Cumin always shows up on these lists, whether it's with heavy metals or something else. It's to the point where I've more or less just stopped cooking with it because I don't trust it to be safe.
Get yourself a dehydrator and try making it yourself. I've started doing this with my herb garden and the catnip I grow for my cats. They much prefer the stuff I make than the stuff from the store as much as I enjoy my fresh dried (oxymoronic??) herbs. I haven't tried cumin yet. We'll see how the peppers in this years attempt at gardening goes.
If this report is seeing spices from outside the EU containing contamination then there are organic options available, as I'm looking at my EU made (comes from France) organic certified Cumin.
I probably have a weird gene or something but cumin smells like disgusting body odour to me and any food that has any trace of it I cannot eat or I will gag
This doesn't happen to me with anything else, I'm not a picky eater and will happily eat literally anything else
There is a hint of that it’s not just you but you get used to it and don’t notice it anymore. It’s kind of how most cheese has a persistent vomit smell.
> cumin smells like disgusting body odour
You're not wrong. If you smell pure cumin (without any other spices or herbs), particularly if you grind and mix it with yogurt to make a salty lassi, you get a whiff of body odor. My kids called it "the BO drink".
It's a weird thing, but the smell becomes quite different in combination with other smells. It's an ingredient in many expensive perfumes, believe it or not! [1]
[1] https://www.fragrantica.com/news/CUMIN-Polarizing-Note-of-Sw...