German beer purity in question after weedkiller traces found in popular brands

[webfact]

German beer purity in question after environment group finds weed-killer traces
BY CAROLINE COPLEY

BERLIN: -- A German environmental group said on Thursday it has found traces of the widely used weed-killer ingredient glyphosate in Germany's 14 most popular beers, a potential blow to the country's reputation for "pure" brewing.

Industry and government immediately sought to play down the report from the Munich Environmental Institute.

The Brauer-Bund beer association said the findings, which were based on a small number of samples, were not credible. Germany's Federal Institute for Risk assessment said the levels did not pose a risk to consumers' health.

Full story: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-beer-idUSKCN0VY222


-- Reuters 2016-02-26

[attrayant]

Trace amounts of pesticides make their way into all kinds of foods. Nothing is sterile, that's why we have to set maximum allowable levels of things that might be problematic if ingested in certain quantities. It's actually fortunate that glyphosate is a comparatively benign pesticide, especially when compared to the older pesticides it replaced (rotenone, copper sulfates, ureas, etc.) Now those were some toxic pesticides.

What's absolutely laughable about stories like this is that beer contains comparatively huge amounts of ethyl alcohol, an actual poison and IARC class 1 carcinogen. That's like guzzling a soft drink which is 25% sugar by volume but being more worried about the 20ppm of brominated vegetable oil that's used as a stabilizer in the drink. Misplaced priorities.

[HenryB]

Germany has many enemies that may have done this. Hope they can find them

[snowgard]

Some interesting docus on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?q=glyphosate

[attrayant]

Is "docus" another word for pig droppings? If so, then I agree.

[connda]

Using US wheat in their beer methinks. Wheat growers routinely spray highly toxic glyposate on their wheat to improve yield. The government doesn't interfere. When Germany buys US wheat for their beer, you get weedkiller in your beer. This isn't rocket science.

[attrayant]

Got any cite for that aside from "methinks"?

And there is no such thing as "highly toxic glyphosate". The pesticide attacks specific metabolic pathways that exist only in plants - not in mammals. This is easily proven by finding the compound in human urine still in its original, unmetabolized form. Glyphosate has a lower toxicity profile than thiamine, vinegar, table salt, caffeine, aspirin and vitamin D3.

[NeverSure]

Glyphosate (Brand names Roundup, Rodeo, Pondmaster...) is an herbicide, not a pesticide.

I don't know how one escapes it. Farmers spray it on fields to kill weeds before planting. It gets into water as well as soil. Fortunately it biodegrades pretty fast but still leaves residue.

They tell me it's safe. I hope so.

[Benjie]

Trace amounts of pesticides make their way into all kinds of foods. Nothing is sterile, that's why we have to set maximum allowable levels of things that might be problematic if ingested in certain quantities. It's actually fortunate that glyphosate is a comparatively benign pesticide, especially when compared to the older pesticides it replaced (rotenone, copper sulfates, ureas, etc.) Now those were some toxic pesticides.

What's absolutely laughable about stories like this is that beer contains comparatively huge amounts of ethyl alcohol, an actual poison and IARC class 1 carcinogen. That's like guzzling a soft drink which is 25% sugar by volume but being more worried about the 20ppm of brominated vegetable oil that's used as a stabilizer in the drink. Misplaced priorities.

Urea?

Glysophate is a herbicide and classed by the WHO as probably carcinogenic to humans.

[attrayant]

Shrug. Weeds are one of many types of pest. Herbicides are a subset of pesticides.

It has been one of the most popular (read: heavily used) pest- er... herbicides over the past forty years. Trillions of roundup-ready meals have been served to farm animals with no negative health effects reported by farmers. If it were toxic at common exposure levels, we should have seen something by now.

[attrayant]

Glysophate is a herbicide and classed by the WHO as probably carcinogenic to humans.

Seems like you may not have read the IARC Monograph. Not that one can be blamed, as it's nearly a hundred pages long. I'll be back tomorrow with a bit of deconstruction on what the classification really means. I'm sure you'll be on the edge of your seat until then.

[Benjie]

Shrug. Weeds are one of many types of pest. Herbicides are a subset of pesticides.

It has been one of the most popular (read: heavily used) pest- er... herbicides over the past forty years. Trillions of roundup-ready meals have been served to farm animals with no negative health effects reported by farmers. If it were toxic at common exposure levels, we should have seen something by now.

Farm animals don't live as long as humans, barely a year in most cases, so cancer and other diseases that take a while to developer are much less of a problem.

[attrayant]

I have spent the morning looking for a long blog post I wrote up about this, but either I can't find it or they've unpublished the blog. Not too thrilled about doing that all over again, so I went looking for the expert (scientific community) reaction to the IARC classification. In short, every major regulatory body in the world deems glyphosate as safe/noncarcinogenic. So how can the IARC come a different conclusion than everyone else, especially when they (the IARC) didn't do any original research? In part, because the IARC looks at hazard but not risk. From the IARC's mission statement:

A cancer hazard is an agent that is capable of causing cancer under some circumstances, while a cancer risk is an estimate of the carcinogenic effects expected from exposure to a cancer hazard.

The [iARC] Monographs are an exercise in evaluating cancer hazards, despite the historical presence of the word ‘risks’ in the title. The distinction between hazard and risk is important, and the Monographs identify cancer hazards even when risks are very low at current exposure levels, because new uses or unforeseen exposures could engender risks that are significantly higher.

What they are saying, is that a substance might be hazardous under certain conditions, but it's not their job to specify the risk - meaning every possible condition under which the hazard might be present. There are plenty of situations where a substance is hazardous only at levels of exposure that we never encounter.

That means we really only get half the story from the IARC monographs. To make an analogy, electricity is extremely hazardous. Just a little can kill you outright. Using IARC reasoning, electricity would be right at the top of the list of hazardous things that can kill people. But what this hazard classification misses is the extreme lengths to which we would need to go before we actually found ourselves at risk for electrocution. Should electricity be banned? Of course not, because we take measures to protect ourselves from coming into contact with levels that might be harmful. A few microamps is not a problem at all, but 50 milliamps is cardiac arrest.

If that doesn't demonstrate how problematic the classifications are, here's another example: Last year the IARC moved processed meats such as bacon, hot dogs and sausages into category 1 (known human carcinogen) which is where we find smoking, asbestos and arsenic. Clearly the incident rates for cancer are many times higher for asbestos than for hot dogs, so how could they both be class 1 carcinogens? Again it's because the IARC doesn't say how likely they are to cause cancer, only that there's a possibility of it happening.

The hazard classification also fails to take into account the levels at which a hazard becomes more likely to affect you. Tiny amounts of electricity course through our nerves all the time - why aren't we dead from this? Because the exposure levels matters, just as it does with glyphosate, coffee, french fries, red meat, pickled/fermented vegetables and working the night shift - an many of the other things the IARC considers a cancer hazard. If you're a farmer who has occupational exposure to glyphosate then you should take all the needed precautions when working with it. But if you're a consumer who ingests a few micrograms of it? Not much to worry about there.

I also have some technical issues with how the IARC arrived at its classification but I'll omit those here as I can't see many readers here being too excited to plod through a dry technical analysis of the decision. Suffice it to say that both the FDA and the European Food Safety Authority (an agency known for its conservative approach to safety) have both reaffirmed their assessment about glyphosate being non-carcinogenic after the IARC's announcement:

Following a second mandate from the European Commission to consider the findings from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) regarding the potential carcinogenicity of glyphosate or glyphosate-containing plant protection products in the on-going peer review of the active substance, EFSA concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans and the evidence does not support classification with regard to its carcinogenic potential according to Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008.

Here's a concise, easily digestible video from Andrew Maynard, Director of the Risk Innovation Lab at Arizona State University, about the IARC's classification process and what those classifications actually mean: What does "Probably Cause Cancer" actually mean?

[kinmaew]

The best beers are never advertised.

[shirtless]

Got any cite for that aside from "methinks"?

And there is no such thing as "highly toxic glyphosate". The pesticide attacks specific metabolic pathways that exist only in plants - not in mammals. This is easily proven by finding the compound in human urine still in its original, unmetabolized form. Glyphosate has a lower toxicity profile than thiamine, vinegar, table salt, caffeine, aspirin and vitamin D3.

]

Roundup is proven to cause cancer, used throughout the USA, You must work for Monsanto.

[attrayant]

Roundup is proven to cause cancer.

Absolutely no truth to this whatsoever. So if you could stop lying, that'd be great.

I know my post up there contained an awful lot of words, many of which were more than one syllable, so you probably skipped over it. But there's one sentence you need to read:

both the FDA and the European Food Safety Authority (an agency known for its conservative approach to safety) have both reaffirmed their assessment about glyphosate being non-carcinogenic

I guess EFSA works for Monsanto, right?

Edited February 28, 2016 by attrayant

[snowgard]

Roundup is proven to cause cancer.

Absolutely no truth to this whatsoever. So if you could stop lying, that'd be great.

I know my post up there contained an awful lot of words, many of which were more than one syllable, so you probably skipped over it. But there's one sentence you need to read:

both the FDA and the European Food Safety Authority (an agency known for its conservative approach to safety) have both reaffirmed their assessment about glyphosate being non-carcinogenic

I guess EFSA works for Monsanto, right?

Do you really believe what you wrote??? Look this videos. Maybe it changed your minds: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=glyphosate+deformed

[canuckamuck]

Using US wheat in their beer methinks. Wheat growers routinely spray highly toxic glyposate on their wheat to improve yield. The government doesn't interfere. When Germany buys US wheat for their beer, you get weedkiller in your beer. This isn't rocket science.

Beer is mostly made from barley but wheat is sometimes added. However if the farmers were to spray glyphosate on their wheat it wouldn't improve the yield, it would kill it. They use the glyphosate when preparing the field for use.

[Scott]

The two largest producers of barley are Russia first, followed by Germany, number two. France ranks third and the UK is 9th. The US ranks 11th, so I don't know why Germany would be importing barley from the US when it has much closer supplies available.

[attrayant]

Do you really believe what you wrote??? Look this videos. Maybe it changed your minds: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=glyphosate+deformed

Oh noes, a YouTube video! Surely that trumps all the evidence and safety trials that have been conducted all over the world by dozens of independent regulatory agencies!

The question should be: Do I really believe I'm wasting my time debating you? No, I really don't.

Posts above are correct - glyphosate is sometimes sprayed as a pre-harvest desiccant, but that that time the wheat is already dead so there's no "improved yield" to be had. Unless glyphosate causes zobmbieism too. Maybe I can find a YouTube video to prove that... BRB.

[jerojero]

The two largest producers of barley are Russia first, followed by Germany, number two. France ranks third and the UK is 9th. The US ranks 11th, so I don't know why Germany would be importing barley from the US when it has much closer supplies available.

.... Sorry but your numbers may be misleading as the barley grown for all beer world wide are special varieties. Quantities as such only grown for the needed beer demand. Common barley is not used for beer, but for animal feed. Point in case: almost all of Russia's barley is grown for animal feed. You need to research malt barley production. Will find Australia, France, Germany, USA and Canada rank among the highest malt barley production.

[Scott]

I am aware of the varieties of barley and what it is used for. The countries listed are suitable for growing barley and the higher quality barley used in food and beer generally fetch a greater price than lower quality barley used for animal feeds.

[snowgard]

Do you really believe what you wrote??? Look this videos. Maybe it changed your minds: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=glyphosate+deformed

Oh noes, a YouTube video! Surely that trumps all the evidence and safety trials that have been conducted all over the world by dozens of independent regulatory agencies!

The question should be: Do I really believe I'm wasting my time debating you? No, I really don't.

Posts above are correct - glyphosate is sometimes sprayed as a pre-harvest desiccant, but that that time the wheat is already dead so there's no "improved yield" to be had. Unless glyphosate causes zobmbieism too. Maybe I can find a YouTube video to prove that... BRB.

If you really looked the videos you saw also that it give a lot of evidence against Monsanto, RoundUp, ....!!! This are all proofed doctors and scientists who found out the traces of GMO in this people and animals. If you are serious you would say too that it must be checked more.

But this is the different between us. If I see something suspious I believe it must be checked better and the results must be proofed. But you are so ignorant that it's really looks like you are a paid from Monsanto for your statements!!! And everyone know that Organisations like FDA and the European Food Safety Authority pay very good for good statements. It's all about money and nothing other!!!

And the most wheat and corn in the US and South America are gene manipulated so that it is herbicite resistante. Just goggle for it: https://www.google.co.th/search?q=gen+manipulatet+wheat

Edited February 29, 2016 by snowgard

[attrayant]

No response needed; I'll just let your post speak for itself.