The widely-used herbicide glyphosate, now classified as probably carcinogenic to humans by the World Health Organization (WHO), has been found in a number of items, including honey, breast milk and infant formula, according to media reports.
“When chemical agriculture blankets millions of acres of genetically engineered corn and soybean fields with hundreds of millions of pounds of glyphosate, it’s not a surprise babies are now consuming Monsanto’s signature chemical with breast milk and infant formula,” said Ken Cook, president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group. “The primary reason millions of Americans, including infants, are now exposed to this probable carcinogen is due to the explosion of genetically engineered crops that now dominate farmland across the U.S.”
“Through their purchasing power, the American consumer is fueling this surge in GMO crops and the glyphosate exposure that comes with it,” added Cook. “It’s time the federal FDA require foods made with GMOs be labeled as such so the public can decide for themselves if they want to send their dollars to the biotech industry that cares more about profits than public health.”
According to a report by Carey Gillam of Reuters, laboratories are receiving a surge in requests to have everything from food to urine samples tested for glyphosate in the aftermath of last month’s announcement by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer that the weed-killer is “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
“The requests keep coming in,” Ben Winkler, laboratory manager at Microbe Inotech Laboratories in St. Louis, told Gillam. Winkler said his lab is getting several testing requests a week since the announcement by the WHO, up from three to four requests a year for glyphosate, Gillam Reported.