Study finds weed killer in beer and wine

The last thing you want to think about when you pour yourself a glass of wine or a cold beer is whether it contains even small levels of a potentially carcinogenic weed killer.

The last thing you want to think about when you pour yourself a glass of wine or a cold beer is whether it contains even small levels of a potentially carcinogenic weed killer.

But the use of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, is now so widespread that the chemical is found virtually everywhere—including, as a Feb. 22 U.S. PIRG Education Fund report found, in 19 of 20 beer and wine products we tested.

“No matter the efforts of brewers and vintners, we found that it is incredibly difficult to avoid the troubling reality that consumers will likely drink glyphosate at every happy hour and backyard barbecue around the country,” Kara Cook-Schultz, author of the report and director of our national Zero Out Toxics Campaign, told USA Today.

U.S. PIRG is calling on federal, state and local officials to ban the use of glyphosate unless and until it can be proven safe.

We’ll drink to that.

Read the report here.

Photo Credit: Public Domain, DisobeyArt via Shutterstock, MikeMozart via Flickr and Public Domain