This week, more than 5,000 people across the country are swarming Kroger-owned (NYSE: KR) stores and delivering letters demanding that the retailer eliminate use of toxic pesticides on the food it sells and increase offerings of domestic organic food to protect children, farmworkers and help curb catastrophic declines of pollinators and other insects.
Public health advocates, environmentalists and concerned customers will visit Kroger-owned (NYSE:KR) stores as part of a national action February 23-29 to demand that Kroger stop selling food grown with toxic pesticides and increase offerings of domestic organic food.
A groundbreaking peer-reviewed study published today in the journal Environmental Research found that switching to an organic diet significantly reduced the levels of synthetic pesticides found in all participants – after less than one week. On average, the pesticide and pesticide metabolite levels detected dropped by 60.5% after just six days of eating an all-organic diet.
READ FULL CITATIONS HERE. The need for organic agriculture is more urgent than ever. Bees and butterflies are disappearing, climate change threatens future food security and our water is polluted with toxic chemicals.
Bees are the canaries in the corn field — their death warns us that the way we’re growing food is on a fatal track. Pesticides are a key culprit in the decline of bees, butterflies and other pollinators,…
Friends of the Earth conducted these peer-reviewed studies in collaboration with researchers at University of California at Berkeley, University of California at San Francisco, Commonweal Biomonitoring Resources Center, and Health Research Institute. We wanted to know whether eating an organic diet could reduce levels of detectable pesticides and pesticide breakdown products in participants’ bodies.
We secured oversight for protection of human subjects through Western Institutional Review Board. The study was published…
All of us are exposed to a cocktail of toxic synthetic pesticides linked to a range of health impacts from our daily diets. Certified organic food is produced without these pesticides. But can eating organic really reduce levels of pesticides in our bodies?
Organic food should be the norm, but the pesticide industry has a major financial interest in keeping their toxic products on the market. The estimated environmental and health care costs of pesticide use in the U.S. is estimated to be upwards of $12 billion annually. Meanwhile, the top pesticide manufacturers reap over $150 billion in profit each year from pesticides and other agricultural technologies.
The pesticide industry has undergone massive…
The report found that oat cereals, apples, applesauce, spinach and pinto beans at the retailers contained detectable amounts of glyphosate, organophosphates and neonicotinoids.
When most of us do our grocery shopping, we don’t suspect that the food we buy contains residues of toxic pesticides. Yet, pesticides have been uncovered in store brand cereal, applesauce, beans and produce.
Today, over 60 local officials from across the country have joined together to send a letter to the farm bill conference committee urging the rejection of a poison pill rider that would preempt local governments from setting their own restrictions on toxic pesticides.