Breakfast with Monsanto: Glyphosate Found in Nearly Half of Breakfast Foods, Study Finds
Food safety tests released by the Alliance for Natural Health-USA show the presence of glyphosate, the most widely used industrial weed killer best known as Monsanto’s Roundup, in 46 percent of popular breakfast foods tested.
24 breakfast food samples were tested by an independent laboratory, and 11 tested positive for the chemical, including oatmeal, bagels, eggs, potatoes, and non-GMO soy coffee creamer. Surprisingly, some of the highest levels of the chemical were found in organic products, such as organic, cage-free eggs and organic bread.
“We decided to do this testing to see just how ubiquitous this toxin has become in our environment. We expected that trace amounts would show up in foods containing large amounts of corn and soy,” Gretchen DuBeau, executive and legal director of ANH-USA, said in a statement. “However, we were unprepared for just how invasive this poison has been to our entire food chain.”
While glyphosate is often sprayed on corn and soy genetically designed to withstand the chemical, its presence in eggs and dairy points to the possibility that glyphosate is building up in the tissue of animals who eat the sprayed crops.
“The fact that it is showing up in foods like eggs and coffee creamer, which don’t directly contact the herbicide, shows that it’s being passed on by animals who ingest it in their feed,” says DuBeau. “This is contrary to everything that regulators and industry scientists have been telling the public.”
This may also point to the same problem for humans who consume it in their food.
This new data will likely increase the urgency with which the FDA begins testing for the industrial weed killer in foods, an initiative announced in February.
While most of the products’ glyphosate contents were lower than what U.S. regulators consider allowable, what is considered safe in the U.S. is higher than what is allowed in other nations, particularly the EU, Carey Gillam, research director for U.S. Right to Know reports.
Last year, glyphosate was added the International Agency for Research on Cancer list of foods that are “probably carcinogenic to humans” by the World Health Organization.
Related on Organic Authority
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From BPA to Glyphosate: What Are the Risks of Endocrine Disruptors?
Testing Foods for Glyphosate Toxicity Is About to Be a Thing
Breakfast food image via Shutterstock
