Roundup (glyphosate) in US vs Europe: Americans are being poisoned
Years ago I started investigating the differences between food products sold in America versus Europe, and what I found really opened my eyes to how much Americans are being poisoned.
Years ago I started investigating the differences between food products sold in America versus Europe, and what I found really opened my eyes to how much Americans are being poisoned.
Food companies have reformulated their products for our friends overseas to sell them safer versions of the same products, while they continue selling Americans the more toxic versions. They are literally poisoning us for profit.
The more I dug into this, the more I realized this wasn’t just happening with the processed ingredients put in our food. It runs the gamut between pesticides sprayed on our crops, chemicals in our plastics, the drugs and feed given to farm animals, and even the substances in our cookware and food packaging.
We have pesticides linked to cancer that are banned across Europe still being sprayed freely on American crops, growth hormones in our meat that have been banned in Europe since the 80’s, PFAS “forever chemicals” in our food packaging that Europe has moved to eliminate, and artificial dyes that require warning labels in Europe but not here. The double standard is everywhere.
One of the most perfect examples of how Americans are being poisoned more than our friends overseas is Roundup weedkiller (The main ingredient: glyphosate).
This is the most widely used pesticide in the world, and in America, it’s everywhere. Farmers went from spraying 12.5 million pounds of it in 1995 to 250 million pounds by 2014. Today, the U.S. uses up to 280 million pounds a year and sprays it at nearly twice the rate per acre compared to the global average. (1) No other pesticide in history has come close to this level of use.
There is a practice called pre-harvest spraying, which is where American farmers spray Roundup directly on food crops like oats, wheat, lentils and chickpeas just days before harvest to dry them faster. This practice is said to account for the majority of glyphosate residues in our food. (2)
Glyphosate has now been found in 60% of food in America (3) and in the urine of 80% of Americans tested (4) – and research has linked it to cancer, hormone disruption, gut damage, and neurological effects.
The foreign corporation Bayer sells Roundup to farmers in both the United States and Europe. It’s the same brand, with the same active ingredient of glyphosate in agricultural formulas – but the rules around how it can be used, what goes into it, and how much can end up in your food and environment are much stricter in Europe – and Americans are paying the price. The differences are maddening.
Let’s break down the differences…
1. Pre-harvest spraying: Banned in Europe, allowed on 70+ crops in America
In the United States, pre-harvest spraying to dry crops is allowed on over 70 food crops. It is not being used to kill weeds…it is being sprayed directly onto the food we eat, just days before it reaches your grocery store. When you spray it directly on a food crop days before harvest, the residues are more likely to end up in our food.
In Europe, this practice is not permitted. Several countries including Italy and Austria had already banned it years earlier, and in 2023 the European Commission prohibited it EU-wide. (5)
Meanwhile, American regulators not only approved it, but actually RAISED the allowable limits of glyphosate residues allowed in our food to make room for the practice. So, while Europe was protecting its citizens, America was making it easier to poison ours.
2. A toxic ingredient banned in Europe is still in American Roundup
Roundup isn’t just glyphosate. It contains other ingredients – called surfactants – that help the herbicide penetrate plant cells. One of these surfactants, POEA, has been shown in studies to be much more toxic to human cells than glyphosate itself. (13) Research has also found that POEA can be contaminated with carcinogenic impurities, including a chemical called 1,4-dioxane, that’s formed during the manufacturing process. (6)
The European Union banned POEA from glyphosate-based herbicides in 2016 due to safety concerns and gaps in risk assessment data. (7) They replaced it with a safer alternative.
In the United States, Bayer is not required to make that same change, so they haven’t. POEA is still in the American formulation, not because it has been proven safe, but simply because no one has forced them to remove it.
3. Glyphosate allowed in tap water is 7,000 times more in US than Europe
The European Union limits each individual pesticide in drinking water to 0.1 parts per billion, a standard they set over 40 years ago and have maintained since. Glyphosate falls under this same limit. (8)
In America, only a handful of pesticides have enforceable limits in drinking water at all. Glyphosate is one of them, and that limit is 700 parts per billion. (9) That’s 7,000 times higher than Europe and it hasn’t been lowered since the early 1990s.
4. Glyphosate residue limits in oats are 50% higher in the US than in Europe
The glyphosate residue limit for oats in America is 30 parts per million (ppm) – compared to 20 ppm in Europe. (10)
The original U.S. limit was just 0.1 ppm. The EPA raised it 300 times over – first in response to a petition from Monsanto, and again in 2008 – as pre-harvest spraying became more common. (11) They essentially changed the rules to fit the practice rather than protecting the people eating the food.
Independent lab testing has repeatedly found glyphosate residues in popular oat-based American products including Cheerios and Quaker Oats. Organic options consistently tested with lower or undetectable levels.
5. European countries are banning glyphosate from public spaces, while America isn’t
In France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, glyphosate has been banned or restricted in public green spaces, parks, schools and playgrounds where children play and families spend time. These governments decided the risk was not worth it.
Meanwhile, in most of the United States there is no such protection. Glyphosate can be and is sprayed in public parks and on school grounds in most communities across the country. Only a small number of cities and counties have put their own local restrictions in place. At the federal level there is no requirement to protect the places where our children play.
Why are Americans being poisoned at an alarming rate compared to Europeans?
I’ll tell you one big reason why. Europe operates under the “precautionary principle”, which means when there’s evidence of potential harm, they act to protect their citizens first and ask questions later. The United States does the opposite. It allows companies to essentially self-regulate and waits for proof of harm, which can take decades. Americans are being treated like lab rats while other countries protect their citizens.
Bayer knows of the health risks linked to glyphosate, and they play by the stricter rules in Europe. Shouldn’t we ask them to do the same here in America? Don’t we deserve the same protections, if not better, than European citizens have?
Don’t we deserve a government that puts our health before the profits of foreign chemical corporations? Especially when that corporation has already paid tens of billions to cancer victims?
Homeowners, landscapers, farmworkers and others who were exposed to Roundup have been suing Bayer because they developed cancer, especially non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Nearly 180,000 lawsuits have been filed and Bayer has already paid over $10 billion to settle cancer claims (and are now proposing another $7.25 billion settlement to resolve remaining claims). More than 60,000 cases are still pending and the number continues to grow. (12)
Instead of taking accountability, Bayer is doing everything in its power to avoid it.
They are using the courts, Congress, statehouses and the White House to get a legal shield that would prevent Americans from holding them accountable for failing to warn about cancer risks.
On April 27th, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Monsanto v. Durnell. Bayer, the German company that now owns Monsanto, is asking the Court to rule that EPA approval of Roundup shields them from cancer lawsuits. If they win, it could strip Americans of their right to sue.
And this goes far beyond Bayer and glyphosate.
If Bayer wins in the Supreme Court, it would set a precedent. Pesticide companies in America could use EPA approval as a shield to avoid accountability, no matter what their products do to people’s health.
I truly believe this is one of the most important issues of our time and Americans need to stand together to fight against this.
If you’re as fed up as I am…
Join us at The People vs. Poison Rally on April 27th at 9am outside of the Supreme Court in Washington DC.
This is our chance to show up and make it clear that the American people will not let corporations legislate their way out of accountability.
RSVP and learn more about the rally here!
If you can’t attend the rally, please share this post with everyone you know and invite your friends and family to attend. Help us flood Washington with people who are done being silent!
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