Cheerios Weedkiller Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against General Mills Over Glyphosate Ingredient

The plaintiff in a new class action law lawsuit against General Mills claims that the company knew about the presence of glyphosate in its cereal but chose not to act on that knowledge. 

Editor’s note: although General Mills donated over a million to quash GMO-labeling efforts in California, the company has since made efforts to remove GMO ingredients. Let’s hope that they can once again truly listen to consumer concerns and find a resolution and that other big food companies follow suit! 

General Mills is facing a potentially damaging class action lawsuit in the U.S. after a Florida woman accused it of engaging in deceptive business practices, by not alerting the public that their Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios cereals contain the known carcinogen and the world’s most used weedkilller – glyphosate.

This new class action follows the landmark cancer trial verdict in San Francisco very closely, in which Monsanto was ordered by a jury to pay over USD $289 Million in total damages to the former school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, a California father who has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which was caused by Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup.

Florida based Mounira Doss filed the Cheerios weedkiller class action lawsuit last Thursday, stating that she has purchased both Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios. She claims that both herself and other consumers would not have purchased the cereals had they known that the product contained a harmful carcinogen.

Doss also claims that General Mills actively tried to cover up the presence of the dangerous chemical from consumers. She seeks for the company to have to disgorge the profits it gained from selling the cereals in question, and to be forced to stop misrepresenting the products.

A 2016 testing project on glyphosate residues in popular American foods by Sustainable Pulse’s partner The Detox Project and Food Democracy Now! is one of the main pieces of evidence being used in the case according to the court documents, after it found levels of glyphosate in both Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios as well as many other products.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer’s 2015 report classified glyphosate as a ‘probable human carcinogen’ and independent scientists agree that this is currently the best classification of the chemical.

The court documents in the class action point to research suggesting that General Mills’ Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios contain the chemical because it is often sprayed on oats right before they are harvested, as a desiccation tool. Oats are one of the main ingredients in Cheerios.

Doss is represented by Scott P. Schlesinger, Jonathan R. Gdanski, and Jeffrey L. Haberman of Schlesinger Law Offices PA.

She seeks to represent two Classes of consumers — a nationwide Class and a Class of Florida consumers who purchased Cheerios or Honey Nut Cheerios.

Glyphosate Box

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