Kellogg Canada is planning to phase out the use of glyphosate products as a desiccant by the end of 2025, according to their blog Kellogg’s Open for Breakfast.

Kellogg Canada’s parent company, Kellogg’s, announced at the end of 2019 that it would be working with suppliers to stop use of glyphosate to dry out crops prior to harvest.

Glyphosate-based weed killers, also known by the brand name Roundup, are used worldwide and are the target of thousands of lawsuits claiming exposure to the herbicide caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

According to the Kellogg’s Open for Breakfast blog, the practice of using glyphosate products as a desiccant, or drying agent, is not widespread in their global wheat and oat supply chains, and is not an approved practice in the U.S. Critics charge that the practice doubles consumer exposure to a chemical compound classified by World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” However, some Canadian farmers use glyphosate products as a drying agent in certain circumstances, such as when a crop threatened by weather needs to be harvested early.

Kellogg emphasized that all of Kellogg’s finished products are in compliance with regulatory requirements.

CAREX Canada (CARcinogen EXposure), an organization whose mission is to provide information about the known and suspected carcinogens to which Canadians are exposed, has classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans, based on evaluations made by IARC. Health Canada subsequently proposed additional labeling protocols for glyphosate products. Major producer Monsanto has publicly disagreed with this new classification.

Several provincial, territorial, and municipal governments in Canada have already passed legislation to reduce risks to humans and the environment posed by glyphosate products. Some of the restrictions specify using glyphosate products only to target weeds, and address the required distance from bodies of water, as well as banning the use of glyphosate for domestic/cosmetic use, i.e., the use in gardens and yards.

The use of glyphosate products is under fire outside of North America, as well. In 2019, Austria totally banned the use of glyphosate products, becoming the first European Union country to do so. In 2018 the French government stated that by 2021, glyphosate would be banned for “its main uses,” and all uses within five years. Restrictions are also in place in the Czech Republic, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Monsanto, the chemical company that developed and sold glyphosate as Roundup, is the subject of thousands of glyphosate products lawsuits claiming that Roundup use caused cancer in the plaintiff or the plaintiff’s loved one. Monsanto has already lost three costly cases in the California courts, and the recent postponement of another trial indicates that a settlement might be reached soon. Monsanto was acquired by German company Bayer in 2018.