The platform recently released their first-ever market data on the certification. SPINS, a provider of data and insights for the natural products industry, found that the Glyphosate Residue Free Certification market has reached $204 Million -- a 58% jump year on year.
Henry Rowlands, Director of the Detox Project, said food and supplement brands play a vital role in keeping consumers safe from toxic chemicals.
Dirty politics
“Glyphosate...is really the base chemical for the entire industrial agriculture industry. So as a whole, the industrial agriculture industry has been based on one single chemical. It's pretty obvious that there will be massive political pressure due to support the chemical and thus to support the industry and that's why there's so much focus on it now, because people have started to realize that, industrial agriculture causes problems with climate change, causes problems with health and therefore there is a you know, there is much more conversation than there was five years ago because glyphosate has been kind of put where it should have been which is there's one of the base chemicals for the industry. And as the awareness grows, I think that the politics will also change,” said Rowlands.
Contributing to that awareness is agribusiness giant Bayer, the seller of Roundup, the popular herbicide that contains glyphosate and has been linked to cancer in recent years.
Glyphosate is considered a probable carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. As a result, dozens of countries worldwide have banned the use of the herbicide.
Bayer continues to deny claims that glyphosate causes cancer. However, US juries have repeatedly ruled on behalf of plaintiffs. Juries in the trials have found that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup, do cause cancer and that Monsanto spent decades hiding the risks.
Ground zero
Rowlands, who is based in Bulgaria, said he got involved in this glyphosate world as it relates to the United States because it’s the primary source of the problem.
“I started concentrating on the US because I like to describe it as ‘ground zero’ when it comes to pesticides. There's a huge amount of pesticides used in the US. There are some huge issues generally surrounding the companies, a lot of them being based in the US, which are producing these pesticides. So we focus a lot on the US market and the picture of the US because it affects the rest of the world a lot and so it's kind of a root of the problem. Although there are other countries which are the root is well, especially Bayer now being a German company, but also I mean this is affecting the global market,” explained Rowlands. “ I think the focus has to be on the US and North America to solve the problems because you know, that is one of the main sources of the problem in the first place.”
To hear more about what the Detox Project is doing to move toward a more regenerative future, listen to the NutraCast. You can also subscribe on iTunes, Spotify and Stitcher.
NutraCast is a podcast that focuses on insights from inside the nutrition industry. It is a production by NutraIngredients-USA. Music by Kevin Macleod.
