By The Defender Staff
Driscoll’s Faces Growing Legal Storm Over Pesticide Safety, ‘Forever Chemicals’ and Social Media Claims
Watsonville berry giant Driscoll’s is fighting a legal war on three fronts, facing two new consumer lawsuits alleging pesticide cover-ups and undisclosed “forever chemicals” while suing a mobile app startup it says is spreading false claims about its berries on social media.
In the first, a class action suit filed in San Jose federal court in June, consumers from multiple states target the company’s use of the synthetic compounds. That filing closely followed a Ventura County lawsuit by a former employee who claims he was fired for refusing to assist in pesticide cover-ups. Meanwhile, Driscoll’s own lawsuit targets the founders of a farmers market locator app.
Though Driscoll’s first began growing berries in the Pajaro Valley in the early 1900s, the company no longer grows the berries it sells. Instead, it licenses its patented, proprietary berry varieties to a global network of independent growers, who manage their own fields and package strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and blueberries under the Driscoll’s label.
THC Drinks Are Sold Beside Sodas, Iced Tea, and Even Chocolate Milk, Often in Violation of State Laws
It’s easy to miss the cannabis beverages that line the refrigerated sections of grocery stores, bodegas, and delis throughout New York City. The rainbow-like array of cans — bearing names such as Oasis, Cann, Milonga, Cycling Frog, Tempter’s, Gigli, and Mighty Kind — often look indistinguishable from iced tea, probiotic sodas, and other wellness-coded “functional beverages” that share their shelf space.
In font sizes that range from prominent to squint-worthy, the cans’ labels note that they contain THC, the psychoactive compound found in cannabis. But most of the 10 stores visited on a recent scouting trip through South Brooklyn, some within a couple blocks of schools, displayed no signs indicating that these were intoxicating beverages, nor did they ask for identification when the drinks were brought to the register.
According to New York state law, none of these drinks should be available in regular retail stores. Regulations adopted in 2023 limit them to no more than 1 milligram of THC per serving. Yet beverages with up to 100 times that much were being sold — in a gourmet deli on a tony Brooklyn Heights street lined with an Instagram-famous bakery and pilates studios; at a large grocery store across from an entrance to Prospect Park.
Campbell’s Introduces New Line of Soup With ‘No Artificial Meat’
Campbell has introduced a new “High Quality Ingredients” soup line with “no artificial meat” or lab-grown meat. Social media users and skeptics view the rebranding as a sign that Campbell’s Soup may have contained artificial meat in the past.
However, Campbell’s website clarified that the newer High Quality Protein Soups lineup “directly addresses viral concerns and social media questions about ‘bioengineered’, lab-grown, or low-quality ingredients in soups.” Campbell’s goes on to say the company “emphasizes real, recognizable ingredients (e.g., white meat chicken, navy beans, carrots, celery, rotini pasta) with no artificial meat or heavily processed fillers.”
Campbell’s claims its new higher protein lineup delivers 20 grams of protein per full can. The protein is sourced from chicken and beans/legumes, plus added fiber.
The company boasts that the new protein soup is more nutritious and filling than traditional soups. A spokesperson said the new soup lineup is mostly a “rebranding/positioning rather than a revolutionary formula change. Campbell’s is “highlighting cleaner, higher-protein recipes amid broader industry trends…”
Late last year, Florida’s attorney general threatened to shut down a Campbell’s factory after a former executive admitted his family doesn’t eat the soup because it contained lab-grown meat.
Study Links Cognitive Decline to Surprisingly Small Daily Amount of Artificial Sweeteners
Adults who ingest daily the amount of artificial sweetener typically found in a can of diet soda exhibited cognitive decline at a rate 62 percent faster than people whose intake is only a fraction of that amount, according to a new eight-year study published in the medical journal Neurology.
Researchers in Brazil followed more than 12,700 adults with an average age of 52 and examined their use of seven common low- and no-calorie sweeteners—aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame K, erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol, and tagatose—found in diet drinks, flavored waters, yogurt, and ultra-processed foods such as breakfast cereals and packaged snacks.
Participants who consumed the most sweeteners averaged 191 milligrams a day, compared with 20 milligrams among those who consumed the least. The research team said the faster rate of cognitive decline among the higher-intake group was equivalent to roughly 1.6 years of additional brain aging. Six of the seven sugar substitutes studied were associated with faster cognitive decline, particularly memory loss. Tagatose was the lone exception.
Cyclospora Spreads Through Human Feces. How Did It Get Into Our Food Supply?
The hard, and nauseating, truth about cyclospora is that it’s spread through human feces. Over decades of research, scientists have not found a single place aside from the human gut where the parasite grows. So now that we’re in the midst of the largest recorded outbreak in United States history, one has to ask: How did human excrement get into our food?
As infections surge across much of the United States, public health investigators are working to figure out how this microscopic parasite contaminated the produce eaten by so many people.
The current case numbers — more than 6,000 people sickened in Michigan alone — suggest that human feces somehow got into our food system on a “surprising scale,” said Matthew Moore, a food safety microbiologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Ultra-Processed Foods Perception Evolves Among Consumers
Americans are becoming more familiar with terms for processed food, including ultra-processed, according to the International Food Information Council’s Food & Health Survey released July 16. More consumers also are seeking convenient food items, and many have seen the US government’s new inverted pyramid.
“Every year the IFIC Food & Health Survey gives us a read on where Americans truly are, and what we see is a meaningful shift in how people view their food and make decisions,” said Wendy Reinhardt Kapsak, president and chief executive officer of IFIC. “In 2026, we find a public whose definition of ‘healthy’ is expanding beyond nutrition. Fresh, natural, the presence or absence of ingredients, as well as how much a food has been processed have all risen in prominence.”
The online survey contacted 3,005 Americans from March 22 to April 8. When asked whether they recognized the term ultra-processed food, 52% said they were familiar with the term, which was up from 44% last year and 32% two years ago.
The term has become “pretty common vernacular” not only within the nutrition community but also among consumers, said Kris Sollid, senior director of research and consumer insights at IFIC, in a July 16 webinar. When asked how they decided whether a food item was ultra-processed, the top two answers were 56% for the ingredient list and 51% for the Nutrition Facts Label.
The post Driscoll’s Faces Growing Legal Storm Over Pesticide Safety, ‘Forever Chemicals’ and Social Media Claims + More appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.
IPAK-EDU is grateful to The Defender as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More
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