Donnelle Eller

deller@dmreg.com

Two national advocacy groups are suing a Sioux City cooperative they say is falsely advertising its honey as pure, despite tests that show it contains traces of glyphosate, used in Roundup, the most widely used farm herbicide in the world.

The Organic Consumers Association and Beyond Pesticides claim that Sioux Honey Association, the 95-year-old cooperative that makes Sue Bee Honey, is misleading consumers by labeling its honey as pure and natural.

The advocacy groups say their lawsuit is more than a labeling dispute — it's an attempt to push retailers and, ultimately, federal agencies to adopt better standards and practices that would protect bees, honey and consumers from contamination from herbicides that are widely applied by farmers.

The lawsuit points to U.S. Food and Drug Administration documents that indicate Sue Bee Honey contains traces of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. It also highlights a gap in government oversight over the herbicide, which experts say is inadvertently getting into honey.

While the herbicide residue "may be due to the application of glyphosate on crops by neighboring farms and unrelated to beekeeping activities," the advocacy groups say "labeling and advertising of Sue Bee products as 'Pure,' '100% Pure,' 'Natural,' and 'All-Natural' is false, misleading and deceptive."

Sioux Honey Association, with 300 members nationally, didn't respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit and testing.

The EPA hasn't set maximum levels for glyphosate in honey that would effectively establish consumer safety levels. That leaves beekeepers caught between consumers, farming and the government, said Darren Cox, president of the American Honey Producers Association.

By comparison, the European Union has set maximum residue limits for glyphosate in honey at 50 parts per billion.

Cox wants the federal government to set tolerances, which could restrict how farmers apply the popular herbicide.

"We can’t wave a magic wand and make that happen," he said.

Monsanto, the St. Louis-based maker of Roundup, is downplaying the study findings, saying that even the highest levels of glyphosate found in the honey samples are still well within the "acceptable daily intake" set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"You could consume more than 25 gallons of honey every day for the rest of your life and still not exceed the EPA’s exposure limits," Monsanto said in a statement.

Regardless, Andrew Joseph, the state apiarist and a beekeeper, said any trace of herbicide in honey is cause for concern. Honey purity is a source of pride for beekeepers.

"There’s no beekeeper that’s in any way happy about this," said Joseph, who keeps about 130 hives. "All of us who are aware of this study are fairly frustrated, and we’d like more answers."

Is it safe for people?

The FDA study also showed that honey sold in Iowa contains glyphosates, with one sample reaching as high as 653 parts per billion.

John Vargo, research and development coordinator at the State Hygienic Laboratory, who co-authored the study, pulled honey jars from the shelves of Iowa City area grocery stores last spring to replicate testing that FDA chemist Narong Chamkasem developed.

The testing is able to detect glyphosate more accurately at lower levels than existing assessments.

Vargo tested nine honeys at the University of Iowa lab and found eight samples had glyphosate levels at more than 10 parts per billion. Four samples had levels higher than the 50 parts per billion limit established in Europe. One sample was 13 times higher than that limit.

Whether those levels are harmful is up for debate.

An email between FDA officials, used in the lawsuit to connect the FDA samples to Sue Bee Honey, states that recent EPA evaluations have "confirmed that glyphosate is almost non-toxic to humans and animals."

"While the presence of glyphosate in honey is technically a violation, it is not a safety issue," wrote Chris Sack, an FDA residue expert, to Chamkasem and others.

U.S. needs to do more to protect bees, GAO says

But a prominent global agency reached a different finding on glyphosate last year. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, labeled the chemical as "probably carcinogenic to humans.”

The European Food Safety Authority and other global groups have disagreed. And the EPA released a finding in September that said "the strongest support is for 'not likely to be carcinogenic to humans' at the doses relevant to human health risk assessment."

Nowhere is safe from contamination

Vargo said he couldn't determine if the honey he bought in Iowa came from state beekeepers. He declined to name the specific brands he purchased.

The lawsuit said a Sue Bee Honey sample tested in the study — and purchased in Atlanta — showed glyphosate levels at 41 parts per billion.

The Sioux Honey Association, formed by five beekeepers in western Iowa in 1921, has bottling plants in Sioux City, Ia.; Anaheim, Calif.; and Elizabethtown, N.C., that process about 40 million pounds of honey annually.

The cooperative lists three beekepers in Iowa as members.

Altogether, Iowa has about 4,500 beekeepers who manage about 45,000 hives, said Joseph, the state apiarist.

Beekeepers have few options when it comes to avoiding areas where glyphosate is used, especially in Iowa, where about 25 million acres were planted to row crops this year, primarily corn and soybeans.

The majority of Iowa and U.S. farmers grow genetically modified corn and soybeans that can be sprayed with glyphosate or other herbicides, killing the weeds without harming the crops.

Joseph said an important part of beekeeping is finding hive locations that will be "good, productive and safe areas for our bees."

"I don’t think there’s anywhere that would be safe" from possible contamination, he said. "I don’t think there’s any place for beekeepers to hide."

Cox, the American Honey Producers Association president, said beekeepers can't "mitigate the exposure" insects encounter as they forage, typically in about a 3-mile radius around their hives.

"I don’t know how you would fix that," he said. "Bees need agriculture, and agriculture needs bees."

Pesticides are everywhere

Nationally, bees pollinate dozens of fruits, nuts and vegetables in $25 billion of agricultural production, federal data show.

But Iowa's dominant crops don't rely on bees for pollination. Corn is pollinated by the wind, and soybeans self-pollinate.

Still, bees forage soybean and cornfields for pollen and nectar, said Matthew O'Neal, an Iowa State University entomologist. And research shows soybean fields visited by bees can push yields 6 percent to 18 percent higher.

"The boost isn't trivial," O'Neal said. "There’s a reason for soybean farmers to think about encouraging bees on their farms" by planting areas with prairies that provide strong forage for pollinators.

He said the presence of glyphosate in honey is "alarming to people, but it shouldn’t be surprising," given the herbicide's prevalence.

Vargo said other foods, even water, can have small traces of chemicals such as glyphosate.

For example, EPA set glyphosate levels in drinking water at 700 parts per billion.

"Pretty much any product that you test, if you have equipment that’s sensitive enough, you’ll likely find low level detects of pesticides," Vargo said.

Most of the time, though, the amount present isn't a high enough level to be considered a health risk.

The FDA said it tested soybeans, corn, milk and eggs for glyphosate this year as part of a special assignment. Preliminary results showed no pesticide residue violations.

Honey was not part of that assessment, the agency said. The FDA chemist conducted that research independently.

Cox said he's concerned the honey industry is being unfairly singled out. Joseph, the state apiarist, agreed.

"I could have had more glyphosate in morning coffee" than most consumers would find in a year of eating honey, he said.

'EPA has sat silent'

Cox said the honey industry has lobbied EPA for greater protections for bees from pesticides, including herbicides, insecticides and fungicides.

"We’ve asked EPA to put caution labels on other products that were causing harm to our pollinators and to our bees, and we’ve not been successful in those efforts," he said. "EPA has sat silent."

Researchers have recently linked bee deaths to dust from neonicotinoids, used to treat seeds so plants are healthier. The insects also are threatened by Varroa mites, a parasite that attacks bees, and dwindling forage areas such as pastures and prairies.

Iowa and other states ask beekeepers to register their hives and limit when some pesticides can be sprayed to protect nearby colonies.

Bees can find similar threats in cities, O'Neal said. Glyphosate is used to kill weeds on lawns, and communities that spray insecticides for mosquitoes, especially given concerns about the spread of the Zika virus, can wipe out entire bee operations.

"Those are tragedies that can be avoided," he said.

The canary in the coal mine

Most of the threats bees face impact the insects themselves, not their honey, experts say.

Last winter, for example, about 60 percent of beekeepers nationally reported losses that exceeded the acceptable average. About 28 percent of the U.S. bee colonies were lost over the 2015-16 winter, according to a beekeepers survey.

Joseph, the Iowa apiarist, said bees reflect what's going on in the environment around them.

"People view bees as a canary in a coal mine," Joseph said. "Whatever is good or bad — it’s reflected in the hives."

Cox hopes the federal government takes a stronger look at how glyphosate could be getting into honey — whether it's in water, sprayed on flowering plants or taken into the plant from the soil.

Federal tolerance levels would help reassure consumers that honey is safe, said Joseph and others.

Even though tolerances could be helpful, they also could have negative ramifications, Cox said, especially since beekeepers are unable to control glyphosate's widespread use.

"What do you do with the honey if you’ve exceeded a limit? Do you take your $1 million or $2 million harvest to the landfill, get rid of jobs and close up business?" Cox said.