Hi, my name’s Dave and I’m a Cheerios consumer. So I’ve got to admit, any news article that name-drops Cheerios grabs my attention much more effectively than an article mentioning, say, Taylor Swift. (I’ll stop here briefly as a public service to warn that if you somehow happened on this article by accident, that last sentence will be the only mention of Taylor Swift in this piece. Unless you count the sentence I just wrote — that’s just me shamelessly throwing her name into this article as clickbait for the web version.)
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If you’ve read our sister newspapers or websites in the past few weeks, you’ll likely have seen the farm-facing version of the news story I’m talking about: that a Washington, D.C.-based activist research organization called the Environmental Working Group ran checks on urine samples from 96 Americans collected between 2017 and 2023 and detected the chemical chlormequat in 77 of those. It found a greater number of the people in question were exposed in 2023, compared to earlier years, and at higher concentrations. The number, it said, “shows exposure to chlormequat is likely widespread. These findings also suggest regular exposure, since we know chlormequat leaves the body in about 24 hours.”
Since these tests were done on a substance whose sole job is to leave the body, that much shouldn’t be surprising — but it does give you a pretty good idea where the EWG is headed with its announcement. Three paragraphs later, it interrupts its own findings to ask the reader to sign an online petition to “tell (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) to get chlormequat out of our food and bodies!”
That request, it says, is because the U.S. since 2018 has had maximum residue levels in place for chlormequat for imported foods, and increased those MRLs in 2020. Then, presumably for the benefit of anyone who’d been living off-planet since the fall of 2016, the EWG adds that “both regulatory changes took place under the Trump administration.”
It also adds that “many oats and oat products consumed in the U.S. come from Canada.” True, that. Chlormequat chloride, while still approved in the U.S. for use only on ornamental non-food crops, has been approved up here as a plant growth regulator (PGR) in wheat since 2013 and in oats since 2020. It’s sold under the name Manipulator as a means to reduce stem elongation, shorten the crop and reduce lodging.
When PGRs first came to market in Canada, it was observed that they’re better suited to some crop species than others. The Alberta government noted that in Manipulator’s case, wheat was found to be most responsive, barley had an “intermediate” response and oats were “the least responsive.”
Such faint praise may be why, in the face of widespread coverage of the EWG’s report, Canadian oat millers have no problem politely asking oat growers to reconsider using Manipulator at all. “We have seen no agronomic value in the use of Manipulator on oats… In some cases, it has even been shown to reduce grain yield and quality as well as potentially lengthening maturity,” Grain Millers said in an email to growers. Lorne Boundy of Paterson Grain told the Western Producer’s Robert Arnason that while Manipulator “works very well on wheat (and) works decently on barley…it’s mediocre on oats, at best.”
And barley — on which Manipulator was cleared for use in Canada at the same time as oats — has already been through this. The Keep It Clean program’s product advisory last year cautioned barley growers to first check their contract obligations and acceptance from grain buyers before using chlormequat on barley for malt, food or feed.
Wheat seems to have got off relatively easy in the EWG’s findings. In 2022, it ran separate tests on foods and found “high detections” of chlormequat in oat-based products; in 2023, it said, detectable levels of chlormequat were found on 92 per cent of non-organic oat-based foods, while only two samples of wheat-based foods — bread, both of them — had low levels.
It should be pointed out here, as Robert Arnason does in the Producer, that there’s a rather huge difference between “detectable levels” and the allowable MRLs. He notes the median amount of chlormequat found in the EWG tests on food came in at 114 parts per billion in 2023 and 90 in 2022. The EPA’s MRL for chlormequat, meanwhile, is 40 parts per million in imported oat grain, and 10 parts per million for oat bran — in other words, 40,000 and 10,000 parts per billion.
To the EWG, though, those levels are beside the point. “Some animal studies show chlormequat can damage the reproductive system and disrupt fetal growth, changing development of the head and bones and altering key metabolic processes,” it says in its announcement, adding, “This research raises questions about whether chlormequat could also harm humans.”
Where does that leave you, the Prairie oat grower? I’d definitely like to hear more if you’d like to drop me a line via email — but in the meantime, I’ll assume it means you’re waiting. Waiting to see whether U.S. regulators take their cues from the EWG and any U.S. voters sufficiently terrified by its report, or instead rely on the science that set the MRLs in the first place, while deciding whether to allow PGR use on U.S. food crops. If you have any oats treated with Manipulator, it leaves you waiting to see if there’ll still be a buyer. And it leaves you wondering what to do to prevent lodging next time around.
As Paterson’s Boundy says, “You shouldn’t be starting your planning… with ‘Yes, I’m going to use (Manipulator)’… Start with your variety. Pick a good, standing variety, tailor your fertility program to help it stand and go from there.”
Paterson and other oat processors aren’t really in any position to defend Manipulator here. Whatever regulators decide, market acceptance is ultimately up to the customer in the cereal aisle at the grocery store, and that customer’s always right.
And yes, that maxim is also debatable from the perspective of the person waiting 20 minutes and counting in line while that customer argues with the unfortunate cashier over a coupon — but if you decide to enter that debate, you’ve already lost.
