Does pasta contain glyphosate?

There is something wonderfully reassuring about making pasta.

You pour flour into a mixer. Add water. At first nothing seems to happen. Then, almost imperceptibly, the two begin to recognise one another. The flour drinks. The water disappears. What looked like dust becomes dough. A few hours later, after being shaped and dried with patience, it has become something that has nourished families for centuries.

It is difficult to imagine a food more honest than dried pasta.

Perhaps that is why we rarely question it.

We turn the packet over looking for protein, fibre, cooking time, perhaps where the wheat was grown. We admire the bronze-cut surface or the colour of the grain. But almost never do we ask a quieter question.

What happened before the wheat became flour?

That question has been on our minds again this month.

The Soil Association recently wrote an open letter to DEFRA asking for the use of glyphosate as a pre-harvest desiccant to be phased out. A few days later, DEFRA published its reply. Reading the two letters side by side is strangely revealing. Not because one feels obviously right and the other obviously wrong, but because they begin from different instincts.

One asks whether the evidence shows today’s system is safe enough.

The other asks whether we should continue using a substance when reasonable doubt still exists.

Between those two positions sits something surprisingly ordinary.

A bowl of pasta.

At first, the conversation feels remote, almost administrative. It belongs to committees, consultations and scientific papers rather than dinner tables. Yet the moment you remember where pasta actually begins, everything changes.

Not in a factory.

Not in a mill.

But standing quietly in a field, long before anyone starts talking about flour or dough.

Every harvest carries a history. It remembers the season, the weather, the variety that was sown, the life beneath the soil and the decisions made by the farmer from autumn until harvest. By the time the grain reaches a mill, much of that story has already been written.

That is why this conversation matters.

What is glyphosate?

Glyphosate is a herbicide used in agriculture, most commonly to control weeds before crops are planted. In some farming systems it is also used shortly before harvest to help crops dry down more evenly, making harvesting easier and more predictable.

It is also one of the most extensively studied agricultural chemicals ever developed, and one of the most controversial.

A question naturally follows.

If glyphosate is used in a wheat field, does it end up in the pasta we eat?

The answer is less dramatic than many headlines suggest, but more interesting.

After harvest, wheat is cleaned carefully. Stones, dust, chaff and other foreign material are removed through a series of mechanical processes. What does not happen is a great washing of the grain. Milling depends on wheat remaining dry, so the grain is never rinsed clean before it becomes flour.

That does not mean every grain contains glyphosate. Nor does it mean every crop has been treated with it. But it does explain why regulators spend so much time measuring residues. If residues are present, they may remain with the grain through milling and eventually become part of the food.

What do legal limits actually mean?

This is where another expression enters the conversation: the Maximum Residue Level, or MRL.

It is one of those technical terms that sounds reassuring without really explaining itself. Most of us assume it means “the amount considered safe”. In fact, it means something slightly different. An MRL is the highest residue legally permitted when a pesticide has been used according to approved agricultural practice. It is a regulatory limit, not a toxicological one.

Health is assessed using a different measure altogether: the Acceptable Daily Intake. This estimates how much of a substance a person could consume every day throughout their lifetime without an appreciable risk to health.

It is a distinction worth understanding, because much of the public debate quietly confuses the two.

And then another question appears.

If every individual food remains comfortably below its legal residue limit, what happens when we eat them together?

A bowl of pasta. Tomatoes. Bread. Fruit. A glass of wine.

Regulators do model overall dietary exposure and conclude that, for glyphosate, current intakes remain within accepted safety margins. Yet most pesticides are still assessed primarily one by one. Whether small quantities of different chemicals interact with one another inside the human body remains an area of ongoing scientific research. It is sometimes called the cocktail effect, although the science behind that phrase is still evolving.

This uncertainty is one reason why the conversation refuses to disappear.

Risk, doubt and the field

The question of cancer illustrates it perfectly.

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. Other organisations, including the European Food Safety Authority, the European Chemicals Agency, the UK Health and Safety Executive and the US Environmental Protection Agency, examined much of the same body of evidence and concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to present a cancer risk at the levels people are normally exposed to.

That disagreement is often presented as proof that someone must be wrong.

Perhaps it tells us something else instead.

Science is remarkably good at measuring evidence. It is often less comfortable deciding how much uncertainty society should accept.

The discussion becomes even more interesting when we leave the laboratory and return to the field.

Many people assume organic and regenerative farming occupy the same place on a map. In reality, they often part company here.

Organic farming draws a clear line. Synthetic herbicides, including glyphosate, are not permitted.

Regenerative farming asks a different question. How can we disturb the soil less? For some regenerative farmers, a carefully targeted application of glyphosate may cause less long-term damage than repeated ploughing, which can disrupt soil structure, release stored carbon and reduce biological activity. From that perspective, one carefully considered intervention may protect the living soil beneath.

Organic farmers generally arrive at another answer. They seek to redesign the whole system through crop rotations, cover crops and mechanical weed control so that neither repeated cultivation nor synthetic herbicides become necessary.

Both approaches are trying to leave the land healthier than they found it.

They simply disagree about where the compromise should sit.

Where we stand

And perhaps that brings us back to pasta.

We often say pasta is made from flour and water.

That is true.

But it is not the whole truth.

It is also made from every decision that came before the flour ever reached us.

At Carleschi, our work begins there. We choose organic grain not because we imagine farming is simple or because every scientific question has been answered. We choose it because, when uncertainty remains, we find ourselves returning to the oldest instinct of all: to begin with the cleanest field we can.

Everything else follows naturally.

Wholegrain. Stoneground. Flour and water. Time.

The pasta room is where our work becomes visible.

The field is where it truly begins.

Further reading

• What does organic really mean?
• Why we make slow dried pasta
• Fibre is how wheat is built
• Open letter from the Soil Association and supporting organisations to DEFRA (May 2026)
• Soil Association policy briefing on pre-harvest glyphosate
• DEFRA response to the Soil Association letter
• News coverage discussing the campaign and the government’s position

Notes

This article is intended for general educational purposes and reflects our experience working with grain and pasta production. It is not medical or nutritional advice.

We encourage you to read the original documents yourself. Good food deserves informed conversations, and informed conversations begin with the evidence.