New Zealand Food Safety keep glyphosate residue limits at 0.1mg/kg for wheat, barley and oats. But most of what New Zealanders eat is imported — under Australian limits up to 200 times higher. Here's why the "win" barely touches what's actually on the shelf.
Every time No More Glyphosate NZ publishes independent food testing results, one question comes up: who actually does the testing, and can they be trusted? This article explains why we use Hill Laboratories, what IANZ accreditation means, why LC-MS/MS is considered the gold standard for glyphosate analysis, and what laboratory results can—and cannot—tell us about glyphosate residues in New Zealand food.
New Zealand's EPA still leans on a 2016 report built from three Monsanto-shaped reviews — one retracted for ghostwriting, two more under active investigation. One of them even repeats a fabricated claim about a viral infection. This isn't about who you trust. It's about what they were given to work with.
Roundup has been sprayed across New Zealand for fifty years without a single independent risk assessment of the product as it's actually formulated and sold. A 2008 legal paper on "man-made disease" — and a real compensation scheme in Denmark — suggest ACC's accident-vs-sickness divide may be leaving glyphosate-related illness with nowhere to go.
Two of the world's most authoritative scientific bodies examined the same evidence on glyphosate — and reached opposite conclusions. One decade, US$18 billion in litigation, a court-rejected EPA assessment, and a trade agreement that lets food exceed New Zealand's own residue limits onto our supermarket shelves later, the question of who is actually being protected — and from what — deserves a straight answer.
You can buy glyphosate-based weedkillers at your local New Zealand supermarket. No cancer warning on the label. The EPA says it's safe — but a US court vacated that very finding, Bayer has paid billions to settle lawsuits, and New Zealand's own reassessment was declined. Here's why the chemical stays on the shelf regardless.
Regulatory approvals are snapshots in time — but science never stops moving. As the US Supreme Court's Roundup ruling places chemical safety decisions firmly in regulators' hands, the question becomes: how quickly do those regulators respond when the evidence changes? Canada's new continuous oversight model for glyphosate offers one answer. New Zealand should be asking the same questions.
After publishing our potato testing results, many readers asked why we only tested for glyphosate, AMPA and glufosinate. The answer reveals just how many chemicals can be used in modern agriculture—and why comprehensive pesticide testing is far more complex and expensive than many people realise.
Canada now continuously monitors new glyphosate evidence as it emerges. Should New Zealand adopt a similar approach, or is periodic reassessment enough in a rapidly evolving scientific landscape?
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into glyphosate residues in food products marketed to families and children. The move raises an important question for New Zealand: if a major U.S. state believes this issue deserves scrutiny, why aren't similar questions being asked here?
