- 03/05/2016
- Posted by: Marta
- Category: News
From one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other, glyphosate resurfaces. In Europe, where the agricultural confederations alongside Monsanto they boycotted the ban. In the USA, 'class action' for its residues in cereals sold with the promise '100 Percent Natural '. In the Courts of Brooklin, San Francisco and Illinois the case 'Quaker Oats'.
The PepsiCo group, owner of the 'brand of the Quaker', was reported by some consumer groups in the United States for false and misleading advertising on its flagship product. The famous and historic oat flakes, presented as '100% natural', in fact contain residues of the poisonous pesticide (1). All the knots come back to roost, it seems.
About glyphosate, endocrine disruptor of suspected carcinogenicity, citizens' sensitivity is constantly growing. Several million signatures have been collected on five continents for governments to ban their use in agriculture, due to well-founded fears for human and animal health, and environmental protection (2). And here the consumers - no longer willing to be ignored by a policy too close to the interests of the 'lobbies' - sublimate their requests and concerns in cohesive purchasing choices, see the 'palma' case, or in legal actions, such as in this affair.
The concept of '100% natural' it still has no univocal criteria of application, in America as in Europe. What does the 'complete naturalness' of an agricultural commodity, of a product resulting from its first transformation, or of a compound food mean? In agriculture can we consider 'natural', perhaps not exactly '100%', what is achieved with the integrated pest management method? In processed products, which food additives are compatible with 'nature'? And how does the 'natural anarchist' differ from the biological (3), which is instead subject to rigorous discipline? The boundary between 'free from…' and 'organic' - as we have been able to highlight in the case of wines (4) - is rather blurred.
The 'Quaker Oats oatmeal' olt was the first food to receive the authorization of the 'Food and Drug Administration', back in 1997, to boast of its healthiness (5). But consumers accused the giant PepsiCo of confusing them, they did not imagine that an 'all natural' oat could bear traces of 'RoundUp'. And therefore, in stating that a cereal 'is good', the operator should perhaps introduce a sort of 'disclaimer', of the type 'it is good for this and that other nutritional property, but it is clear that it is not' organic ' "? In the absence of clear rules, from the discipline of 'Nutrition & Health Claims' borders on that of organic productions, towards a holistic dimension of 'better for you' still in search of a regulatory author. Will the judges of the boroughs of NY, California and Illinois (6) be tracing a new path?
Dario Dongo
www.foodagriculturerequirements.com
Note
(1) http://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/news-food-times/armi-di-distruzione-di-massa-il-glifosato
(2) http://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/news-food-times/glifosato-ora-basta
(3) on ' ‘, cf. www.ilfattoalimentare.it/si-fa-presto-a-dire-bio-ma-cosa-significa.html
(4) on 'free wine' e 'natural wine', cf. http://www.ilfattoalimentare.it/vino-naturale-libero-biologico-federbio-marketing.html. On The organic wine, http://www.ilfattoalimentare.it/vino-biologico-regolamento-ue.html
(5) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1541-4337.2011.00170.x/full
(6) Daly vs. Quaker Oats, 16-cv-2155, US District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn), Cooper vs. Quaker Oats, 16-cv-2364, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco), Wheeler and others vs. Quaker Oats C. Cook County Chancery Division, 16-ch-06075, Illinois
