Emails reveal FDA found ‘illegal’ levels of glyphosate in common US foods

Emails obtained through a freedom of information (FoI) request by the Guardian have revealed that scientists at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) discovered ‘illegal’ traces of the herbicide glyphosate in samples of several common food products.

The FDA has been investigating food samples for glyphosate residue for the last two years but has not released any official findings. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in many common herbicide products, and the emails suggest that most food samples contained traces of the chemical, which is known to be carcinogenic.

FDA chemist Richard Thompson wrote in an email to colleagues: “I have brought wheat crackers, granola cereal and corn meal from home and there’s a fair amount in all of them.”

It appears that the only food product he found not to include glyphosate was a sample of broccoli.

This was just one email in a string of communications that detailed the FDAs efforts to trace glyphosate residue in US foods.

University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine professor Tracey Woodruff said: “People care about what contaminants are in their food. If there is scientific information about these residues in the food, the FDA should release it. It helps people make informed decisions. Taxpayers paid for the government to do this work, they should get to see the information.”

In a separate study, FDA chemist Narong Chamkasem found high levels of glyphosate in corn, detected at 6.5 parts per million (ppm), higher than the legal limit of 5ppm. This is normally reported to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) but an FDA supervisor wrote to the EPA saying the corn could not be considered as an ‘official sample’.

In response, an FDA spokesperson said that the agency has not found any illegal levels in corn, soy, milk, or eggs, but did not address unofficial findings mentioned in the emails.

Other documents showed that Chamkasem found glyphosate in several honey samples and oatmeal products, but it was revealed that the FDA suspended testing after the findings and reassigned Chamkasem’s lab to ‘other programmes’. The FDA said those tests were not part of its official assignment.

US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) director and toxicologist Linda Birnbaum said: “Even with low levels of pesticides, we’re exposed to so many and we don’t count the fact that we have cumulative exposures.”

Consumer groups and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticised the FDA, which is responsible for conducting annual tests on food samples for illegally high levels of pesticide residue. Glyphosate has been used in food production for over 40 years, so the fact that the FDA only recently began testing for it is a concern for these organisations.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) only classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015.