General Mills Class Action Says Cheerios Contain Dangerous Weedkiller

A class action lawsuit accuses General Mills of hiding the presence of glyphosate, a dangerous weedkiller, in Cheerios.

Plaintiff Mounira Doss filed the Cheerios weedkiller class action lawsuit on Thursday, claiming that she has purchased both Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios.

She says the cereals contain glyphosate, a common herbicide used in agriculture.

Doss alleges that the chemical can cause cancer, a fact which General Mills knew or should have known.

Additionally, the Cheerios class action lawsuit claims that General Mills actively tried to cover up the presence of the dangerous chemical from consumers.

Doss notes that glyphosate is a chemical that is found in common herbicides including Roundup, a weedkiller produced by Monsanto.

She alleges that the World Health Organization has categorized the chemical as a “probable human carcinogen,” and the state of California categorized it as a known carcinogen, arguing that the chemical is widely acknowledged to be connected to cancer.

The Cheerios glyphosate weed killer class action lawsuit claims that Doss and other consumers would not have purchased the cereals had they known that the product contained a harmful carcinogen.

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

Doss alleges that because the company knew or should have known that their product contained a dangerous chemical, General Mills engaged in deceptive business practices by not alerting the public to the possible danger posed by the cereal, and breached both warranty and implied warranty with its consumers.

The plaintiff seeks for the company to have to disgorge the profits it gained from selling the cereal in question, and to be forced to stop misrepresenting the product.

The Cheerios chemicals class action lawsuit states that glyphosate is commonly used on corn and soybeans, and has increasingly been used on oat crops. Each year, more than 300 million pounds of the chemical are sprayed on food crops in the U.S., according to the Cheerios class action.

The General Mills weedkiller class action lawsuit points to research suggesting that the General Mills cereals contain the chemical because typically, it is sprayed on oats right before they are harvested, which then allows the chemical to be incorporated into the food produced from the oats.

As support for her claim, Doss cites several studies that she says show the presence of glyphosate in the cereals.

One of the studies Doss points to was released as recently as Wednesday, the day before she filed her Cheerios class action lawsuit.

Studies she also cites include research published since 2016 by the Center for Environmental Health, as well as two nonprofits — Food Democracy Now and Environmental Working Group.

Allegedly, research from all three sources show that both Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios contain glyphosate. She claims that the research shows General Mills is not alone in this issue, as glyphosate has been found in many other cereal brands.

The Cheerios cereal class action lawsuit says even extremely low levels of the chemical can cause cancer.

Doss claims that the research also indicates that children are especially susceptible to the risk of developing cancer from glyphosate exposure because their immune systems are still developing so they are more vulnerable to attack.

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

The Cheerios Glyphosate Weedkiller Class Action Lawsuit is Mounira Doss v. General Mills, Case No. 0:18-cv-61924, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

UPDATE: On June 14, 2019, a Florida federal judge dismissed a class action lawsuit claiming that General Mills should have told customers that there were low levels of the weedkiller glyphosate in Cheerios.