Ben & Jerry's became the latest food company to come under fire after tests showed evidence of a common herbicide in its products.
Independent lab tests commissioned by the Organic Consumers Association found that 10 of 11 samples of Ben & Jerry's ice cream showed traces of glyphosate or its main metabolite, AMPA.
Glyphosate is the most heavily used herbicide in the world but gained increasing notoriety after an arm of the World Health Organization listed it as a "probable" carcinogen in early 2015.
Other regulatory bodies have not reached similar conclusions, and Monsanto, the maker of glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide, sharply criticized the 2015 findings by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Advocacy groups, however, focused on numerous food companies whose products could be made with ingredients modified to resist the herbicide.
Ben & Jerry’s officials said that the company aims to use non-modified ingredients in its ice cream but said that they "need to better understand where the glyphosate they’re finding is coming from."
"Maybe it’s from something that’s not even in our supply chain, and so we’re missing it," Rob Michalak, who heads the company's social mission efforts, told The New York Times.
The OCA, meanwhile, called on the company to change its ingredients sources and suggested that, if it does not do so, that natural or organic stores should drop the brand.
"Ben & Jerry's falsely advertises its products as 'natural' and its brand as 'sustainable' and 'socially responsible,'" OCA International Director Ronnie Cummins said in a statement. "Nothing could be further from the truth."