Episode #295
Chuck Benbrook: What the Driscoll’s Lawsuits Reveal

Chuck Benbrook examines what the Driscoll’s lawsuits reveal about the growing tension between corporate power, pesticide exposure, food safety, and transparency in the berry industry. He discusses Driscoll’s lawsuit against Localize after the company criticized pesticide practices around Watsonville-area schools, as well as allegations raised by former Driscoll’s agronomist David Harada about pesticide applications and berries destined for Canada. Benbrook also looks at a separate challenge to Driscoll’s marketing and production claims involving hydroponics and plastics. Together, these legal battles lead to a larger question: what responsibility does a dominant food company have to go beyond minimum legal requirements when the health of farmworkers, children, consumers, and farming communities may be at stake?

Chuck Benbrook’s interview has been edited and condensed for clarity:

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Chuck Benbrook was interviewed by Dave Chapman in August of 2026:

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Dave Chapman 0:00
You sent me a long document that you had written that was submitted to a court for a lawsuit. Right now, this is about Driscoll’s. Right now, Driscoll’s is in several lawsuits, and they’re being sued by several different people for various allegations, and we can talk about those.

Dave Chapman 0:22
A really important one is by David Harada, who worked for them, and basically he felt he lost his job because he was telling the truth to them about what was going on. We’ll talk about that, but this is different. This is a lawsuit where Driscoll’s is suing Localize, a small app on your phone that you use to find where you should get real food, and could you tell us about that?

Chuck Benbrook 0:53
Sure. I got a call from an attorney in Houston that had been hired by the two young men that started this Localize web-based system to help people around the country identify sources of high-quality, organic, local food to improve their diet and their health and support local food systems, which, as you know, Dave, is a trend and a cause that people all over the country are promoting.

Chuck Benbrook 1:30
These two young men in Texas built an app that people spend, I think, like 59 bucks a year to subscribe to, and then the users just type in their zip code and the food that they’re after, and it pops up all sorts of local sources or mail-order sources of the product that they’re interested in procuring. It’s taken off remarkably well. I think they have on the order of 700,000 subscribers, which is a lot of people.

Chuck Benbrook 2:13
One of the ways that they’ve attempted to expand the use of their app and encourage other people to use it in new ways is to feature educational information on it and highlights of what’s going on in the food and ag space, and sometimes they poke big ag in the underbelly.

Chuck Benbrook 2:37
They decided some months ago to feature some of the controversies around Driscoll’s in Watsonville over the use of pesticides in and around schools, which some people think may be part of the explanation for some elevated rates of pediatric cancer in that coastal California area where significant acreage is devoted to Driscoll’s berry production.

Chuck Benbrook 6:33
This Localize team featured some information about the controversy in the Watsonville area surrounding Driscoll’s production practices, and in particular, they were critical of Driscoll’s for not supporting efforts to reduce the use of toxic pesticides around schools and where kids hang out a lot.

Chuck Benbrook 6:33
They also posted some of their content on social media, on TikTok, on Snapchat, etc. In these social media platforms, there’s an opportunity for people that are viewing the content to comment, usually on the right side, and it’s kind of a running stream of commentary.

Chuck Benbrook 6:33
Some of these comments got quite sharp and critical of Driscoll’s, and even kind of worrisome: “We ought to string the bastards up,” “Send them to jail for poisoning kids.” Driscoll’s management and attorneys took exception to that and sued the Localize company in court, asking a judge to force them to take down the content, eliminate the threatening social media commentary, and provide what they would regard as truthful information about the nutrition and high quality of Driscoll’s fruit.

Chuck Benbrook 4:52
Essentially, it’s a three-person company. All of a sudden, it has a real legal problem on its hands. They hired a capable, well-respected defense firm in Houston, and they looked around for somebody that might know something about this, and somehow they found me and asked me if I would take a look at the case.

Chuck Benbrook 5:22
They needed a declaration to submit to the judge that was considering a preliminary injunction motion from Driscoll’s, which basically was saying to the judge, “Judge, we’re going to win on the merits, so please just order the relief that we’re seeking now, even before the trial.” That’s often what preliminary injunctions seek in this type of litigation.

Chuck Benbrook 5:50
This Texas attorney had to contest this, and in order to contest it, he needed at least some expert testimony, and so he asked me if I would do it. After I heard from him that Driscoll’s had not agreed to settle the case on terms that clearly would have been fairly advantageous to Driscoll’s, I decided to weigh in, and I wrote a declaration on the underlying pesticide use and risk issues that are of concern in the Salinas-Watsonville area.

Dave Chapman 6:36
It was a pretty powerful opinion that you wrote – I read the whole thing. There’s a lot to unpack there. Let’s just start, seeing as this was one of the big issues that came up. Do the children around Watsonville have an elevated incidence of cancer?

Chuck Benbrook 7:05
Many of your podcasts have addressed cancer epidemiology. It’s a complicated field. It’s dynamic. There have been some studies in that area that report a higher frequency of certain cancers in that sort of multi-county area around Watsonville compared to the rest of the state.

Chuck Benbrook 7:35
I haven’t studied that particular paper in great detail, but that concern and that assertion have been raised multiple times in the area in local media, and it’s something that certainly the farmworker community is very concerned about because of the time that they spend out in the fields and in close proximity to where these pesticides are being applied.

Dave Chapman 8:12
One of the lawsuits is from David Harada suing Driscoll’s for wrongful termination and basically harassment, I believe. He was an agronomist for them, and he discovered that some of their contract growers… Driscoll’s doesn’t mostly actually own the land and grow the berries. They pay other people to do that. They buy from them, and the other people take the risk. The other people pay the labor and all of that.

Dave Chapman 8:50
What he discovered in his job of auditing them is that some of them were spraying illegally – they were spraying too frequently. He reported that to his bosses at Driscoll’s. This developed, and it went on. Also, he discovered that they were spraying illegally on berries that were being shipped to Canada because Canada has stricter pesticide laws than the U.S.

Dave Chapman 9:19
Supposedly, things that are grown for export to Canada are grown to meet Canadian law, not U.S. law. But they were not. He discovered there was actual fraud there. Again, he went to his bosses. They tried to work on it, but in the end, he felt that he was being directed to mislead people, to sweep it under the rug, and to not mention it. All the things that are common in these kinds of instances of, like, we don’t want an issue, a….

Chuck Benbrook 10:00
Dave, this is so reminiscent of the reaction of pesticide companies when they’ve sponsored research on the toxicity or adverse health impacts of one of their products. There’s an experiment that’s underway, and it looks like it’s starting to show problems, that there’s some evidence of an adverse effect. A lot of the time, they discover that there’s something wrong with the study, and they terminate it, and nobody ever finds out about it.

Chuck Benbrook 10:23
When companies get as big as most of the four leading pesticide companies, and Driscoll’s has the same kind of share of the berry market that Syngenta or Bayer-Monsanto have of the pesticide market. They’re dominant players. There is just such an ethos inside the companies that develops almost naturally, and it’s all about protecting the brand, protecting the product lines.

Chuck Benbrook 11:25
Actions that Driscoll’s would not have thought two seconds about doing 20 years ago are now, it strikes me, sometimes considered acceptable. It’s simply because big companies have big reputations, and they have to do everything they can to avoid questions being raised in the minds of consumers. The things that are being done by some of the larger companies are very troubling, and they’re very regrettable.

Chuck Benbrook 12:08
I think it’s really at the heart of the current controversy around Driscoll’s. It’s how Driscoll’s has dealt with both the responsibility it has as now the leading player in the berry market and the importance of Driscoll’s fruit to the health of millions of Americans on a daily basis.

Chuck Benbrook 12:34
That is an awesome responsibility. I think it’s a responsibility that, as companies grow, becomes harder and harder to deal with without taking some actions that are really hard to defend.

Dave Chapman 13:04
Let’s step back just for a moment from Driscoll’s and look at pesticides. The more I learn, the worse it gets. I feel that there are so many unresolved questions about the health impacts of pesticides. Of course, the farmworkers are on the front line, and they’re going to get it worse than anybody, and they’re going to get it earlier than anybody because they’re getting much higher levels, and their kids are getting much higher levels.

Chuck Benbrook 13:39
Also the applicators, Dave. You’ve got to remember them. They often are exposed even more than farmworkers in the fields.

Dave Chapman 13:50
Yes. I have to say, the home users actually don’t have the safety equipment of the applicators nor their training, and they have been told that glyphosate is as safe as table salt, so they slop it around and don’t think much about it until their dog dies.

Chuck Benbrook 14:12
Yeah. One of the things that’s come up in the litigation, both on Roundup and non-Hodgkin lymphoma and paraquat and Parkinson’s disease, is that some brands of paraquat herbicide were sold on the home market. They’re not anymore, but they were not that long ago. Of course, Roundup is still available in lawn and garden stores and sold to the general public.

Chuck Benbrook 14:38
The way that the pesticide companies get the EPA to say yes to those formulations is that they basically mix the active ingredient with a lot of water. They dilute it to where, when a farmer buys Roundup, it’s got probably 40% to 45% glyphosate by weight in the gallon jug. It’s concentrated.

Chuck Benbrook 15:04
That farmer has to mix that one gallon with 50 gallons of water before it’s sprayed on the field, or 30 gallons, or 70 gallons. It can depend on a variety of factors. But the point is that often the pesticide companies will sell directly to homeowners a ready-to-use product that’s already mixed in water and has less than 1% of the active ingredient.

Chuck Benbrook 15:36
The companies say to the EPA, “Oh, well, it’s not going to harm anybody. It’s only 1% of the chemical in the water in the mix.” But the problem is sometimes people spray a lot. They spray in flip-flops and shorts, and they get it on their legs, they get it on their hands and their arms, and they get a lot. Because they’ve been told it’s safe, they don’t take any steps to wash it off.

Chuck Benbrook 16:05
That’s why, particularly in the case of the Roundup non-Hodgkin lymphoma litigation, so many people were exposed to enough Roundup to significantly contribute to their disease because they just basically let it get on their skin. They were told it was safe. It didn’t cause any rash. It didn’t cause any symptoms. So they figured, “Well, I guess Monsanto’s right. It’s safe.”

Chuck Benbrook 16:35
We discussed in one of the earlier podcasts, when a pesticide damages your DNA, you don’t feel anything. You don’t feel that cell starting on its path to cancer. You don’t feel that tension in your immune system as it tries to snuff out the early growth of cancer. Every person on the planet has thousands of cancerous cell growths that start every day that we’re alive.

Chuck Benbrook 17:06
But we have these magnificent immune systems that are very capable, and they’re redundant. There are two or three different ways to stop a given cancerous cell from progressing, but the problem is, for some people, something else is taking the attention of the immune system or impairing its response at some point in their life when they’re exposed to a chemical that has damaged their DNA and started a cell on its path to cancer.

Chuck Benbrook 17:40
It’s those periods when that cancerous growth, over a three-week period or a month, can kind of get ahead of the immune system. Then the odds are that maybe the immune system’s never totally going to catch up and snuff out that cancerous growth.

Chuck Benbrook 17:59
That’s what the cancer specialists and public health specialists that have studied this… This is now understood. It’s not a matter of debate. We really have a much better handle on how low-level chronic exposures to a number of chemicals can actually lead to cancer in some people in the population. Not everybody.

Chuck Benbrook 18:28
Dave, we all know people that smoked one or two packs of cigarettes for their entire lives and didn’t get lung cancer. Does that mean that smoking cigarettes doesn’t cause lung cancer? No. It means that some people have a healthy, active immune system, and nothing distracted or undermined their immune system when cancerous cells were developing in their lungs. It’s not that they didn’t have the beginnings of cancer in their lungs; they did, but their immune system snuffed it out.

Dave Chapman 19:08
Chuck, what do you think are some of the significant risk factors that would impact that healthy immune system? What are some lifestyle choices, some choices that we have in our lives? Obviously, there’s a genetic predisposition. But what are some lifestyle choices that we have?

Chuck Benbrook 19:26
That’s a pretty easy question. Of course, the main thing is that you’ve got an ear infection, a urinary tract infection, an injury, a joint replacement, surgery, or something else that is demanding a lot of attention from your immune system. Of course, everybody has that sort of thing at some point in their life.

Chuck Benbrook 19:27
Maybe you, unfortunately, have some Taylor Farms lettuce and have Cyclospora for four or five days. Your immune system is going to be hyper-focused on dealing with that threat for a period of time. The thing that probably, for most people, explains why some cancerous cell growths get to the next stage of development is because the immune system is busy dealing with some other threat.

Chuck Benbrook 19:27
But there’s also the fact that several chemicals impair the response of the immune system, and glyphosate happens to be one of them. Of course, all Americans are exposed to dozens of chemicals every day, including at least a few chemicals that impair the immune response. There’s that.

Chuck Benbrook 19:27
Then there are chronic health conditions that pose an ongoing, steady-state demand on the immune system. Things like any health problem, rheumatoid arthritis, or fibromyalgia. Any problem that’s caused by inflammation in the body somewhere, that’s going to trigger changes in cells that demand the attention of the immune system.

Dave Chapman 19:27
What about some of the wonderful American diet?

Chuck Benbrook 21:45
One of the primary ways that chemicals damage DNA and contribute to cancer risk is through what’s called oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is caused by the generation of free radicals in our cells. It’s something that happens just normally every day we’re alive. But our bodies produce antioxidants that neutralize free radicals and limit the damage from oxidative stress.

Chuck Benbrook 22:25
Unfortunately, several pesticides and other industrial chemicals that people are exposed to trigger oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is a cumulative thing. The best way to neutralize the adverse effects of free radicals on a person’s DNA is to eat a lot of antioxidants in your diet. Brightly colored fruits and vegetables, beans, and any food that has a lot of phenolic compounds that are antioxidants.

Chuck Benbrook 23:06
Studies that have compared the total antioxidant activity of organic food to conventional food show an average 20% advantage for organic food. That’s why that’s one of the most important consumer health benefits from purchasing organic food, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables. The diet provides critical supplemental antioxidants, which are very important among the very young because the body’s endogenous antioxidant system isn’t fully developed at birth.

Chuck Benbrook 23:51
Once a kid gets six or seven years old on through mid-adulthood, unless we have some disease or problem, our bodies are producing an ample supply of natural antioxidants so that, with the extra we get from our diet, we tend to be fine. But from age 40 or so on, your endogenous production of antioxidants goes steadily down.

Chuck Benbrook 24:20
For you and me, we are much more dependent on our diets for enough antioxidants to deal with any oxidative stress that’s impacting our bodies, which is one of the reasons I try to eat a pint of berries every day if I can.

Dave Chapman 24:38
There’s a double win with organic food. One is that it has more antioxidants and maybe a greater variety of antioxidants, and the other is that you’re not getting the pesticide residue load.

Chuck Benbrook 24:50
Exactly. One of the findings from the research that I did before 2012, when I was the chief scientist of The Organic Center, that really excited me, and it hasn’t gotten the attention that it deserves, is that when you calculate the nutritional quality of organic fruit compared to conventional fruit on a per-calorie basis, the organic fruit is even better.

Chuck Benbrook 25:22
That’s because with conventional fruit that’s been grown in a system with a lot of extra nitrogen and a lot of irrigation water to really make those big strawberries, and the big juicy apples where you bite into one and you need a bib to eat it, all that extra moisture and sugar dilutes the concentration of the phytochemicals that are contributing to the total antioxidant capacity of that apple.

Chuck Benbrook 25:55
Yeah, the apple’s bigger, it’s sweeter, it’s more moist, and it has roughly the same phenolics in it, but the amount of total antioxidant capacity per calorie in the apple is way down compared to an organic apple that’s only two-thirds the size, has a more distinct and sharp flavor profile, is less dominated by just simple carbohydrates and sugar, and has a higher concentration of the phenolics.

Chuck Benbrook 26:37
When you look at organic fruit for nutritional quality on a per-calorie basis, it really stands out as providing… We did the calculation: if you buy good organic blueberries like King Grove Farm produces, you get a whole extra serving worth of antioxidants compared to conventional berries when you look at it on a per-calorie basis. That’s good. That’s a good thing because, in general, most Americans need to reduce their caloric intake.

Chuck Benbrook 27:16
This is what just frustrates me so much. There is so much science from all over the world that supports what I’ve just said, but this is all a well-kept secret in the United States. Would anybody that works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture dare speak to the fact that organic food is more nutritious than conventional food? Well, not if they want to keep their job.

Chuck Benbrook 27:44
The reason that the American consumer doesn’t understand how much healthier organic food is is because our government will not support that message, will not conduct the research, or release the data that shows what people from the rest of the world have understood for 20 years. That’s why they’ve been investing in their organic sectors and growing them steadily. But not here in the U.S. No, that’s too complicated for us.

Dave Chapman 28:18
I was just talking with a rancher named Chris Baggett from Indiana, a livestock farmer. He raises beef cattle. The whole conversation was interesting. I need to interview him. He was talking about the fact that organic has this reputation of being for the elites – that it takes a lot of money to eat organic.

Dave Chapman 28:46
He said, “I deliver steak to people who live in trailer parks. They care about the money that they spend on food, but they actually find that they spend less money when they eat my steak than when they get a conventional steak.” He was talking about the idea of ultra-processed food, and that people who eat ultra-processed food can only eat ultra-processed food. It’s got to be very easy to digest and chew up easily.

Dave Chapman 29:14
He says, “My steaks aren’t like that. I can’t eat the same volume of my steak as I do of a CAFO steak, but I get so much more health from it, and so I eat less. I am full, and I am healthy.” I thought, “Wow, you’re really laying it out there, brother.”

Chuck Benbrook 29:39
Dave, on the livestock side of the plate of the American diet, the unequivocally most important consumer health benefit of organic eggs, milk, dairy products, meat, and poultry is the composition of the fatty acids in these foods. Of course, we’re concerned about the fat content of animal products. Some of the highest concentrations of saturated fat are in animal products.

Chuck Benbrook 30:18
But animals that are fed primarily forages produce much more omega-3s and much less omega-6s than conventional livestock that are fed a grain, corn, and soybean-heavy ration. Corn is a building block of omega-6 fatty acids, which is why corn oil, corn-fed beef, and corn-fed pork have substantially elevated omega-6s relative to omega-3s.

Chuck Benbrook 30:58
Basically, conventional beef has between six and 10 omega-6s to omega-3s. An omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of 10 to one to six to one, in that range. Grass-fed beef, grass-fed pork, and chickens fed forage-based feeds, which is not that common, but certainly organic dairy, are down in the four to one to as low as one to one range.

Chuck Benbrook 31:35
One hundred percent grass-fed Organic Valley whole milk has very close to a one to one omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, which is as heart-healthy as animal food can be. Again, it’s kind of a well-kept secret in the U.S. because it hasn’t been given the focus and the research attention that is warranted based on the public health benefits that are now really readily attainable by incrementally switching livestock back to a more forage-based diet, which we have to do for soil health, cost, and other reasons.

Dave Chapman 32:29
I just love it that here we are. I am truly just a civilian. Yes, I’m a farmer. I know a lot and I read a lot, but here we are talking about omega-3s and omega-6s. Fifty years ago, I don’t think very many people outside of academia or industry were having any thoughts about those. Now this is a common conversation. But can you share with me, omega-6s sound like they’re not a good idea. Why not?

Chuck Benbrook 32:57
Because they are clearly risk factors for cardiovascular disease and all the related problems like stroke, heart attacks, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes. That’s why. Again, there’s so much literature from around the world that now makes clear that we don’t understand all the reasons why food that contains more omega-3s and less omega-6s is really good for you, which, of course, is why salmon and tuna are so healthy. A lot of it’s about the omega-3s that are naturally part of these fish.

Chuck Benbrook 33:54
Other countries have acknowledged this and educated their consumers and guided their food industry to do whatever they can to increase the omega-3s in the diet and reduce the omega-6s. Of course, in the U.S. diet, it’s so obvious how to do that. We eat a lot of fried foods: French fries, fish and chips. A lot of baked goods are fried. What are they fried in? Corn oil and soybean oil. Very high in omega-6s, very low in omega-3s.

Chuck Benbrook 34:37
That’s what really was one of the profound changes that started about 1950 in the American diet, which explains in part why there were very few people with obesity, fewer people with diabetes, and far fewer people with heart disease in 1950 compared to 2026, when there’s so much fried food in our diets.

Chuck Benbrook 35:09
What’s the solution? Pretty obvious. Use a different oil. There are cooking oils out there that have a much lower level of omega-6s and a much higher level of omega-3s, like canola oil, for example.

Dave Chapman 35:23
Canola and olive oil I’m assuming.

Chuck Benbrook 35:25
Olive oil, etc. For scientists like me that have been involved in tracking the understanding in the scientific community and debates among dietitians and among food scientists about all of these: the degree to which improving the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio would improve health outcomes, of course, that’s been debated. It hasn’t been clear, but it has become clearer and clearer.

Chuck Benbrook 36:02
Again, other countries have decided that the evidence is good enough now to make some systematic, well-funded changes in how they grow food, what food they grow, and how they process it. They’ve done it, and it’s why Europeans are generally far healthier than Americans. Here in America, we have the capacity right now to shift most of the fresh fruit and vegetable industry to organic production.

Chuck Benbrook 36:39
Why we haven’t done it, it just escapes me. I know why we haven’t done it, but we can overcome all of those constraints relatively easily and substantially reduce pesticide exposures because probably 80% of pesticide exposures come from fresh fruits and vegetables. We’re talking about 12 million acres of crops out of 300-something million.

Dave Chapman 37:10
There’s a lot that comes from herbicides too. That’s the Midwest.

Chuck Benbrook 37:17
Herbicides in the Midwest, but it’s not coming through food. It’s coming through the air and through the water. I hope that one of the tipping points that happens between now and when a new administration takes over the federal government in a little over a couple of years is that among the changes is a decision by Congress, the administration, and the federal government that we’re now going to be open and honest with the American public about the advantages of organic food and farming in terms of public health.

Chuck Benbrook 38:06
Again, it is a well-kept secret in the United States because too many conventional farmers and conventional food businesses regard organic as a threat to their market share and to their profits, as opposed to seeing it as an opportunity to sell a higher-quality, higher-value product to their customers that’s not only going to make people healthier, but is also going to make farmers, their families, and farmworkers healthier. It’s going to make the environment better off. It’s a win-win-win.

Chuck Benbrook 38:48
I sure hope that the stars will align in 2029 and that the government says, “Okay, we’re going to start going after at least the low-hanging fruit.” The low-hanging fruit will be converting berries, apples, pears, and tomatoes to organic production as fast as possible across the U.S. It can be done.

Dave Chapman 39:14
I know it can be done, and I also know that the political barriers are huge. Yes, if the government wanted to make America healthy again, it would have incredible leverage in that. What about industry? We started out by talking about Driscoll’s. Seventy percent of organic berries in America are sold by Driscoll’s. I don’t know where they are in conventional. My guess would be 50%, but they’re huge.

Dave Chapman 39:47
I’m not particularly picking on Driscoll’s. I’m just saying here’s a huge company that has incredible influence on our government and on our food system. If that company said, “You know what? We want to take our conventional berries and reduce them by half and shift all of that berry production to organic,” what would that look like? What would they do?

Chuck Benbrook 40:17
They would do what they’re doing now on significant acreage. They would just do it on more acres. What the citizens’ petitions and the activism in California are all about is just asking them to start around schools. There’s just really good reasons to do that.

Chuck Benbrook 40:41
It is clearly in Driscoll’s power, Taylor Farms’ power, and the power of all of the big organic players in California, they could all say, “In five years, all of the acreage within half a mile of a school is going to be organic.” Period. They just do it.

Dave Chapman 41:01
Right. They would go beyond the legal requirement, right, and meet the ethical requirement. I think we have a situation in which the laws around pesticides tend to be set by the pesticide companies. It’s just how it is. We know that they’re testing only the active ingredient in a pesticide in a very unrealistic situation. They’re not testing it on children.

Dave Chapman 41:02
They’re not testing it on the final compound, and they’re not testing the interaction of all the pesticides that everyone’s exposed to. If you said, “Well, we think the laws are inadequate. We’re going to go beyond them.” There have been instances of that in human history.

Dave Chapman 41:08
The government and the corporations working together to address the ozone depletion in our atmosphere was an example of government working with industry to make a voluntary choice, not just to say, “This is illegal.” Yes, we’re going to work with that, and we’re going to keep tightening the law and tightening the law. But they were working with an international community.

Dave Chapman 42:11
They couldn’t control the laws of every country, but they were able to change it so that we could all live better and longer, have healthier lives, and our grandchildren could still have healthy lives. It might be possible, but if you were the new CEO of Driscoll’s – because I see they just replaced Soren Bjorn and brought in Brie Reiter Smith. She’s one of the Reiters – if you were the new CEO, what might you do?

Dave Chapman 42:45
Driscoll’s has got a problem right now. People are now getting to know their name very well. They’re one of the most recognizable brands in the supermarket. But now there’s an awful lot of negative talk about Driscoll’s. For lots of different reasons.

Dave Chapman 43:03
There was a new lawsuit that just came out today, I think, from Beyond Pesticides. I’m sorry. I’ll come back to that question. I promise. Can you explain the Beyond Pesticides lawsuit? What have you learned about it so far?

Chuck Benbrook 43:17
I saw the press release on it and got the complaint, and I’ve read it. It’s basically challenging Driscoll’s for misleading and unscientific claims that they’re making on their packaging and in their marketing. There are really two things that they focus on. So much of the expansion in Driscoll’s production has been in systems that are hydroponic, where they level land, they put plastic down, they’re growing in pots, and then they cover the whole thing with plastic.

Chuck Benbrook 43:59
There’s this huge amount of plastic in the system, and as a result, there are these microplastic particles that are on and in the berries. They’re challenging Driscoll’s for not being truthful about the presence of microplastics. They’re also challenging Driscoll’s on the notion that most Driscoll’s berry production is grown in the soil on healthy-looking farms where the plants are growing in fields and it’s open, when in fact most of it’s covered with plastic and really has become very industrial.

Chuck Benbrook 44:50
Particularly, the hydroponic production is very dependent on plastic. They’re asking the court to force Driscoll’s to alter its messages and be more truthful about how they’re actually growing most of their fruit. Now, the new CEO, who is, I believe, the granddaughter of the founder of Driscoll’s.

Chuck Benbrook 45:27
In an earlier part of her adulthood and career with the company, went down to South America and grew berries and contributed to Driscoll’s expansion of hydroponic and, I suppose, in-ground berry production in Chile and Peru, which is where so much of the organic berries in the off-season now – the organic berries that Driscoll’s sells – are coming from: Chile, Peru, and Mexico.

Chuck Benbrook 46:02
She must know about how they do it because she played a role in building that. I don’t know how it’s going to play out, but I would say that Driscoll’s and much of the conventional fruit and vegetable industry need to get over their fear of embracing organic and committing to shifting most of their production to organic, because if they don’t do it, consumers are going to force them before long.

Dave Chapman 46:38
I have to say that, so far, Driscoll’s has used their enormous power to shift organic over to how they want to produce berries instead of the other way around. I want to say that I celebrate any berry that is grown without pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, or fungicides. That’s a step. That’s an important step, certainly for the people involved in the production.

Dave Chapman 47:09
It’s a big step, and for their children living in the community and schools that are being hit with pesticide drift. I’m willing to bet that that drift is much less around the schools where the children of the executives go to school every day. But aside from that, nonetheless, it’s still not what I would call really organic. That’s what I would like to see: organic changing the industry instead of industry changing organic.

Dave Chapman 47:42
Soren Bjorn, the guy who just left as CEO of Driscoll’s, said in an interview, “Well, I don’t see what the fuss is about hydroponics because basically that’s how we grow in the ground too. We just grow in sand, and it’s all liquid feed.” I thought, “I can’t believe he just said that to a reporter,” because he just said the soil doesn’t matter. He was talking about organic production because nobody was complaining about their chemical hydroponic production.

Dave Chapman 48:15
He was saying, essentially, we are not growing in a living soil; we are growing in a system in which we provide the nutrition for the plants. I think, based on what we’re talking about here, it means that our customers are getting a nutrient-deficient berry out of that because you need the living soil.

Dave Chapman 48:39
David Harada has discovered that Driscoll’s is shipping berries that are illegal in Canada. They have prohibited pesticides or a prohibited number of pesticide applications. It’s against their law. Everyone is kind of struggling with how much of this is going to come out and how to resolve it.

Dave Chapman 49:04
It occurred to me that there’s another issue, which is that Canada does not allow hydroponics to be certified as organic, and so you can’t export a berry to Canada that’s been grown hydroponically. Now, Driscoll’s has said over and over in public that they don’t grow anything hydroponically, even though they clearly do. I’m sorry, that’s just all they’ve done to make that statement, which is to try and redefine a word and say that what we do is not hydroponic, but it clearly is, and they know it is.

Dave Chapman 49:43
Although I’ve talked to them enough to go, I think a number of them have actually convinced themselves that that’s true. But nonetheless, the Canadians have a definition, and I don’t know how that’s being enforced at all. That’s probably another lawsuit waiting to happen.

Chuck Benbrook 49:58
Yeah. It’s kind of an unfortunate time on the trade front between the U.S. and Canada, where, who knows, given the politics of what’s happening between these two countries, it’s just unpredictable what might transpire. But the Canadians do a pretty good job of trying to assure that the food coming in meets their standards.

Chuck Benbrook 50:33
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they become even a bit more vigilant relative to imports from the U.S., given the current developments with the Trump tariffs and the new tariffs from Canada. I don’t know what the tariff treatment of berries is. It just strikes me that it’s not a great time for any food company that has a lot of cross-border movement of food to be trying to cut corners on food safety.

Dave Chapman 51:19
All right. Let me go back to the question that I’m sorry I asked and then interrupted. I’m just trying to see big solutions here, or big steps – a step towards a big solution. You’ve made it very clear in this conversation that if you wanted to genuinely make America healthier, then you would have all the beef be raised and pasture-fed. That’d be true for dairy, and that’d be true for beef. You would have all the vegetables and berries be grown organically.

Dave Chapman 51:43
You’re now talking about the end of the world, really, Chuck. Okay, let’s say we do need to solve this problem. We are making our people sick. We’re making ourselves sick, our kids sick, and our grandkids sick. If you were the head of a large food company like Driscoll’s, what might you do to help bring that change around?

Dave Chapman 52:25
Driscoll’s has said, “Well, we would grow all organic, but the market isn’t there.” Is that the answer? Do we need to address the market? If so, can we get a company like Driscoll’s to work with the USDA? We’re obviously in fantasy here. How do we do this?

Chuck Benbrook 52:45
Dave, I want to be clear. It’s going to take a decade, maybe even a generation, to shift to 80% to maybe even as much as 90% of the fresh fruit and vegetable production in the U.S. to organic. But significant progress can be made fairly quickly.

Chuck Benbrook 53:16
Just by taking out of the production systems the half dozen riskiest pesticides that are showing up regularly as residues, we can eliminate a significant share of the pesticide dietary risk even before the ground has gone through the three-year transition to organic.

Chuck Benbrook 53:38
Farmers will move to organic in an incremental process, but as that progress occurs, there’ll be benefits even to much of the conventional production. Same thing with animals. It’s going to be a long time before all of the milk is produced from only grass-fed dairy cattle, but a much more significant role of forages in the rations of all dairy cattle is not only totally feasible; it has to happen in order for Midwestern farmers to bring forage crops and non-grain crops into their rotation, which they have to do for soil health reasons, for economic reasons, and to protect the water quality.

Chuck Benbrook 54:32
We can make a lot of positive progress and bring about positive public health outcomes without saying, “Oh, we’ve got to go 100% grass-fed beef or 100% organic fruits and vegetables.” I want to say that. What can be done? I think that there are relatively few high-risk pesticides used on berry crops that are… The new USDA data on pesticides in blackberries is really worrisome.

Chuck Benbrook 55:08
The USDA has not tested blackberries until just very recently, and frankly, I was shocked to see the number of high-risk pesticides in blackberries. Let’s work together and agree that there are these four or these six pesticides that account for most of the dietary risk. Let’s just stop using them on all blackberries. There’s plenty of other pesticides.

Chuck Benbrook 55:37
Conventional berry growers around the world have about 60 herbicides to choose from, 40 fungicides, and at least 60 insecticides. Let’s just stop using the ones that are showing up in food, and we know pose risks. That’s the low-hanging fruit. The other thing is where we’re growing fruit. Where there’s a lot of schools and a lot of people that have their houses, that’s where extra investment should be made.

Chuck Benbrook 56:14
Convert it all to organic, and if the market can’t sell all that organic fruit, then sell some of the organic fruit as conventional. That happens regularly in California. Sometimes the conventional crop takes a big hit, but there’s better production in the organic fields. Some of the companies just sell organic as conventional.

Chuck Benbrook 56:42
I really don’t feel it’s a legitimate reason for the companies to say, “Oh, well, we can’t expand our organic production because the market doesn’t demand it.” Why doesn’t the market demand it? Because the companies and the government aren’t telling consumers how much better it is for them, the environment, and farmworkers.

Chuck Benbrook 57:04
If we addressed, as a public health matter, the pesticides in fruits and vegetables the same way we decided to address nicotine in cigarettes and do an all-hands-on-deck effort to reduce smoking, particularly among children, we would achieve the kind of major public health benefits from cleaning up food and starting with fruits and vegetables, particularly fruits and vegetables grown around schools. Why we don’t do it, as I said, why these companies are fighting that, is just inexplicable to me.

Dave Chapman 57:51
I understand why Bayer-Monsanto and Syngenta are fighting it, because that is their product. They are like tobacco companies. That is what they sell.

Chuck Benbrook 58:00
Yeah, you’re right there.

Dave Chapman 58:02
For Driscoll’s and Taylor Farms, they could grow it organically. They know how. Not real organic. I cannot say, “Well, now I support you.” I support you when you really do it right. I also say that there’s always this question, which is… I don’t think Driscoll’s is any worse than any other company. They may become worse over time because they’ve swallowed their own poison pill.

Dave Chapman 58:33
But I think that as companies get bigger and bigger, it becomes in their nature to twist the system for their own benefit. Because they have that power, they can do it, which is why it’s a good idea not to let companies get that big.

Chuck Benbrook 58:53
In certain sectors of the economy, companies get that big, like in computer software, energy, railroads, and several other sectors in the U.S. If you’re going to let the companies get bigger and stronger, then you better invest in and build the power of government to constrain the behavior of those companies so that they don’t extract more profit at the expense of other people, which is the message that your friend Zephyr has articulated so clearly in podcasts with you and at Churchtown Farm.

Chuck Benbrook 59:40
Right now, the big companies – the big pesticide, seed, and biotech companies – they’re not worried about the USDA and the EPA substantially impacting their business. They know they’ll get their way. They’ll find a way. That’s too bad. We still have paraquat on the market in the United States because of this power that they have.

Chuck Benbrook 1:00:06
Not only do we have it on the market, but it’s still legal to spray it two weeks before a farmer harvests a crop to kill the plants. The harvest aid, the crop desiccation use, which is just insane. It’s insane. It’s every bit as much of a black mark on the EPA and our regulatory system. They should have banned paraquat crop desiccation uses 20 or 30 years ago.

Chuck Benbrook 1:00:36
Because why do you want a kid eating a piece of bread or a cookie to be getting paraquat in their brain, where it’s just going to start chewing away at their dopaminergic neurons and put them on the 20- to 30-year path to Parkinson’s disease, when science had really shown that that was not only possible but happening in people?

Chuck Benbrook 1:01:29
Syngenta and the predecessor companies that were responsible for paraquat were able to point to enough uncertainties and other explanations. They used their influence in the scientific community and in the regulatory community to just keep putting off any meaningful change in how high-risk products are used.

Chuck Benbrook 1:01:58
When instead, when we do realize that there’s a way that pesticides are being used where sometimes they probably are exposing some people to a dangerous level, let’s do something about that use, and we can. But no, it doesn’t happen because the ethos in the companies is that we don’t give an inch. We don’t give an inch to a regulator without fighting them tooth and nail in all of the venues with all the legal tools that we can bring to bear.

Chuck Benbrook 1:02:38
That is what my 25 years as an expert witness in pesticide litigation, where I get to look at their internal documents, their internal strategies, has shown me. Even after their scientists are convinced that there is a risk – if you use a lot of paraquat, you’re at heightened risk of Parkinson’s disease.

Chuck Benbrook 1:03:03
Even after their scientists are convinced of that, they still, when they talk to the regulators, say there’s no convincing evidence when used according to the label that it increases risk. That’s the message, and that’s got to change. That has to change.

Dave Chapman 1:03:22
Naomi Oreskes showed that the same thing was true for the oil companies and climate change. Their scientists knew it was true before any of us knew because they had done the research. They were good scientists. But then the corporation decided, “We were not going to share that message.”

Dave Chapman 1:03:38
Chuck, we should finish. I just want to say to everybody that hopefully you’re going to be listening to this before the Churchtown Conference on September 18th and 19th in Hudson, New York. Chuck will be there, and Zephyr will be there, and Naomi will be there, and many people will be there, both telling the hard story of the real challenges that we face.

Dave Chapman 1:04:06
It’s not just going to be happy talk, but there will be hope too, because we have people who have inspiring stories about how we’re doing it differently.

Chuck Benbrook 1:04:16
Dave, why don’t you send a personal invitation to the new CEO of Driscoll’s and invite her to come to Churchtown so she can talk to us about what they’re doing? Perhaps that is one small step to getting this very big and important company to start doing right by the American public and everybody that cares about staying healthy.

Dave Chapman 1:04:45
Okay. I will do that, Chuck. Chuck Benbrook, thank you so much.

Chuck Benbrook 1:04:50
All right.