Post wrongly links Goldfish snacks to weed killer and cancer | Fact check

Hannah Hudnall, USA TODAY
Updated ·6 min read
4

The claim: Goldfish snacks contain dangerously high levels of weed killer linked to cancer

An April 25 Facebook video shows a man speaking about the supposed dangers of eating Goldfish snacks.

"Goldfish crackers contain a dangerously high amount of weed killer, which has been directly linked to cancer," says the man as he holds up a box of Goldfish. "It's called glyphosate."

The post garnered more than 30,000 shares in three weeks.

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Our rating: False

Though Goldfish may contain trace amounts of glyphosate, the amount present through normal dietary exposure has been deemed not carcinogenic by numerous international food safety agencies. The studies cited in the Facebook video did not examine the glyphosate levels in Goldfish.

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Glyphosate is a popular herbicide that's used primarily in agriculture, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Khanya Brann, an Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson, told USA TODAY the organization sets limits, called "tolerances," on the amount of pesticide residues that may remain in or on food marketed in the U.S.

"With regards to glyphosate, due to its widespread use, trace amounts of pesticide residues may be found in various food and beverage commodities," Brann said in an email. "However, these trace amounts are not of concern for the consumer."

Brann said the EPA evaluated the product's impact on infants, children, adults and women of childbearing age and concluded glyphosate is "not likely to be a human carcinogen."

The EPA says the same thing on its website and adds that its findings align with those of numerous international experts, such as the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency and the Australian Pesticide and Veterinary Medicines Authority.

Glyphosate is not listed on Goldfish's ingredients list, meaning if residues of the herbicide were present in the food it would only be in trace amounts.

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James Regan, a spokesperson for Campbell Soup Company, the company that owns Goldfish, told USA TODAY the claim is false.

"We require our suppliers to follow the standards for pesticide use set by the EPA and state regulatory agencies," Regan said in an email. "We also encourage all our ingredient suppliers to use integrated pest management... which promotes the use of biological controls such as cover crops and other preventative measures before the use of chemical controls."

Since 2016, the FDA has performed annual tests on dozens of food samples and found that though some of the samples contained residues of glyphosate, the levels didn't violate the tolerances set by the EPA aside from one unnamed product that exceeded the acceptable level in 2018.

In 2016, a series of pesticide residue experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization concluded that "glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet." Though the researchers noted that the herbicide could be carcinogenic to rats in high doses, they didn't find evidence of this at "anticipated dietary exposures."

A year earlier, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans" but based this finding on “limited evidence of cancer in humans" and “sufficient evidence of cancer in experimental animals."

The World Health Organization said these two findings aren't contradictory, as the 2015 study examined "potential cancer hazards" using only published studies and the 2016 meeting reviewed both published and unpublished studies to assess the level of risk to consumers through dietary exposure.

Inapplicable studies cited in video

The man in the Facebook video references reports published by the Environmental Working Group and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, both of which reported finding residual levels of glyphosate in food samples.

The report by the Environmental Working Group tested the glyphosate levels in 28 oat-based products, while the Public Interest Research Group tested the levels in 20 samples of beer and wine. Goldfish do not contain oats, and neither organization examined the snack in its report.

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The Environmental Working Group has a lengthy history of campaigning against glyphosate, publishing articles calling for an end to its use on its website and its news page, The New Lede. Its research also wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The Public Interest Research Group study noted that the glyphosate residues found in the beer and wine it tested were below the tolerances set by the EPA.

The Facebook video also features a screenshot of a 2019 CNN article, which cited a study that found glyphosate raised the risk of cancer for those exposed to it by 41%. The study, which found a link between the herbicide and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, was based on limited available data, however, according to its authors.

But Luoping Zhang, a co-author of the study, told USA TODAY her team purely studied occupational exposure, not exposure from trace amounts found in foods.

USA TODAY reached out to the World Health Organization and the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

The claim has also been debunked by PolitiFact.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No proven link between glyphosate in Goldfish and cancer | Fact check