- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
Lawsuit claims about 50% of shipments from 2022-24 had fruit exceeding Canadian safety levels
Driscoll’s berries are on many Canadians’ plates and all over Canadian grocery stores, with their tagline claiming to be “only the finest berries.”
But a whistleblower lawsuit in California alleges the finest berries were not sent to Canada: instead, millions of pounds of fruit containing non-compliant levels of pesticides and chemicals crossed the border, and the company tried to cover it up.
California resident and former Driscoll’s employee David Harada claims in the lawsuit that by Driscoll’s own estimates, about 50 per cent of all shipments to Canada from 2022 to 2024 had fruit that exceeded Canadian safety levels.
Also, a lot of ag producers will till biosolids into their fields as fertilizer, which are the leftover spoils from sewage treatment plants. The biosolids are supposed to be composted enough to kill off harmful microbes, but sometimes they don’t get up to kill step temp.
Regardless of complete composting, they usually have residual chemicals that are in the wastewater stream that aren’t removed in wastewater treatment, like pissed out pharma drugs/metabolites, random household chemicals and hazardous waste, PFAs, etc.
More info covering the scope of the problem here. Anecdotal coverage of farmers being left with unusable toxic land here.
Thank you. Eloquently put. What I was try to say about sewage spillover with waste from humans with whatever drugs etc they take out into the sewers.