A huge Quaker Oats box is displayed at the company's headquarters in Chicago on Dec. 4, 2000. (Photo : Getty Images/ Tim Boyle)
Quaker Oats is facing a new lawsuit over its false advertising claim that it is offering 100 percent natural oatmeal. Tests showed the presence of the herbicide glyphosate deemed as a human carcinogen.
A class-action lawsuit was filed in Federal District Courts in New York and California, claiming the Chicago-based food company's oatmeals have high levels of glyphosate weed killer. It is the same weed killer found in Monsanto's Roundup that was labeled as cancer-causing by the WHO in 2015.
The suit alleged that Quaker Oats is deceiving consumers by capitalizing on the market's demand of healthful, natural products, RT reported. The company responded to the accusations by saying glyphosate is not used in its milling process. According to them, they are implementing a strict cleansing procedure in producing high quality products such as oatmeals.
In a separate report, the plaintiff's lawyers for the Richman Law Group paid for a test conducted by a St. Louis laboratory in California. Using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, the experiment revealed 1.18 parts per million in a sample of Quaker Oats Quick 1-Minute. It is nearly 4 percent of the allowable limit of the 30 parts per million by the EPA, according to New York Times.
The lawsuit also alleges other products not part of the test, including Quaker Oats Old-Fashioned and Quaker Steel Cut Oats of having significant levels of the cancer-causing chemical. Glyphosate is among the world's commonly used pesticides for corn, canola, sugar beets and soy grown in America.
After Glyphosate was classified as a possible carcinogen, the EPA has set the average daily level intake of glyphosate at 1.75 milligrams per kilogram, while the European Union has announced a daily intake limit not exceeding to 0.3 milligrams per kilogram.
Kim Richman, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs told the publication that the issue is not about the presence of glyphosate, but the company's false advertising. He said that the company owned by PepsiCo is advertising the products as 100 percent natural, when in fact it contains glyphosate that is not natural.
It was not the first time for the company to be sued over wrong labeling. The company settled a class-action suit in 2014 after they were sued over trans fat content in its products. As part of the deal, Quaker Oats remove trans fat from its products, Instant Quaker Oatmeal and Oatmeal to Go.
The plaintiffs are demanding PepsiCo to reformulate the oatmeal products, reveal the presence of glyphosate in the label and refund their purchases. Additional lawsuits will be filed in other states by the plaintiffs against Quaker Oats.
Watch the video below about Quaker Oats' latest lawsuit:
