Wine is just made from grapes, right?
Well, the answer is a little more complicated than that.
Very few wines are still being made from grapes, yeast, and sulfur alone. Instead, enzymes, extracts, sugar, water may be added into the mix to get the desired texture and flavor (1,2).
These ingredients aren’t much of a problem, but there is a little extra something you’ll never see on the label: glyphosate.
That’s right, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s toxic Roundup herbicide has been found in all 10 wine sample tested by Moms Across America and Sustainable Pulse. Even organic and biodynamic products tested positive for the chemical.
Study Results
Microbe Inotech Labs in St. Louis, Missouri examined Californian wines originating from Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino Counties (3).
Syrah, coming from a biodynamic and organic orchard that was apparently never sprayed with pesticides, was found to contain .659 ppb while another organic wine contained .913pb. In comparison, a 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon contained 18.74 ppb of glyphosate.
Glyphosate doses as low as .1 ppb annihilate beneficial gut bacteria while regular exposure can cause breast cancer, destroy nerve cells, damage the kidneys and liver.
In pregnant and fertile women, the substance destroys the placenta and can lead to future birth defects and miscarriages.
In a similar study to the one mentioned above, Decanter magazine reports that 90% of the wine they tested contained traces of at least one pesticide. This is not only alarming for consumers, but also for the farmers applying the treatment.
Not everyone agrees, though.
Jennifer Putnam, the Executive Director of Napa Valley Grape Growers, insisted that she’s skeptical of the study but that “…nobody’s more interested in a healthy environment of the vineyard than [the growers]”. She warns that “If you do away with the tool of being able to use glyphosate, we go back to a lot more labor and we go back to shovel work”.
Other groups in favor of GMO farming, including Monsanto toxicologist Dr. Donna Farmer, insist that wine doesn’t contain significant levels of glyphosate. Dr. Farmer even said, “A person, say a 150-pound person would have to drink around 8,000 regularly sized bottles of wine in one day to meet the allowable daily intake for glyphosate.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency explains that it’s safe for a 150-pound person to consume up to 120 milligrams (a teaspoon) of glyphosate a day.
Considering that glyphosate is present in nearly all conventionally grown foods and has begun to contaminate water sources and organic soil, it’s no surprise that we’re facing increasing allergies, inflammatory disease, and digestive conditions linked to the chemical.