Oatly.com

Chlormequat in Oatly?

Hi there! Do you test for chlormequat in Oatly? I wish you guys were still making organic Oatly, but was heartened by your glyphosate free guarantees - now just concerned about all of the other chemicals that might not be as widely known but still very harmful.

Responses

Sophia

62 Messages

7 months ago

Hey @ari_ld,

We’re always picky and aim only for high-quality oats and ingredients to use in our products. For a deep dive into how we select our ingredients you can read this article. We even have a dedicated thread only for glyphosate here, which you seem to have insight on. We work with oat suppliers who regularly test their raw oats for a broad range of pesticide residues to maintain high quality and ensure minimal residual substances are present. To date, test results provided to us show levels far below regulatory thresholds and, in the majority of cases, no detectable results at all.

We've also recently launched the Oat Drink Barista Organic in a few of our European markets, you can see if it's available in your market by clicking on the hamburger menu on our website and selecting your market. Otherwise by responding to this thread!

Love Sophia,

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john_cornwell

1 Message

@Sophia thanks for your response, but you seem to be saying only that your oat suppliers "regularly test their raw oats for a broad range of pesticide residues". Will you please confirm whether or not they are testing for chlormequat?

In case you haven't seen the study that likely prompted the original question, the issue is that the Department of Agriculture and the FDA are not yet testing for chlormequat despite "Studies of animals exposed to the chemical show it can disrupt fetal growth and harm the reproductive system...Chlormequat has been used on oats in Europe for decades and it's detected in nearly all people sampled in both the U.K. and Sweden." (https://www.ewg.org/research/ewg-investigation-dangerous-agricultural-chemical-chlormequat-found-popular-oat-based)

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7 months ago

e_mader

1 Message

Following up on john_cornwell's post...

Sophie, I appreciate the BS-talking points and corporate shielding position the you occupy in the CPG public affairs world, however your answer was really lame, as you certainly know.

Oatly is long-overdue for establishing a clear, transparent sourcing policy that does not allow for any oats that have been treated with pre-harvest desiccant (and ideally meet NOP standards). Oatly has buffaloed the public long enough now with the down-home marketing but increasingly the average person is aware of how Oatly has managed to keep your sourcing practices intentionally opaque.

Even as cumbersome and bulky as the oat supply chain is, desiccant-free oats are available in segregated supply lots (through Richardson Milling in Winnipeg and elsewhere as the Oatly sourcing team no doubt knows). Moreover, Oatly leadership certainly knows this issue is not going to go away, consumers will continue to press for it, and the Oatly foot-dragging going on in an effort to squeeze every last bit of extra revenue out cheaper desiccant treated oats should be an embarrassment to everyone who works at the company.

Paying 40-cents more a bushel for clean oats isn't going to put Oatly out of business -- and seriously -- having clean oats would save Oatly money by reducing the strategic communications budget needed to deal with, and obfuscate, this issue.

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6 months ago

Sophia

62 Messages

Hey both!

Thanks, for your responses!

We’ve been in the Oat business for 30+ years, and given that we don’t grow our own oats, we rely on amazing farmers across the globe that grow oats for us!

The oats that enter our factories are always food grade and tested for pesticide, including chlormequat, by our oat suppliers. So, @John_Cornwell, yes, they are testing for chlormequat.

Love,
Sophia at Oatly

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6 months ago