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.
UPDATE: On June 14, the Court dismissed the case for lack of standing under the Supreme Court’s seminal decision in Spokeo v. Robins.
Spokeo teaches that a plaintiff must allege a particularized and concrete injury. Speculative, immaterial injuries will fail. Judge Scola determined that the plaintiff in Cheerios failed to meet this concrete injury requirement. While the complaint alleged, “even ultra-low levels of glyphosate may be harmful to human health,” (emphasis added), there was no allegation as to what those potentially harmful levels are. Additionally, the plaintiff never alleged that she was harmed from eating the cereal. Thus, her injury was only an economic one—“buying a product under allegedly false pretenses.” Here as well, the plaintiff’s pleading fell short. While some samples of Cheerios had tested positive for glyphosate, the plaintiff pleads that the cereal she purchased “contained or could contain glyphosate.” As Judge Scola determined,
NOTE: Following the lawsuit, General Mills Removes ‘100% Natural’ Label from Nature Valley Granola Bars.
put simply, the plaintiff has failed to allege an injury in fact based on her purchase of Cheerios and she therefore lacks standing.”
Cheerios represents yet another example of the formidable hurdle standing can come to represent for plaintiffs post-Spokeo. Courts continue to place alleged injuries under a microscope, and will decline to allow cases to proceed on theoretical allegations not supported by concrete and particularized assertions of harm.
Sustainable Pulse, where this article first appeared, provides the general public with the latest global news on GMOs, Sustainable Food and Sustainable Agriculture from our network of worldwide sources.
