Bob’s Red Mill is facing a federal class action, filed in San Francisco Friday, after the world’s most used weedkiller, glyphosate, was discovered in both its organic and non-organic oats.
Citing a recent report by the Environmental Working Group finding traces of the ‘known carcinogen’ glyphosate in Cheerios, Quaker Oats and other oat-based breakfast foods, plaintiffs Tamara Frankel and Natasha Paracha said Friday that Bob’s Red Mill knew its oat products contain or likely contain the chemical, but didn’t disclose it on the label.
Instead, they say, the Oregon-based company labeled the products with phrases such as “gluten free,” “wheat free” and “purity tested,” leading consumers to believe them to be healthy.
“Consumers have a reasonable expectation that material product information, such as the presence of a probable carcinogen like glyphosate, will be provided by a product manufacturer, especially when the manufacturer affirmatively identifies the health-related attributes of its products such as “Gluten Free”, “Whole Grain”, and “Friend of the Heart,” the complaint states, adding that the labeling amounts to “misleading half-truths.”
Frankel and Paracha say Bob’s Red Mill had a duty to disclose the presence of glyphosate in its oats and that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen, because consumers don’t have easy access to the information. They want a court order blocking the company from continuing to advertise the products as healthy.
They seek to certify classes of consumers in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Washington. In the alternative, they seek to certify a California-only class.
Patricia Syverson with Bonnett, Fairbourn, Friedman & Balint in San Diego represents Frankel and Paracha.
In late August, it was also announced that General Mills is facing a potentially damaging class action lawsuit after a Florida woman accused it of engaging in deceptive business practices, by not alerting the public that their Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios cereals contain glyphosate.
A 2016 testing project on glyphosate residues in popular American foods by Sustainable Pulse’s partner The Detox Project and Food Democracy Now! is one of the main pieces of evidence being used in the case, according to the court documents, after it found levels of glyphosate in both Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios as well as many other products.
This wave of class actions against food companies has caused many food brands to start seeking The Detox Project’s Glyphosate Free certification, according to their Director, Henry Rowlands; “The Detox Project has received a massive rise in enquiries from food brands regarding Glyphosate Residue Free certification, ranging from baby food to honey to supplement brands. So far we have 15 brands from around the world fully certified but over 50 brands have been in touch during the last week.”
The lawsuits against food brands also follow the landmark cancer trial verdict in San Francisco very closely, in which Monsanto was ordered by a jury to pay over USD $289 Million in total damages to the former school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, a California father who has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which was caused by Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup.
(30 votes, average: 3.90 out of 5)
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Dang, I just bought some “Organic” Bob’s Red Mill Oatmeal today from Whole Foods, looks like I gotta take a trip back to the store to return it. Dang Glyphosate, that cancer-causing death juice is in EVERYTHING—-See???? See how insidious Monsanto is? Damn that company to hell.
Good luck finding any grain that is glyphosate free, it is in everything! If not used during the growing process, it is used at the harvest. Unless you grow and process it yourself, never trust that it is free of anything.
I totally trusted that company…bad me
In May 2015 I saw the video by Dr Thierry Vrain which he made in Oct 2014. This researcher, retired, was spilling the beans about USDA allowing the drying of crops with glyphosate in 2005. The farmers had been doing it on their own since 1992 (1980 in Scotland). I immediately called Bobs where they do answer the phone and asked: “Do you source clean oats (oats kept separate from wheat in growing and processing) sprayed with roundup? Yes we do, but we will not after this summer”. Many years ago my sister had a conversation with Bob himself and he told her he did not see any problem with GMO foods. This company needs to fail now and I feel sorry for his employees who were duped and then given this deceptive company.
This is a big disappointment. I have Red Mill products all over my pantry. Now we can’t even trust that products labeled Organic are free of glyphosate. Thank God for consumer advocate agencies who are testing products and letting us know their findings. Clearly, the FDA doesn’t give a damn.
How do I get in on this? We have been buying and eating 1-2 bags of the organic oatmeal for over two years. We eat this every morning and feed it to our almost two year old every day, sometimes all day. This is heartbreaking for people who trust certain brands…
Please add North Carolina.. This is my main source for products for my very sick child. This is so disgusting and probably part of his health not improving..
Bob Should Be Ashamed of Himself!!!!
I just went raw. Vegan Raw, only fruits, veggies, nuts, sprouts, seeds, no grains at all. I’m all the better for it. Its like glue, sticks to the gut walls. Having clear plumbing has superb advantages.
naturalnews.com does ISO certified lab testing. You might check there for glyphosate testing that’s has been done on foods.
Do we have any recourse? I have 2 bags of organic BRM oats. I make granola with 4 cups at a time. This is just wrong!
Is anyone aware if this recent deceit also applies to their baking soda? I just purchased a pouch two days ago (already in my possession) for my afflicted body.Intended to use the baking soda for my various health protocols. Now, I’m apprehensive in using the item for my maladies.
Now matter how thorough I am in this century, there’s that one item that slips past my discernment. I nearly can’t keep up with the onslaught of deceit.
Please, if anyone can shed truthful light on this, I would be in your debt.
Oh man. I’ve been eating his oatmeal because it’s the only gluten free steel cut I can find. Shame on him!! I love my morning oatmeal to
These days glyphosate is falling down on us in the rain and snow, making it almost impossible to grow anything truly organic.
A farmer could have a genuine bio-dynamic farm but will still have glyphosate in his crop. How can we blame him? Should we sue him, even though he’s done everything perfectly by-the-book?
From what I read, in 2016 if I remember correctly, if we don’t stop using glyphosate in the entire world we’ll reach a tipping-point in around 2030, causing a collapse in the entire world’s environmental system, killing everything: plants, insects, birds, and yes, even humans.
www.dw.com/en/glyphosate-will-destroy-the-whole-ecosystem/a-37968836
Glyphosate’s in organic food is the tip of the ice burg. If your sick and don’t know why, it could be Lyme disease. Please check out Truthcures on Facebook for covered up facts due to a Lyme vaccine to be released soon, the last one released in 1992 “Lymrix” had OspA in it, the same is in Round Up, it and gave folks Lyme disease. All because of GREED! Don’t trust the CDC, they are one of the culprits, the others you can see on Truthcures and other FB pages.
We need a bloody miracle!!
Bob’s Redmiil’s intention was to give us a pure alternative. I think we should wait to know if actually happened before we throw them under the bus. I sure trust them over General Mills.
What about Canadian customers? I thought the steel cut oats were healthy. Need a total ban on this chemical. We should be suing Monsanto and the governments. No wonder cancer is rampant.
I doubt Bobs is to blame for buying organic and non organic oats from his suppliers that have been tainted with roundup or glyphosate. That shit is everywhere. We need to be going after Monsanto and their parent corporation for putting this stuff on the market. Bobs Red Mill should be suing Monsanto as well.
It’s in all commercial food. Yet this good company that pays well and treats their employees like human beings is being sued by scumbag class action lawyers who do this only to enrich themselves. Sue Monsanto NOT Bob’s.
I’ll keep buying Bob’s — I’m NOT going to contribute to the downfall of a good company.
I pay premium prices for BRM organic oats because I have several health issues all autoimmune…it’s criminal to do this to consumers.
Please add Kentucky to your list of states to include in the class action suit. I feel so violated, like any food I eat, any medicines I take are apt to worsten my conditions or hasten my death. Evil abounds in this world for the love of money is the root.
Glyphosate is in the water used for agricultural irrigation throughout the US. This is going to be a major difficulty in the production of all organic food.
Here’s the EWG Report on Breakfast Foods with Glyphosate.
www.ewg.org/childrenshealth/glyphosateincereal/
Bob’s was at least 2nd lowest with 20 PPM among the Organic Oats. 365 Organic (Whole Foods brand?) had none. I’m rinsing my Bob’s Oats before cooking them in hopes that will get rid of some of the toxin.
I have cancer and many other health problems I live in South carolina. I buy this brand often. Add me in your lawsuit.
This is just beyond belief! Is there any place on this earth that in untainted by corporate greed? As evil as Monsanto is by trademarking seeds and suing farmers if their seeds accidentally slip over their organic crops, these Monsanto bastards are so greedy in trying to form a monopoly, they will turn around and sue the organic farmer. We need to put Monsanto out of business. I’ve bought BRM products exclusively for the past 20 years or so. This is outrageous. Definitely add me to this lawsuit. And add me to a class action against Monsanto, too! Damn this sucks big time. .
David – this is how baking soda is made. It has nothing to do with plant products that would be sprayed with RoundUp. I suppose there could be a minuscule chance of glyphosate in the water used in the manufacturing process, but I think that is highly, highly unlikely. So you can relax about Bob’s Red Mill baking soda.
“Commercial quantities of baking soda are also produced by a similar method: soda ash, mined in the form of the ore trona, is dissolved in water and treated with carbon dioxide. Sodium bicarbonate precipitates as a solid from this method:
Na2CO3 + CO2 + H2O → 2 N”
Im not sure why but im shocked by this. This brands been around so long and i purchase so many of there products. Im glad to know of this news and will look into another brand recommended by the * cornucopia org (website) and the * Environment working group aka; EWG….. WOW i think we all need to look into growing our own foods bc we cant trust no one now a days:(
The frivolous lawsuit machine is fueled by greed.
I have to eat it because im celiac and your trying to kill us
I concur with susan anyone in today’s time thinks there is an organic anything due to a green sticker by the usda which has been hijacking the food supply since 1910 is truly deluded with bad programming
Tony
Folks, I strongly believe that Bob and his company had no clue. Let’s be serious and go after THE Company that is causing all these issues and while you are at it, lets go after the FDA as well. That outfit needs to be re-invented and managed by people that did not come from government or industry.
I have met Bob and several of his employees personally at a Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon and I totally trust him and his employee owned company. He is a very fair man and this must be devastating to him. Do not be so quick to judge.
While it may be impossible to avoid foods with glyphosate you can certainly reduce your exposure by growing as much as possible the food you eat and even raise a few chickens for eggs and table. But with chemtrails and who knows what that particulate that accumulates on my car is, I’m moving toward greenhouse hydroponics. While I water with harvested rain water, I no longer eat leaf lettuce type vegetables grown in my raised beds. Instead I’ll reserve them for root crops, but everything else will be from hydroponics that I control in my greenhouse. My small poultry flock keeps me in eggs and meat. The result is large reduction in toxic/pollutants in my food as well a larger degree of self sufficiency.
The Monsanto family have been doing it dirty for a while…they were key players in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
In 1757 Isaac Monsanto, a Sephardic Jew born in the Netherlands arrives in New Orleans by way of Curacao establishing himself as a merchant and engaging in the business of shipping slaves and cargo from the Caribbean to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1767 Monsanto purchased a plantation known as Trianon outside of New Orleans. By the time the second Spanish governor took control in 1769, expelling the Jews from Louisiana, Isaac Monsanto had become one of New Orleans’ wealthiest merchants. Under Spanish rule, Monsanto was stripped of his holdings and forced to leave the territory, relocating to the town of Mancha near Lake Pontchartrain in British territory, where he was joined by his brothers, Manuel, Jacob and Benjamin; while their sisters relocated to Pensacola, then part of British West Florida. Following Isaac’s death in 1778, Manuel, Jacob and Benjamin Monsanto continued to manage their mercantile firm, dealing not only in dry goods but in real estate, commodities, debt collection and slaves. Records show that Benjamin Monsanto traded thirteen slaves for some three thousand pounds of indigo in 1785. By 1790, Manuel and Jacob had set up shop on Toulouse Street in New Orleans, while Benjamin and his wife Clara moved to a 500 acre plantation worked by eleven slaves on St Catherine’s Creek near Natchez, Mississippi, where he continued operating part of the family business until his death in 1794. The Monsanto chemical corporation was founded by John Francis Queeny, who married Olga Mendez Monsanto, daughter of Emmanuel Mendes de Monsanto, a descendant of this family.
www.renegadetribune.com/the-ever-increasing-presence-of-glyphosate/
Yes, not disclosing toxics that are in products deserves lawsuit settlements at best, in many worst cases like the synth chems manufacturers and applicators / oil and nuke corps that hide and coverup / lie big time for decades (Lying to point where educating one’s self and society TAKES MAJOR CLASS LAWSUITS), these worst cases’ players deserve settlements large enough to shut them down and use the settlement to dismantle, cleanup and repurpose their assets towards genuine organics in regenerative approaches.
And if somebody wants to sue BRMill, for non product toxin label disclosure, best to them, though the company will likely say “mistakes happen” (that’s toxic bs, as they know of these correctable and systemic ‘mistakes’).
That company has dragged feet for long time saying it was going to moving towards becoming 100% “organic” – and it likely gets excused like many mixed corps that excuse their selves by saying cross contamination happens and then, they would in-court likely defend with “its not our fault, it (toxins) drifted from other producers fields” (at which time, organic plaintifs should be awarded 100% justifable settlements for costs, health, pain, losses. And, then, if what BRMill corp says is partly true, that corp should sue the people / companies causing toxic drifting).
Here here!!
Defund & repurpose the very ill utilized resources of MonUsdaSantos.
More class and lawsuits that well serve genuine edu, democracy, transparency, healthy food, ecology & people’s ecology.
No more to subsidizing legacy of illness – get corrupted, cover-up, and secretive systems out of people’s governance.
Thanks so much for your good service. I had just finished preparing my noonday meal of a large bowl of “Organic” Red Mill oat groats, which I let soak (don’t cook them since am raw fooder) for an hour, along with its cut up fresh fruits. As it was soaking away and I was getting progressivfely hungrier while waiting, I opened an email from Erin, which referenced your story. Bummer. I put the delicous looking, but now I know also toxic, mixture into a sealed platic bag, along with two large bags of the groats, so can return it all to my local Natural Food store in hopes of at least getting my money back. Were it not for your news story on this fiasco and criminal fraud, I’d not have known. Keep up the good work.
I’ll still buy Bob’s Red Mill products. I make sure I consume healthy fat with everything so every single cell (and my brain!) in my body is protected. Since they are protected, my family won’t experience cell degeneration, which then leads to symptoms and dis-ease. If 80% of our food plan (versus using the term diet) is strong and supportive of helping the body function properly, our bodies can ‘combat’ the 20%. I will also continue to reduce toxicity that leads to cell degeneration. As long as I am not growing/farming/harvesting every single morsel of food my family consumes, we will be exposed to some type of toxicity.
I purchase half a steer, half a pig, raw milk, raw butter, and farm fresh eggs from local farmers. I render my own fats (tallow and lard). I purchase my vegetables as close to organic as I can. We don’t have snacks because we are not hungry in between meals (hail to saturated fats!). We keep our ‘terrain’ (digestive system) functioning properly so that levels of toxicity don’t affect us as bad, if at all. It is all about the terrain!
I buy and have eaten Bob’s red mill organic outs for years. Also my kitchen cabinets are full with their products for cooking and baking. I just looked at the label on their organic rolled oats and it states chemical free. I am beyond disgusted and now we have to worry about our health and that of our families. This horrified me and a company that I truly trusted!!!
It’s called population control. I read that oat meal called 365 oats and simple truth brand contains no Roundup.
Also, I spoke with Natures Path costumer service and they told me that they purchased 5500 acres of land to grow their oats so that they are not any nearby contaminating oat growers are near them.
This is outrageous. Shame on you Bob!! Have been eating these steel cut oats for years. I rinse before I cook but, I am truly disappointed.
Dirty Bob’s Red Mill! Shame on you!!!
How do we join lawsuit? they say Natural products but their yeast I thought was natural has sorbitan monostearate in it! another lawsuit perhaps?
Dr. Mercola wrote an article saying ” glycine, ” an animo acid would help remove glyphosate from the body.Available at health food stores.
This was not fair balanced reporting on Bob’s Red Mill because glyphosate is water soluble, and organic crops can be irrigated with contaminated water without knowledge of the farmer. Additionally, each sample bag had a batch number to indicate the origin of the cereal or grain. But this lawsuit should not stop with Bob’s Red Mill because it is already predictable that many fresh produce sold at Whole Foods are contaminated with glyphosate. Where is the outcry?
Official statement on their website which shows that their organic products/farmers do not use glyphosate
www.bobsredmill.com/blog/healthy-living/glyphosate/
This is what I have each morning for breakfast. Thanks for bringing this issue to my attention. I will stop eating it!
Shocked at BRM.
Will no longer buy their products unless the clean up their products
Jane Grey MD
I have been eating Bob’s “organic” oatmeal for years. Paying the extra charge for it being organic.I hope Bob RM is held accountable. Usually the attorneys get rich and the customers get a 25 cent coupon off the next purchase as settlement. Bob and the lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank. The NWO contaminate our food with glyphosate and/or heavy metals to kill the “useless eaters”, that is you and me. The clueless is still screaming “conspiracy theory”.
Because water flows and wind blows, glyphosate (Roundup) as well as GMO pollen is EVERYWHERE. Waters, soils, plants, atmosphere, birds, insects, wildlife……..
The genie can NEVER be put back in its bottle. If GMO gene sequencing to make trees have harder wood, escapes into the forests, they also will NEVER be the same. Monsanto, Bayer, etc, sure has their nerve to sue farmers over the escape of their “secret” pollen from their GMO Roundup resistant crops, onto neighboring farmers fields. NONE OF THIS CAN EVER BE REVERSED
Bob’s Red Mill, nor anyone, can guarantee completely unadulterated foods any longer!
I am super bummed that these folks targeted Bob’s Red Mill instead of other bad actors in this field. For his 80th birthday Bob made his employees shareholders in his company. They try to source from ethical suppliers, but you can’t test every batch from every field. I will continue buying Bob’s Red Mill products and speaking out against Monsanto and large agrichem monoculture in general.
Let’s not just single out Bob’s Red Mill, but put the scull and cross bones on everything else that has glyposate in it. eg. all other cereals that may have up to 4x the maximum allowable level of glyphosate, canola, margarine, milk.
Glyphosate and EVERY chemical that has been introduced into the environment will inevitably be present in ALL LIVING THINGS.
Why?
Because water flows and wind blows…….
The boundary lines are man-made and mean nothing. Monsanto will sue a farmer if Monsanto patented seeds or pollen show up on their farms, which is inevitable. Grimly laughable because water flows and wind blows!
Law required stating the amount of glyphosate in every item. Our politicians and government agencies are derelict or on the take from the Round-up Companies.
As the use of Roundup increased, the number of children with autism increased. Now, about 1 of 6 children are affected with neurological problems.
My wife died from massive cancers I attribute to Glyphosate. I now have Waldenstroms Disease, a cancer in the marrow bones. All for the sake of increased sales and larger year end bonuses
Is there no one in our congress willing the face risk of their career and expose these monsters?
Problem is Congress, legislatures, and the executive branches are on the payroll of big business. They won’t bite the hands that feed them. They are 100% corrupt. That’s why these billionaires pay no taxes at all. It is their system, not ours.
You should expect all conventionally grown foods to contain glyphosate or other pesticides. Certified organic foods may contain it from cross contamination of non organic crops and anything in the atmosphere gets blown all around the planet by the wind. I would expect the non-organic crops to have much higher amounts of it since its being purposely applied to them.
Have never trusted BRM. Sadly even health food stores promote this company as organic even when the label does not claim it to be. Had to educate a local food coop that thought it was being helpful calling the company product organic. The lawsuit is so correct in noting how the public is sucked into a false belief. Lesson is to never trust anything and always ask questions and research.