent weather, comes the lack of mobility for most species followed by the lack of food.
Of course according to the UN-IPCC atmospheric CO2 warming will save the day, eh?
Thankfully the UN is filled with the best the world has to offer in terms of moral leadership, efficient bureaucracy, undisputed masters in science advisors and educators, and squeaky clean fiscal probity (sarc). Also the UN has never been proven to be wrong (as it dresses most policy and advice in plausible deniability), just like their atmospheric CO2 warming has never been observed or proven to exist.
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Hans
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I read this article. Then read it again. This must be the least scientific evidence-free fear mongering article. Why did principia scientific decide to publish this? Publishing this and yet claiming to be dedicated to the classic facts based scientific approach of problem solving appears contradictory.
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K. Kaiser
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Glyphosate has been used already for decades, all around the world (i.e. where corn [maize], and other cereals are being grown).
Several thousand studies have confirmed its negligible effects on the environment and/or human health when applied correctly.
Extensive reviews by intl. panels have all confirmed those findings.
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jerry krause
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Hi Hans,
PSI does not only post the articles or opinions with which they, you, or I might agree. They believe in the right to be heard.
In the case of this article PSI has the obligation to post it because what is reported in this news article as been documented by observation and experiments (analysis).
I grew up on a farm, farmed, and am a chemist. Relative to the latter I have experience and therefore have knowledge that too many of our society commonly consider nearly every chemical compound, and even elements, to be harmful. Even the known great benefits of immunizations cannot out weigh their also known, but very rare, negative side effects in a few peoples’ minds.
Given this known environment, Monsanto and the farmers, who sprayed their almost mature wheat and oats, were absolutely naive. There was so little to gain and so much to possibly loose.
While I farmed we did not grow wheat (because there were then no varieties resistant to ‘wheat blight’. But we grew oats, not as a cash crop to be sold, but as an animal feed and, yes, a small portion was possibly sold to General Mills as a human food.
At first we cut the oats, while not fully mature, with a binder which tied the stalks with the kernels into the bundles, piled the bundles together in shocks, to allow the oat kernels to dry. Then, when dry, we hauled the bundles to a stationary threshing machine.
Next, we swathed the oats while not fully mature and allowed it dry in a windrow. Then, when dry, we threshed it with a mobile threshing machine, termed a combine.
Next evidently, to eliminate one step, some farmers began spraying the oats, while not fully mature, to ‘kill’ the plant so that the kernels could dry on the stalk and then be ‘straight’ combined. Where a mobile combine cut off the stalks as a swather did; but then directly feed the stalks with the dry kernels into the combine.
And obviously the dry residue, while slight, of the herbicide residue could never be removed from the kernels while being processed as a human food. This is not precisely correct because most oat kernels have a hull which is removed before being processed as a human food. But no one can pretend that this removes all the residue from the food product.
However, I will put a bright-side spin on this which should not never happened if people would have been rationally reasoning.
For I read: “We knew that some UK farmers had been spraying Roundup on cereals pre-harvest since 1980 in order to desiccate (dry) crops, at the suggestion of a scientist from Monsanto.”
Hans, when you wrote: “This must be the least scientific evidence-free fear mongering article.”, I must now admit the I am not sure what portion of the article you are referring. For it is a fact that the statement: “Increasing incidence of cancer in children in Europe and competing risks
Extracts from the paper: “First, cancer incidence in children aged 0–14 years has gradually increased over the 1991– 2010 period.”, has no quantification.
So, if this practice began in 1980 in the UK, there should be a 38 year record of its possible influences with which to evaluate how common, or rare, the suspected influence of this problem actually might be. For it should seem quite possible to know the volume of cereals sold when and where and the number children having each specific type of cancer during each year of this 38 year period.
The results of this unintentional experiment should be far better than any study conducted with rats.
Have a good day, Jerry
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John O'Sullivan
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Yes Jerry. That is correct. Publishing any article is not necessarily an endorsement of it. Our goal is exposing faux science which is based on subjective fear mongering rather than empirical evidence. The comments above prove there is a lively debate to be had on the Roundup issue.
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jerry krause
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Hi John,
I quickly scanned the comments and did not notice that anyone had drawn attention to the following historical fact.
Bruce Ames himself argued against linear dose-response extrapolation from the high dose used in carcinogenesis tests in animal systems to the lower dose of chemicals normally encountered in human exposure, as the results may be false positives due to mitogenic response caused by the artificially high dose of chemicals used in such tests.[15][16] (Wiki)
Articles 15 and 16 were written in 1990 after the Ames test had been used identify potential cancer causing chemical compounds for nearly 20 years. For Ames. At this time (1990s) I had read that Ames reached this conclusion after beginning to test compounds ‘naturally’ found in human foods that had been possibly eaten since the beginning of humans and found that these ‘natural’ compounds gave positive tests for causing mutations. And I had read that few considered what Ames had drawn to their attentions and most went right on claiming a positive Ames’ test ‘proved’ a compound could cause cancer at any levels of exposure and needed to be banned.
Ames’ 1990s conclusion was based upon empirical evidence so there should no debate about it.
Yes, his conclusion creates uncertainty but life is uncertain. Pierre Curies was killed when he slipped and fell on a Paris street so that the wheel of a horse drawn freight wagon rolled over his head and crushed his scull.
Have a good day, Jerry.
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jerry krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
I forgot to refer to the comment of Boris Badenov about DDT and Judy’s response: “I agree and millions died of mosquito born Maleria.”
But relative to DDT I have not read, what I consider a important empirical fact. The first time DDT was used to kill barn (house) flies it worked. The second year it did not kill these flies. But DDT has been observed to kill mosquitoes year after year after year.
Different life has different responses to some chemicals.
Have a good day, Jerry
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