Report : Weed Killer Chemical Glyphosate traces found in Beer and Wine

Glyphosate: It’s not just for breakfast anymore.

Though much has been made of the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer being found in breakfast cereals, trace amounts have now shown up in beer and wine, according to a new report from the U.S. Public Research Group (USPIRG) Education Fund.

Weedkiller found in dozens of popular oat-based breakfast foods »

USPIRG tested five wines, 14 beers and a
hard cider, the group said in a statement. This included the wines Beringer, Barefoot and Sutter Home, and beer brands Budweiser, Coors, Miller Lite, Sam Adams, Samuel Smith Organic and New Belgium. At least trace amounts – and much more, in some cases - of the known carcinogen (according to the World Health Organization in 2015) turned up in nearly all of them.

“When you’re having a beer or a glass of wine, the last thing you want to think about is that it includes a potentially dangerous pesticide,” said U.S. PIRG Education Fund’s Kara Cook-Schultz, who authored the study, in a statement. “No matter the efforts of brewers and vintners, we found that it is incredibly difficult to avoid the troubling reality that consumers will likely drink glyphosate at every happy hour and backyard barbeque around the country.”

This included three of four organic beverages tested, USPIRG said, showing how ubiquitous the substance is.

“The amount of glyphosate discovered in the samples ranged as high as 51 parts per billion (ppb) in Sutter Home wine and more than 25 ppb in non-organic beers from Budweiser, Coors, Corona, Miller and Tsingtao,” USPIRG said in its statement summarizing the results. “The organic drinks were found to have totals as high as 5.2 ppb. While these numbers are below the EPA’s risk tolerances for beverages, at least one previous scientific study found that as little as one part per trillion of glyphosate can stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells and disrupt the endocrine system.”

The study came out on the same day that arguments started in a federal court case being heard in California about whether glyphosate as used in the Monsanto herbicide and pesticide Roundup caused a man’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The case of Edwin Hardeman of California is one of more than 760 that are consolidated in the same federal court in San Francisco, according to Reuters. There are 9,300 cases in the U.S. against Bayer, which owns Monsanto, Reuters said.

Alcohol industry organizations pointed to the fact that the levels found are far below what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined to be hazardous.

“Our members work with farmers who go to great lengths to raise their crops sustainably and safely,” the Beer Institute, a national trade organization, told USA Today. “The results of the most recent federal testing showed farmers’ use of glyphosate falls well below federal limits.”

Given that, the trade group the Wine Institute pointed out, it would take an enormous amount of vino for a person to breach even the most stringent of standards, those of California.

“An adult would have to drink more than 140 glasses of wine a day containing the highest glyphosate level measured just to reach the level that California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has identified as ‘No Significant Risk Level,’ ” a spokesperson for the Wine Institute told USA Today.

“Assuming the greatest value reported, 51.4 ppb, is correct, a 125-pound adult would have to consume 308 gallons of wine per day, every day for life to reach the US Environmental Protection Agency's glyphosate exposure limit for humans,” a Monsanto spokesperson told CBS News.

 “To put 308 gallons into context, that would be more than a bottle of wine every minute, for life, without sleeping.”