In a settlement reached this past June, Bayer AG agreed to pay $10 billion over claims its signature herbicide Roundup causes cancer in people, according to a report by Reuters.

The $10 billion settlement will be apportioned to four leading plaintiffs’ law firms, who will in turn distribute the money to nearly 100,000 clients who were stricken with cancer after prolonged use of the toxic weedkiller.

The German company acquired the St. Louis-based agrochemical giant Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion, and inherited liability in thousands of lawsuits filed by people who claim exposure to Roundup and its main ingredient glyphosate was the cause of their cancer.

EWG President Ken Cook made this statement on the settlement:

Today’s settlement is vindication for all those who have fallen ill with cancer as a result of being exposed to this chemical. No amount of money can reverse the damage Bayer-Monsanto has inflicted on these victims and countless others, but because of their and their attorneys’ tireless fight for justice, the company that exposed them is now paying a heavy price for its duplicitous deception.

The most damning revelations in this case uncovered, through the company’s own internal documents, the extent to which Monsanto-Bayer recognized early on the risk of cancer and other health problems posed by glyphosate and its commercial formulations. Monsanto-Bayer aggressively conspired for decades to withhold or lie about the evidence to the public and to regulators, while relentlessly attacking scientists and organizations that sought to tell the truth about the company’s products.

This damning information only became public because plaintiff’s lawyers pried it out of the company in court and made it public. That coverup killed the company’s integrity as systemically as its chemicals kill plants. Monsanto-Bayer’s dissembling for profit at the expense of public health is a permanent stain on its reputation. Nothing in this settlement amends the conclusion that this is a company that simply cannot be trusted.

Glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world, was classified in 2015 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as “probably carcinogenic” to people. In 2017, glyphosate was also listed by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment as a chemical known to the state to cause cancer.

Glyphosate is mostly applied to corn, soybean and wheat crops, but is increasingly sprayed just before harvest on oats, chickpeas and other crops as a drying agent, or desiccant, to speed the harvest. The pre-harvest use is why many oat-based cereals are contaminated with glyphosate.

Three separate rounds of laboratory tests commissioned by EWG in 2018 and 2019 found glyphosate in nearly every sample of popular oat-based cereals and other foods marketed to children. The contaminated brands included cereals and breakfast bars made by General Mills and Quaker.

A new EWG testing report, coming next month, will show glyphosate contamination widespread in hummus and chickpeas.

Besides its use in agriculture, millions of Americans spray Roundup on their yards and gardens – a main source of exposure for those who were sickened and sued Bayer-Monsanto. The product was marketed until last year by Scotts, the same company that sells Miracle-Gro. Four people in California have already won their cases in jury trials, including Dewayne Johnson, a Bay Area school groundskeeper.

“Even as we celebrate and congratulate those who made this day possible, millions of people are being exposed to glyphosate through the food they eat, working as groundskeepers or farmworkers, or gardening at home,” Cook said.

“Bayer-Monsanto must be held accountable beyond today’s settlement. The Food and Drug Administration must immediately eliminate its use as a pre-harvest desiccant, and the Environmental Protection Agency must ban all home uses. That is the only way to assure future generations of Americans do not get sick or die from exposure to this cancer-causing chemical.”

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The conventional hummus product with the highest level of glyphosate – more than 2,000 ppb in Whole Foods Market Original Hummus – was nearly 15 times the benchmark set by a US enviro group.

Independent laboratory tests commissioned by the Environmental Working Group in the United States found glyphosate, the notorious weedkiller linked to cancer, in more than 80 percent of non-organic hummus and chickpeas samples, and detected at far lower levels in several organic versions. Find out what brands are worrisome below. The take home: buy organic most of the time.

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world. It was sold for decades by Monsanto, now Bayer AG, under the brand name Roundup. Bayer AG is a German multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.

This product Roundup was marketed for years by Scotts MiracleGro company in the United States until last year. Until Scotts understood they could no longer be implicated in peddling this poison. But Scotts is how consumers accessed RoundUp for years. Some blame Roundup celiac and stomach diseases as well.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified glyphosate a probable human carcinogen, and the state of California lists it as chemical known to cause cancer.

One third of hummus brands tested exceeded recommended amount of Roundup

One-third of the 27 conventional hummus samples exceeded EWG’s health-based benchmark of 160 parts per billion, or ppb, for daily consumption, based on a 60-gram serving of hummus (about four tablespoons).

The Environmental Protection Agency’s woefully inadequate legal limit for glyphosate in chickpeas, known as a tolerance level, is 5,000 ppb, or more than 30 times EWG’s benchmark.

The conventional hummus product with the highest level of glyphosate – more than 2,000 ppb in Whole Foods Market Original Hummus – was nearly 15 times the EWG benchmark.

Overall, 10 hummus samples exceeded EWG’s benchmark for glyphosate:

Sabra Classic Hummus

Sabra Roasted Pine Nut Hummus

Whole Foods Market Original Hummus

Whole Foods Market organic-label Original Hummus

Cava Traditional Hummus

Harris Teeter Fresh Foods Market Traditional Artisan Hummus

Glyphosate levels in organic samples were much lower

EWG also tested 12 samples of organic hummus and six samples of organic chickpeas. All but two contained detectable concentrations of glyphosate. Although glyphosate levels in organic samples were much lower than those of their conventional counterparts, one dry chickpea sample had the highest glyphosate concentration of all samples tested in the study.

“Beans, peas and lentils are a nutritious, affordable source of protein and an important part of the American diet,” said Olga V. Naidenko, Ph.D., EWG’s vice president for science investigations. “These excellent foods would be much better without glyphosate. Toxic weedkiller should never be allowed to contaminate these products, or any other foods, that millions of American families eat every day.”

The beans and bean-based products such as hummus tested in the study were purchased online or at major food retailers in the Washington, D.C., New York City, and San Francisco metropolitan areas, including Aldi, Costco, Giant, Harris Teeter, Safeway, ShopRite, Target, Trader Joes, Walmart and Whole Foods grocery stores.

Glyphosate was first brought to market in 1974, but its use exploded after 1996, when Monsanto introduced genetically modified “Roundup Ready” crops that were resistant to the herbicide. For consumers, most worrisome is use of the chemical on beans and grains as a drying agent just before harvest. This spraying can lead to high levels of glyphosate in beans, hummus, oat cereals and other foods.

By law, organic farmers are not allowed to spray Roundup or other toxic pesticides to grow and harvest crops. The detections of glyphosate on the organic samples may be due to pesticide drift from conventional crop fields or contamination at processing and packaging facilities.

Only organic

“Organic foods, including organic hummus and chickpeas, remain a better choice for consumers,” said EWG Toxicologist Alexis M. Temkin, Ph.D. “EWG testing of both conventional and organic bean products for glyphosate helps increase the transparency in the marketplace and protect the integrity of the Department of Agriculture’s organic certification.”

Hummus and chickpeas, as well as other beans, offer multiple nutritional benefits, and are an important part of a healthy diet. EWG’s findings show the need for a ban on pre-harvest uses of glyphosate, a much stricter EPA standard, and increased testing by the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration for this cancer-causing chemical in the American diet.

EWG’s research on beans and hummus builds on EWG’s tests of oats and oat-based products for glyphosate, which found the weedkiller in nearly every sample of cereal and breakfast bars tested.

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The deadlock centers on whether the chemical poses a health risk to humans, a question that has divided scientists and politicians across the EU. Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) can’t make up its mind, with one internal unit determining that glyphosate could be “probably carcinogenic to humans” while another declaring human health risks as unlikely.

Glyphosate is the most widely used weedkiller in Europe, commonly used on food crops that have been genetically modified (GM) to resist it. Over 80% of GM crops worldwide are now sprayed with it, and several studies have linked usage to damage to surrounding flora, fauna and the entire food chain. Increased use of pesticides have been found to increase nervous systems diseases such as MLS.

According to a report in the Guardian, glyphosate residues are often found in breads, beers and human bodies. A recent German survey found that more than 99% of people have traces of the compound in their urine, 75% of them at levels five times the safe limit for water or above.

In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) convened a meeting to evaluate the potential carcinogenic risks to humans from several pesticides, including glyphosate. After that meeting the IARC panel classified glyphosate in Category 2A – probable carcinogens – a group that also includes red meat.

The IARC is part of the WHO. It has no regulatory role and its decisions do not automatically lead to bans or restrictions, but campaigners use their findings to put pressure on regulators. The IARC reached its decision based on the view of 17 experts from 11 countries, who met in France to assess the carcinogenicity of 5 organophosphate pesticides.

Last November, EFSA – the European Food Safety Authority – released a report stating that the chemical was an unlikely carcinogen, which kicked off the efforts for re-licensure. EFSA formed in 2002 following a series of food crises in the late 1990s to be a source of scientific guidance on food chain risks. Funded by the EU, it operates independently of EU legislative and executive institutions and EU Member States. Its November findings sparked accusations that the agency was unduly influenced by glyphosate proponents.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published its official classification of glyphosate as “Not Likely to be Carcinogenic to Humans.” The EPA is the third regulator to publish this conclusion since the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced an opposite finding in March 2015.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) determined in November 2015 that glyphosate is “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans.” That same year, the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Authority (PMRA) concluded the same. These findings are refuted by environmentalists who assert that chemical industry giants underwrite scientific research, influencing report content.

Greenpeace EU food policy director Franziska Achterberg said on the Greenpeace website, “The agencies contradicting the [IARC] WHO cancer warning seem to either rely on officials who prefer not to be named, or lack a watertight policy to protect their impartiality. Any decision affecting millions of people should be based on fully transparent and independent science that isn’t tied to corporate interests. It would be irresponsible to ignore the warnings on glyphosate and to re-licence this pesticide without any restrictions to protect the public and the environment.”

Philip Miller, Monsanto’s vice president of global regulatory affairs, condemned the EU’s failure to reapprove glyphosate as “scientifically unwarranted”. He blogged, “This delay undermines the credibility of the European regulatory process and threatens to put European farmers and the European agriculture and chemical industries at a competitive disadvantage.”

Monsanto brought glyphosate to market under the trade name Roundup in the 1970s. With estimated annual sales of USD $6 BIL, the herbicide accounts for one third of Monsanto’s total earnings.

Anti-glyphosate campaigners welcomed the EU decision as a sign that public concerns were being heard. Over 1.4 million people signed an online petition calling for the herbicide to be banned. Pascal Vollenweider, the campaign director of Avaaz, which organized the poll, told the Guardian, “Governments are beginning to understand that their citizens refuse to be treated as lab rats. Monsanto and other chemical giants are used to getting their way, but public pressure has forced politicians to stand firm behind the precautionary principle.”

The EU Commission decision could be appealed, or the committee could override the heads of the EU states and independently reauthorize glyphosate. EU president Jean-Claude Juncker has said that he opposes doing this and officials doubt it will happen, although the procedure has been used to approve GM crops for import.

The IARC’s assessment of the 5 pesticides is published in the latest issue of The Lancet Oncology. You can access the full document – link here – register for free access.

Image from Rodale’s Organic Life

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