Beer Contaminated with Roundup: Is It Dangerous?

For anyone paying attention, Roundup has been getting a lot of play on the news lately, and if you eat any plant-based products, eat meat that eats plants, or drink beer or wine, it is valid to be asking about Roundup.

Yes, right down to your beer and wine.

If you’ve been wondering about beer contaminated with Roundup and whether it is dangerous, the answer to that concern, and any others about Roundup, are now more straightforward than ever.

For those not quite in the loop, let’s start at the beginning.

What Is Roundup?

Roundup is a broad spectrum, glyphosate-based herbicide that was produced by the U.S. corporation Monsanto and then recently purchased by the U.S. corporation Bayer.

Glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Roundup, is a systemic herbicide used to kill weeds by inhibiting plant enzymes, basically stopping the growth of plants that compete with desired and intended crops.

The chemical compound was designed by the Monsanto corporation in 1974 and quickly sent to market, where it became the most widely used herbicide by farmers and home gardeners alike, with a one-hundred-fold increase in the use of glyphosate-based herbicides from 1970s to 2016.

Much of this increase is due to the fact that the widespread use of glyphosate led to the evolution and growth of glyphosate resistant weeds, creating the demand for even more glyphosate, which was then sprayed even more liberally on crops.

Glyphosate is widely known by its market name, Roundup, and because it has a targeted approach to specific plants, it can be sprayed over an entire crop system, where it will be absorbed through the foliage and spread to the roots and into the soil.

Once in the soil, it will, ostensibly, prevent the growth of undesired weeds.

Furthermore, Monsanto has also developed glyphosate based genetically modified crops, called Roundup Ready crops.

Where Is Roundup?

If you eat food or drink a plant based beverage that is not certified as organic, there is an excellent chance it is either sprayed with Roundup or comes from a Roundup Ready Crop.

As of 2022, 90 percent of soybeans and 70 percent of corn and cotton grown in the United States is Roundup Ready, and farmers additionally spray those crops with Roundup to insure against weeds.

Total worldwide Roundup use rose more than 12-fold from 1995 to 2014, with 6.1 billion kg of glyphosate having been applied to global crops.

In short, Roundup is everywhere.

Even, in fact, in the drinking water, as much of the crop and soil runoff ends up in our water systems, contaminating the water we get from our tap.

And yes, Roundup is probably in your beer.

What Does Roundup Have to Do with Beer?

Today, most beer is made with corn syrup because it is a highly fermentable sugar and easy to add to the end of the fermenting process.

It is also used as an adjunct, a filler of sorts, in mass market beers.

So chances are, if you drink beer from a big corporation, it has got corn in it, either as an adjunct or as a fermentable sugar, or both.

And if your beer uses corn, it likely has Roundup in it, and probably a lot of Roundup.

Same goes for wheat beer, which may be even worse, as wheat is typically not only treated with Roundup or a Roundup Ready crop, but it is then sprayed liberally with Roundup toward the end of harvest as it forces the wheat to go limp, making it easier for extraction from the ground.

So, if you are not drinking organic beer, you are probably getting quite a bit of Roundup in your Friday night drinks with friends.

Is Beer Contaminated with Roundup Dangerous?

Well, studies have shown a direct link between Roundup and a wealth of illnesses in humans that include but are not limited to cancer, endocrine disruption, celiac disease, autism, and leaky gut syndrome. Those illnesses alone also extend out to various other chronic illnesses and syndromes that are linked back to glyphosate.

As a result, it is not a stretch of logic to say that yes, beer contaminated with Roundup can be dangerous.

Why Is Roundup Still Being Used if It Is Toxic?

It is really important to understand what is happening with the messaging around Roundup and Glyphosate. Monsanto and Bayer are both billion dollar corporations with immense political power across the globe.

So much so that 40% of the world’s crops today are genetically modified, and 80% of them are owned by Monsanto and containing glyphosate, and in the US, up to 95% of many of the crops are GMO.

Monsanto has a vested interest in maintaining the rise and spread of GMO crops and products, and Bayer now has a vested interest in keeping glyphosate on the market.

So, while there are the studies that we’ve already mentioned, there are also studies showing that glyphosate is not harmful to humans “when used appropriately,” whatever that means, and “in certain amounts,” which are very small.

Now, some argue that, essentially, these studies are done on humans using very small doses of glyphosate for very short periods of time to reveal that under these specific conditions no harm is done.

Bottom line, in real life, humans not eating an organic diet and drinking regular tap water are fully inundated with glyphosate, and several double blind, peer reviewed studies have shown that the effect on the human system can be disastrous.

To that end, dozens of lawsuits have been brought against Monsanto and Bayer, and the companies have both settled for millions of dollars and continued to use glyphosate and insist that the chemical compound does not cause cancer or any other illness.

It seems that now is the time to take these issues more seriously, both as a beer drinker and as brewers. We have gotten by for millennia without glyphosate, and we can get by without it once more.

Cheers!

Passionate about the beer and/or wine making process? So are we! If you’re interested in finding out how you can use our technology to control fermentation and monitor your yeast, save work hours and improve the cost-efficiency of your business, drop us a line at [email protected] or check out our product pages:

Also, you can now get access to a fully functional demo account to test your yeast via our Web App. Completely free of charge and with no commitment to purchase.

Sources:

  1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32203845/
  2. https://www.mygenefood.com/blog/why-glyphosate-is-dangerous-and-how-to-avoid-eating-it/
  3. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/studies-show-gmos-in-majority-of-us-processed-foods-58-percent-of-americans-unaware-of-issue-104510549.html
  4. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/product-liability/roundup-lawsuit-update/
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