WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration failed to include oats and wheat products in its glyphosate testing program, leaving Americans largely in the dark about their exposure through food to the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer.
After sitting on the data from its glyphosate tests for more than a year, the FDA finally made the results public. Tests found glyphosate on 63 percent of corn samples and 67 percent of soybean samples. But FDA did not test any oats and wheat, the two main crops where glyphosate is used as a pre-harvest drying agent, resulting in glyphosate contamination of foods such as Cheerios and some brands of granola.
“FDA’s failure to test for glyphosate in the foods where it’s most likely to be found is inexcusable,” said Olga Naidenko, Ph.D, Senior Science Advisor for Children’s Environmental Health at EWG. Instead, she said, the FDA tested milk and eggs for glyphosate, even though studies by independent researchers and Monsanto’s own analysis show that glyphosate does not transfer into these products.
In August, tests commissioned by EWG found glyphosate residues on popular oat cereals, oatmeal, granola and snack bars. Almost three-fourths of the 45 samples tested had glyphosate levels higher than what EWG scientists consider protective of children’s health with an adequate margin of safety.
Glyphosate has been linked to cancer by California state scientists and the World Health Organization.
“We are not saying that parents should stop feeding their children healthy oat-based foods,” said Naidenko. “But parents should not have to worry that these foods have residues of an herbicide linked to cancer.”
