The nonprofit activist group Moms Across America recently tested 20 bottles of popular wines for glyphosate, using the state of the art testing lab HRI Laboratories in Iowa.
The highest and lowest results?
49.24 ppb for Gallo Pink Moscato
0.38 ppb for Bonterra Sauvignon Blanc
Take your pick.
WINE INSTITUTE RESPONSE: GLYPHOSATE IS SAFE
Question: why did the Wine Institute buy the search terms for a search of "Moms Across America glyphosate" and publish this page?
WINE INSTITUTE MISREPRESENTING LATEST SCIENCE
Why is the industry association representing California's biggest cash crop (by revenue) misrepresenting science? This is not good PR for the industry.
• Glyphosate is legally classified as a carcinogen in the state of California.
• The World Health Organization's IARC - a blue ribbon panel of non partisan scientists (who are not regulators) - found glyphosate to be a probable carcinogen in 2015. And these scientists included some of the most prominent, former senior U.S. health officials.
• Almost all of the entities who have approved glyphosate (US EPA, EFSA, etc.) are regulators, many of whom have been shown to have been lobbied by Monsanto. (Regulators are very different from scientific panels, as any scientist will tell you.)
• More than 6,000 individual plaintiffs (aided by top product liability law firms) are suing Monsanto alleging that Roundup caused them to get non Hodgkin lymphoma.
• Increasingly medical studies are showing the harm of glyphosate at very low levels (1 ppb); here's one recent example.
BEN AND JERRY'S - A MODEL FOR CHANGE
When it was found - through testing - that Ben and Jerry's ice cream had glyphosate, Ben and Jerry's took immediate steps to try to change the way it sourced ingredients.
How long will it take the Wine Institute to see there is a problem and take action based on the latest peer reviewed science?
VINTNERS LAG
The problem in the wine industry is that they are not taking this issue seriously enough. A growing number of consumers do.
Moms Across America, just one of the groups bringing this to the attention of American consumers, has more than 1.5 million Facebook page views each month. And there are many groups with a lot of social media power broadcasting similar messages.
Companies - including vintners - that want to position themselves for growth need to start paying more attention and planning to launch glyphosate free products.
Siding with Monsanto and its dangerous herbicide is not a forward thinking path.
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