Recently, a jury in San Francisco awarded a school district groundskeeper nearly $290 million in damages because they found that Monsanto’s Roundup and Ranger Pro herbicides likely caused the groundskeeper’s deadly cancer. The jury found that the company failed to warn consumers about the risks posed by these products.
Now, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) reports that glyphosate, the weed-killing chemical used in these products, has been found in large doses in breakfast products that use conventionally grown oats — cereal, oatmeal, granola and snack bars. According to EWG, three in four of the products exceeded what they deem is safe for children to consume. The products with the highest concentrations included Quaker Old Fashioned Oats, Cheerios Toasted Whole Grain Cereal and Back to Nature Classic Granola. Organic oat products also were tested and showed lower concentrations of the weed killer.
While Monsanto claims that glyphosate has been “used safely for decades,” the World Health Organization deems the chemical a “probable carcinogen” and California authorities categorize it as “known to the state to cause cancer.” Internal emails from the Food and Drug Administration indicated that scientists have found glyphosate on a wide range of food items and found it “difficult to identify a food without the chemical on it.”
