German Beer Industry in Shock over Glyphosate Contamination

Posted on Feb 25 2016 - 3:54pm by Sustainable Pulse

The Munich Environmental Institute (Umweltinstitut München) has released shocking results Thursday of laboratory testing it has completed on 14 of the most sold beers in Germany. The probable carcinogen and World’s most used herbicide – glyphosate – was found in all of the 14 beers tested.

Source: www.br.de

German Beer – Glyphosate Testing Results:

Hasseröder Pils – 29,74 μg/l (ppb)
Jever Pils – 23,04 μg/l
Warsteiner Pils – 20,73 μg/l
Radeberger Pilsner – 12,01 μg/l
Veltins Pilsener – 5,78 μg/l
Oettinger Pils – 3,86 μg/l
König Pilsener – 3,35 μg/l
Krombacher Pils – 2,99 μg/l
Erdinger Weißbier – 2,92 μg/l
Paulaner Weißbier – 0,66 μg/l
Bitburger Pils – 0,55 μg/l
Beck’s Pils – 0,50 μg/l
Franziskaner Weißbier – 0,49 μg/l
Augustiner Helles – 0,46 μg/l

In 2015 the World Health Organization’s cancer agency IARC declared that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen.

The German Brewers’ Association, reacted by calling the study by the Munich Environmental Institute “not credible”, but admitted that low residues of the probable human carcinogen glyphosate could not be prevented, because “the herbicide is now found virtually everywhere after decades of use in agriculture”.

Sustainable Pulse Director Henry Rowlands stated Thursday; “Stone-Age industry funded science suggested that the higher the dose of a chemical the more dangerous it was, however modern independent science has discovered that many toxic chemicals have as much or more of an influence on our health at low doses– these chemicals are known as hormone hackers (endocrine disruptors).

“A study from March 2015 stated that the health costs to the European Union of hormone hacking chemicals is over $ 150 Billion per year! The study stated that lower IQ, adult obesity and 5% or more of autism cases are all linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors.

“Glyphosate is likely to be one of these hormone hacking chemicals according to independent science. Find more information on this here.”

For more information on glyphosate please find here:

1o Things You Need to Know about Glyphosate

5 Things You Need to Know about Glyphosate Testing

Glyphosate in Numbers

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18 Comments so far. Feel free to join this conversation.

  1. Cornel February 27, 2016 at 12:17 - Reply

    as long as the german pesticides companies are shareholders for the company that collect and recycle the pesticides packages, do not be surprised to find more pesticides residues in other recycled packages: angry4change.com/2015/04/01/who-is-playing-snow-white-in-pesticides-waste-package-industry/

  2. Abe February 29, 2016 at 18:25 - Reply

    So much for the Purity Act!

    • M G Dineley March 3, 2016 at 19:16 - Reply

      Indeed, for as far as I know there is no GMO Barley, so this would imply adulteration with GMO wheat or GMO corn. I have suspected that British beers are adulterated with “high fructose wheat syrup” from the list of contents on bottles. This would seem to support my suspicions

      • NJ April 26, 2016 at 22:14 - Reply

        Or the barley could have been sprayed with round up before harvest, a practice becoming more prevalent with other crops, to cause quick, even drying of grains.

  3. First Officer March 2, 2016 at 14:41 - Reply

    They publish no details on testing methodology, no calibration curve, no LOQ’s (Limit of Quantification), just that they used the ELISA method. For all we know, they only measured the LOQ’s in the respective beers.

    That said, even if the above are accurate, they are so low as to be meaningless, in parts per billion to trillion, especially since beer is already awash with a Class 1 carcinogen, ethanol, in parts per hundred.

    • Spherical Box August 23, 2017 at 06:42 - Reply

      Troll! How much did they pay you to post that? EtOH is not a carcinogen! The longest-lived people on earth drink it frequently, and have very low rates of cancer. That toll technique is called muddying the water. Do you read German? Did you read the source article, and track it down to its original study?

  4. Schadenfrau March 3, 2016 at 06:49 - Reply

    www.commondreams.org/news/2016/02/25/eu-moves-reapprove-monsantos-toxic-glyphosate

    Here come’s Roundup–AGAIN… EU moves to reapprove Monsanto toxic glyphosate….so it will be in everything including the beer

  5. Brian March 3, 2016 at 08:16 - Reply

    Homeopathic medicine shows us that incredibly low doses have impact on the body. To argue that glyphosate in low doses has no impact or is not accumulative is absurd.

  6. Colin March 3, 2016 at 19:46 - Reply

    The greater overall point to be emphasized is that Big Ag development of GE/GMO designed to withstand glyphosate has indisputably lead to ever increasingly massive applications of glyphosate. There is no scientific evidence that GE/GMO agriculture is even necessary, no proof that it produces greater yields, it doesn’t, but plenty of evidence that it does produce the greatest amounts of herbicides and pesticides ever put out into our environment. Meanwhile, there is unending scientific evidence that sustainable agriculture/agroecology produces nutritionally superior food, replenishes soil health and its oft-overlooked immense capacity to sequester carbon and reproduce agricultural yields without chemical fertilizers, and its socioeconomic context of providing more and better paying jobs. Thus, the argument of whether or not this infinitesimal amount of glyphosate is more or less harmful, while certainly valid, does miss the overall context that its use isn’t necessary at all. More poisons bad. Less poisons good. Seems pretty clear to me. STOP POISONING PEOPLE AND ENVIRONMENT FOR MASSIVE CORPORATE PROFIT ALREADY. Thanks.

  7. Suzanne March 4, 2016 at 11:19 - Reply

    Glyphosate contaminates our food through more than GMO crops. It is sprayed on wheat, barley and sugar cane, right before harvest to increase the yield and desiccate (dry) the plants to harvest them.

  8. M G Dineley March 8, 2016 at 14:02 - Reply

    Apparently it is now common practice to dessicate grains with glyphosate before harvesting! This of course affects germination, so it is not done to malting or seeding crops. This still leaves syrups as the only route by which glyphosate can get into German beer, and this breaks the purity laws.

  9. Mairead March 10, 2016 at 15:18 - Reply

    10 Pilsner, 3 Weißbier, and a helles. No lagers. Significant?

    • Brad Railsback April 25, 2018 at 03:50 - Reply

      All the beers listed are lagers except the wheat beers. Lagers are beers that are fermented at lower temps.

  10. Mairead March 13, 2016 at 16:41 - Reply

    From the abstract at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19539684 (edited to add linebreaks for clarity):

    these herbicides are spread on most eaten transgenic plants, modified to tolerate high levels of these compounds in their cells. Up to 400 ppm of their residues are accepted in some feed.

    We exposed human liver HepG2 cells, a well-known model to study xenobiotic toxicity, to four different formulations and to glyphosate, which is usually tested alone in chronic in vivo regulatory studies.

    We measured cytotoxicity with three assays (Alamar Blue, MTT, ToxiLight), plus genotoxicity (comet assay), anti-estrogenic (on ERalpha, ERbeta) and anti-androgenic effects (on AR) using gene reporter tests.

    We also checked androgen to estrogen conversion by aromatase activity and mRNA.

    All parameters were disrupted at sub-agricultural doses with all formulations within 24h. These effects were more dependent on the formulation than on the glyphosate concentration.

    First, we observed a human cell endocrine disruption from 0.5 ppm on the androgen receptor in MDA-MB453-kb2 cells for the most active formulation (R400),

    then from 2 ppm the transcriptional activities on both estrogen receptors were also inhibited on HepG2.

    Aromatase transcription and activity were disrupted from 10 ppm.

    Cytotoxic effects started at 10 ppm with Alamar Blue assay (the most sensitive),

    and DNA damages at 5 ppm.

    A real cell impact of glyphosate-based herbicides residues in food, feed or in the environment has thus to be considered, and their classifications as carcinogens/mutagens/reprotoxics is discussed.

  11. William Collings April 23, 2016 at 11:49 - Reply

    Beer producers could always insist on organically grown cereals etc. I will keep on drinking beer as it is though.

  12. MACR May 6, 2016 at 13:36 - Reply

    I knew they sprayed wheat in the US with glyphosate, but do they spray barley for the German beers? There are 90+ searchable studies by tags here showing how bad glyphosate is:goo.gl/iVrB3g

  13. Colorado May 26, 2016 at 18:56 - Reply

    Would like to know if New Belgium Brewing Company in Colorado uses Glyphosate.

  14. Alexander Robinson July 2, 2016 at 07:28 - Reply

    Well people are ignorant. Chemicals do not break down naturally like natural alcohol would in your body. A endocrine disruption is longer lasting. This allows for a build up of disrupting synthetics. Common sense says a little here a little there is a lot later on. All to pad their pockets no they are not passing savings on to you people. But now I’m sure their buddies down at the country club that run big pharmaceutical companies don’t mind all while the dumbed down American says it’s OK. And don’t expect government to be honest they have to fabricate jobs already that’s easier with dead people cause they can’t work. And don’t expect to see scientists risking their jobs to let you know. It would be a conflict of interest government biotechnology pays scientists not regular people so think about it.

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