DENVER — The Colorado Public Interest Research Group (CoPIRG) released a report Monday morning stating that it had found a weed killer chemical in 19 different beers and wine.
Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Bayer Crop Science’s (owner of Monsanto) weed killer, Roundup.
The CoPIRG report says that a "high number of top beers and wines, including organic ones and Colorado-based ones," contain the chemical. It will highlight those brands at a 10:30 a.m. press conference.
Bayer released a statement that claimed CoPIRG’s findings were misleading.
The statement reads, in part: “The US PIRG is publicizing misleading information about pesticide residues in food. The reality is that regulatory authorities have strict rules when it comes to pesticide residues. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets daily exposure limits at least 100 times below levels shown to have no negative effect in safety studies. The levels sometimes found in food are not even remotely close to any level of concern.”
It claims that the numbers CoPIRG released do not demonstrate any safety concern associated with the products that were tested.
"Assuming the greatest value reported, 51.4 ppb, is correct, a 125-pound adult would have to consume 308 gallons of wine per day, every day for life to reach the US Environmental Protection Agency’s glyphosate exposure limit for humans," Bayer said in a statement. "To put 308 gallons into context, that would be more than a bottle of wine every minute, for life, without sleeping.”
CoPIRG Director Danny Katz said they will use the results of their research to ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to start testing beers and wines more aggressively or prove that glyphosate is safe for consumers to drink.