Nearly four years after traces of chemicals suspected to cause health problems in children and reproduction problems in adults were found in mass market and cheese packs, Annie’s Homegrown began working with its suppliers to eliminate the offending material from their food processing equipment.
The presence of the chemicals, called orthophthalates, has angered consumers who rely on the food, especially parents. Phthalates make rigid plastics more flexible material and are commonly used in tubes and conveyor belts found in food manufacturing plants and in food packaging.
It can disrupt male hormones such as testosterone and has been linked by some researchers to learning difficulties in children. But the plastics industry has argued that food products have been found to contain relatively small amounts of chemicals, and that food regulators have not ruled that they are dangerous to consumers.
The 2017 study, funded by environmental promotion groups and not published in a peer-reviewed journal, discovered the chemicals in all ten of the mac and cheese varieties it tested, although the brands were not identified.
Annie’s, known for its cute bunny logo, said in a statement on its website that the company ‘is working with our trusted suppliers to eliminate orthophthalates that are present in the packaging materials and food processing equipment that the cheese produces. . and cheese powder in our macaroni and cheese. ”
In a statement, a spokesman for General Mills, who owns Annie’s, said: “We are committed to learning more to better understand this emerging issue and to determine how Annie’s can be part of the solution. “
The economic and practical reality of eradicating phthalates, which can be found in many parts of the food manufacturing process, can be daunting.
The chemicals can get into the food in many places along the supply chain, including on the farm, where flexible plastic tubes transport milk from the barn, or the manufacture of the cardboard container in which the noodles are kept. The chemicals tend to accumulate in foods high in fat, such as cheese.
The commitment to the purification of phthalates from the production of one type of food raises questions about the chemical content of the myriad other products manufactured with similar flexible plastic equipment.
The health advocates applauded General Mills for taking this step with Annie’s, one of its distinctive brands. General Mills bought Annie’s in 2014, and its popularity skyrocketed during the pandemic as consumers who go home go to packaged foods.
“People do not have to eat chemicals in their food if it can make them sick, especially not if there are safer alternatives,” said Mike Belliveau, executive director of Defend Our Health, an environmental and health promotion group. on the dangers of phthalates.
The Belliveau group, formerly known as the Strategic Center for Environmental Health, helped fund the 2017 study that revealed the existence of the chemicals in food. Since then, he has reached out to giant food companies like General Mills and Kraft over phthalates. Only General Mills started a discussion with his group about phasing out chemicals from its supply chain, he said. (Kraft did not respond to a request for comment on this article.)
“Annie’s updated the language on their website for our new external engagement,” General Mills CEO Lee Anderson wrote in a December email to The Advocacy Group, which was viewed by The New York Times. “We are not planning any additional communications and neither are we looking.”
“While we realize it’s important to some consumers, it’s not the focus of most of our consumers during these difficult times because we want to reassure them about the basic availability and value of our products,” the email said. said.
Mr. Anderson added that Annie had discussed how to implement the changes with suppliers, and that she was developing a “supplier confirmation tool”, but that it would take time to assess its effectiveness.
Other companies have taken steps to limit the chemicals in their packaging, including Taco Bell, which by 2025 has promised to remove phthalates from the packaging. Ahold Delhaize USA, which operates grocery chains such as Stop & Shop and Hannafords, has announced a ‘sustainable chemistry’. commitment ”to restrict phthalates in its private label products.
Maine will begin banning food packages containing phthalates from 2022 “in any quantity greater than an accidental presence”.
But except for Annie, few companies have publicly committed to removing phthalates from the manufacturing process.
The Organic Trade Association convened a task force this winter to begin investigating how they can help members deal with the issue. “But they need packaging and suppliers,” said Gwendolyn Wyard, vice president of the regulatory group for regulatory and technical matters.
Phthalates have powerful defenders, including Exxon Mobil, a leading producer of the chemical. The chemical industry rejects some of the studies on phthalates in food as ‘bad science’ designed to generate alarmist headlines, but not based on rigorous research.
Kevin Ott, executive director of the Flexible Vinyl Alliance, a trading group that includes Exxon, said many consumers and advocates are too quick to condemn certain substances. “Any chemical you cannot see, smell or spell must be dangerous,” he said.
Mr Ott criticized how some studies have measured the presence of phthalates in macaroni and cheese in parts per billion. “It’s like a thimble in an Olympic-sized pool,” he said.
In 2008, Congress curtailed the use of phthalates in children’s toys and instructed the Consumer Products Safety Commission to study the effects of several other phthalates.
Today, after all the investigations, “phthalates have basically been phased out of toys,” said Mr. Ott said. “No smart businessman is going to make toys with phthalates.”
Food is a different story. The Food and Drug Administration studied the presence of phthalates in food packaging and manufacturing equipment. In an article published in 2018, a group of researchers from the agency concluded: “To date, there have been no studies related between exposure to the human diet to phthalates and adverse health consequences.”
But the FDA has not yet officially ruled on the issue, although researchers say food is a major concern.
“Phthalates enter our bodies through our skin, through our noses – we get them from everywhere,” said Shanna Swan, a professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, who said the effect of the chemical on reproductive health. “But the primary source is food.”
In a statement, an FDA spokesman said the agency was currently reviewing two petitions, including one filed by various environmental groups five years ago, in which regulators were asked to restrict phthalates from food contact materials.
“The FDA has a priority to complete our review of these petitions and publish our response in the Federal Registry,” the agency said Friday.
In a book published this month, “Count Down”, Dr Swan argues that a range of chemicals over the past 40 years have contributed to a 50 percent decrease in sperm counts and that exposure to certain phthalates may play a role in reproduction. problems.
“This alarming rate of decline could mean that humans cannot reproduce themselves if the trend continues,” Dr Swan wrote in the book.
These issues are not caused by ‘something inherently wrong with the human body, as it has evolved over time’, she writes.