Food manufacturers don’t want glyphosate in their products either!

Food manufacturers don’t want glyphosate in their products either!  First off, my apologies to Ben & Jerry’s for this old post.

Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc., Happy Family Organics, MegaFood, MOM’s Organic Market, National Co+op Grocers, Nature’s Path Foods Inc., One Degree Organic Foods USA, Inc., and Stonyfield Farm, Inc. have joined with The Environmental Working Group (EWG) to write a petition to the EPA.  I don’t really know who most of these organizations are, but Ben & Jerry’s gives them a little brand name recognition.

The petition calls TO EXPLICITLY PROHIBIT THE USE OF GLYPHOSATE AS A PREHARVEST DESICCANT in America!  Wow! Bravo!  Maybe just for Oats, maybe just in the USA, but its something.

The 17 page petition is a great article on how the preharvest application of glyphosate on food crops results in a glyphosate residue in our food which presents risks both known and unknown.  A mostly cited article (to keep the lawyers happy I am sure!)!

A couple of nuggets from the petition text that made it past the lawyers:

• Presently, the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture do not monitor glyphosate residues on most food crops. Yet, by all indications, Americans’ exposures have increased dramatically.
• Between 2014 and 2016, at least 70 percent of American adults surveyed had detectable traces of glyphosate in their bodies, compared to 12 percent of American adults between 1993 and 1996. Between 2014 and 2016, at least 70 percent of American adults surveyed had detectable traces of glyphosate in their bodies, compared to 12 percent of American adults between 1993 and 1996.
  However, the current tolerance level for food residue in oats is less protective than EWG believes necessary to protect children’s health based on independent studies on dietary exposure, international findings of cancer risk, and possible reproductive toxicity.
• There have been at least 14 multiyear studies of glyphosate’s ability to cause cancer in laboratory animals, most of which were conducted by the pesticide industry. More than half of the studies the EPA reviewed detected elevated rates of cancer in study animals.
• While all levels were within legal tolerance limits established by the Agency, the omission of cancer risk in the EPA’s assessment of glyphosate undermines the credibility of current tolerance limits. EWG urges the agency to reduce the current tolerance limit of oats from 30 ppm back to the 1993 level of 0.1 ppm.

And it looks like you can sign the petition here.

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