2021 Pesticides in the Pantry:
Transparency & risk in food supply chains
Pesticide-intensive agriculture has become the default for how food is grown in the United States. Over one billion pounds of conventional pesticides¹ are used in the U.S. each year.² In the most recent year of data, Americans spent almost $9 billion on pesticides for agricultural use. ³
This widespread use causes widespread exposure. Farmworkers face the most acute exposures when applying pesticides. Due to regular exposure to pesticides and acute poisonings, farmworkers face the most chemical-related illnesses of any occupation in the U.S. and suffer between 10,000 and 20,000 pesticide poisonings per year.⁴ Communities near farms can also be exposed due to pesticide drift. In particular, those living, working, or attending school near larger farms using elevated spraying equipment or crop-dusting planes that apply chemicals to crops and fields face exposure. Children are especially vulnerable to these airborne pesticides, given that their young bodies are still growing and developing.
Pesticide exposure also affects consumers. Pesticide residues have been found in drinking water, soil, rainwater, and a wide range of food products, making human exposure to these chemicals almost unavoidable. Increasingly of concern to consumers, food products that contain pesticide residues can be found across the supermarket; they include many produce items from spinach to cherries, cereal and oatmeal, grains, beans, and even flours and cooking oils.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) biomonitoring has found pesticide residues in the bodies of 90% of Americans studied. A growing body of scientific research connects pesticide exposures to many harmful human health effects, including cancer, birth and developmental defects, liver and kidney disease, obesity, and others. Due to the wide use of so many pesticides, science has hardly begun to understand the health implications of combined exposures, including interactions between chemicals and long-term impacts of small dose exposures over the course of a lifetime.
RESULTS:
The following 17 companies are included in this review (listed alphabetically): ADM, B&G Foods Inc., Campbell Soup Company, Cargill, Conagra Brands Inc., Danone S. A., Del Monte Foods Inc., General Mills Inc., The Kellogg Company, The Kraft Heinz Company, Lamb Weston Holdings Inc., Mars Incorporated, Mondelēz International Inc., Nestlé, PepsiCo Inc., Post Holdings, Inc., and The J. M. Smucker Company. Each company was given the opportunity to review the information compiled in this report and to provide additional information or clarification. The following four companies are new this year (i.e., were not included in our 2019 report): ADM, Cargill, Danone, and Mars. ADM and Cargill were included in this year’s report in recognition of feedback from companies that major grain processors are an important segment of food manufacturing that can either assist or impede consumer goods companies’ action on pesticides. Danone and Mars were also included this year despite neither company being traded on the U.S. stock exchange. Danone (publicly traded in France) and Mars (privately held) both share similar supply chain risks and demands as the other companies in our report; as such, including these companies in our analysis provides insight into the food manufacturing sector as a whole.
1. “Pesticides” includes all chemical products engineered to destroy any kind of agricultural pest (i.e. insecticides, herbicides, rodenticides, fungicides) and excludes natural or biological agents.
2. United States Environmental Protection Agency. Pesticides Industry Sales and Usage: 2008 – 2012 Market Estimates. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-01/documents/pesticides-industry-sales-usage-2016_0.pdf.
3. Ibid.
4. Geoffrey M. Calvert et al., “Acute Pesticide Poisoning among Agricultural Workers in the United States, 1998–2005,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 51, no. 12 (December 2008): 883-898, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18666136.