Feds: tainted cereal safe - cereal manufactured by General Mills Inc

Vegetarian Times, August, 1995

LAST APRIL, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allowed General Mills Inc. to sell 18 million bushels of oats tainted with an unauthorized pesticide as livestock feed. Meanwhile, 110 million boxes of Cheerios, Lucky Charms and some other cereals made from the same oats--which in most circumstances would have been recalled by the FDA, according to federal law--may still be on supermarket shelves.

The story of the contaminated oats began in May 1994, when the Golden Valley, Minn.-based cereal company and the EPA discovered low levels of the pesticide chlorpyrifos (klor-PIE-ri-foes) on 21 million bushels of oats. A subcontractor had substituted the unapproved chemical for a more expensive, legal version.

The EPA notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which enforces pesticide standards, that the incident presented no public health hazard. "Normally [the law states] a product like that would not be allowed to be sold until a [legal limit] was established," says Dennis Edwards, a product manager in EPA's Pesticide Regulation Division. He says the agency considered the possibility of public panic if the cereal were recalled. General Mills was allowed to sell the cereal that had left its factories, and buried the remaining 50 million boxes in landfills.

Consumer advocates say both agencies duped the public. By law, "the FDA should have acted to seize the food and remove it from the shelves," says Jay Feldman, director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides.

The pesticides in question are both cholinesterase-inhibiting chemicals that can impair the nervous system. Chlorpyrifos-methyl is registered with the FDA for use on stored oats after they have been harvested. The more toxic chlorpyrifos is not.

Robert Lake, director of the Office of Policy and Planning in the FDA's Food Safety division, acknowledges that the use of chlorpyrifos on oats violates federal law, but is permitted on wheat and other grains. The risk assessment that no harm would come from its use on oats "was a judgment call based on data that's been around a long time," Lake adds. "The stuff was adulterated, but not unsafe."

Feldman and others say the cereal incident is particularly disturbing because children are its main consumers. A 1993 report by the National Academy of Sciences found that children get 10 times the safe level of cholinesterase-inhibiting pesticides, and a 1990 report in the American Journal of Public Health says infants' exposure to pesticides may be more than five times the human threshold for acute effects.

Even pesticides used according to government guidelines can be riskier than consumers expect. The EPA recently fined DowElanco, the maker of both chemicals, for failing to report adverse health effects associated with chlorpyrifos-methyl--the pesticide approved for use on stored grains, including oats. The agency is currently reviewing the health data.

As for those boxes of tainted cereal that have been on supermarket shelves, in May, General Mills settled a class action suit filed by an attorney in Chicago. The result: Consumers who can prove that they bought tainted cereal between May 1993 and July 1994 will be eligible for a coupon for another box of cereal. The offer--which will be advertised via coupons in newspapers--expires in December.

In an objection to the settlement, Con Hitchcock, an attorney with Public Citizen, a consumer-advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., said the coupon scheme is "a promotional opportunity for General Mills to sell more cereal rather than a serious effort to resolve alleged statutory and common-law violations."