Almost four years after traces of chemicals that can cause health problems in children and reproductive problems in adults were found in pasta macaroni and cheese packages, Annie’s Homegrown began working with its suppliers to eliminate harmful material from their equipment. food processing.
The presence of chemicals, called ortho-phthalates, has shaken consumers who depend on staple foods, especially parents. Phthalates make rigid plastic more flexible and are commonly used in tubes and conveyor belts found in food factories and food packaging.
They can disrupt male hormones like testosterone and have been linked by some researchers to learning problems in children. But the plastics industry argued that food products were found to contain relatively small amounts of chemicals, and food regulators have not determined that they are dangerous to consumers.
The 2017 study, which was funded by environmental groups and not published in a peer-reviewed journal, found chemicals in all 10 varieties of macaroni and cheese that it tested, although the brands were not identified.
Annie’s, known for her fluffy rabbit logo, released her move in a statement on her website, saying the company was working “with our trusted suppliers to eliminate ortho-phthalates that may be present in packaging material and processing equipment. foods that produce cheese and cheese powder in our macaroni and cheese. “
In a statement, a spokeswoman for General Mills, owner of Annie’s, said: “We are committed to learning more to better understand this emerging problem and determine how Annie’s can be part of the solution.”
The economic and practical reality of trying to eradicate phthalates, which can be found in many parts of the food manufacturing process, can be daunting.
Chemicals can enter food in many places along the supply chain, including on the farm, where flexible plastic tubes carry milk from the barn, or in the manufacture of the cardboard container containing the pasta. Chemicals tend to accumulate in high-fat foods, such as cheese.
The commitment to purge phthalates from the manufacture of a type of food raises questions about the chemical content of a myriad of other products made with similar flexible plastic equipment.
Still, health advocates applauded General Mills for taking this step with Annie’s, one of its exclusive brands. General Mills bought Annie’s in 2014, and its popularity skyrocketed during the pandemic, as domestic consumers choose packaged foods.
“People shouldn’t have to eat chemicals in their food when it could make them sick, especially where safer alternatives exist,” said Mike Belliveau, the executive director of Defend Our Health, an environmental and health advocacy group. focused on the dangers of phthalates.
Belliveau’s group, which previously called itself the Environmental Health Strategy Center, helped fund the 2017 study that revealed the existence of chemicals in food. He has since contacted giant food companies, such as General Mills and Kraft, about phthalates. Only General Mills opened a discussion with its group about eliminating 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 her website for our new external engagement,” Lee Anderson, an executive at General Mills, wrote to the advocacy group in a December email that was seen by The New York Times. “We are not planning any further communications, nor are we looking for any.”
“While we recognize that this is important for some consumers, it is not the focus of most of our consumers during these difficult times, as we seek to reassure them about the basic availability and value of our products,” continued the email.
Mr. Anderson added that Annie was discussing how to implement the changes with suppliers and was developing a “supplier confirmation tool”, but that it would take time to assess its effectiveness.
Other companies have taken steps to limit chemicals in their packaging, including Taco Bell, which has committed to removing phthalates from its packaging by 2025. Ahold Delhaize USA, which operates supermarket chains like Stop & Shop and Hannafords, has announced a “chemical sustainable commitment ”to restrict phthalates in its own brand products.
Maine will begin banning food packaging containing phthalates “in any amount greater than an accidental presence” from 2022.
But, with the exception of Annie, few companies have publicly committed to removing phthalates from the manufacturing process.
The Organic Trade Association is calling a task force this winter to start studying how to help its members deal with the problem. “But they need packaging and suppliers with them,” said Gwendolyn Wyard, vice president for regulatory and technical affairs for the commercial group.
Phthalates have powerful advocates, including Exxon Mobil, a major producer of the chemical. The chemical industry dismisses 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 Flexible Vinyl Alliance, a commercial group that includes Exxon, said that many consumers and advocates are too quick to condemn certain substances. “Any chemical that you can’t see, smell or spell must be dangerous,” he said.
Ott criticized how some studies measured the presence of phthalates in macaroni and cheese in parts per billion. “It’s like a thimble in an Olympic pool,” he said.
In 2008, Congress restricted the use of many phthalates in children’s toys and instructed the Consumer Product Safety Commission to study the effects of several other phthalates.
Today, after all the scrutiny, “phthalates were basically eliminated from toys,” said Ott. “No cunning businessman is going to make toys out of phthalates.”
The food is another story. The Food and Drug Administration has 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: “There have been no studies so far that have shown any connection between human food exposure to phthalates and adverse health effects.”
But the FDA has yet to officially comment on the matter, although researchers say food is a major area of concern.
“Phthalates enter our body through our skin, through our nose – we get them from everywhere,” said Shanna Swan, professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine on Mount Sinai, who studied the effect of the chemical substance in reproductive health. “But the primary source is food.”
In a statement, an FDA spokesman said the agency was currently considering two petitions, including one filed by several environmental groups five years ago that asks regulators to restrict phthalates from “food contact” materials.
“Completing our review of these petitions and publishing our response in the Federal Register is a priority for the FDA,” the agency said on Friday.
In a book being published this month, “Count Down,” Dr. Swan argues that a variety of chemicals have contributed to a 50 percent decline in sperm count over the past 40 years and that exposure to certain phthalates can be playing a role in reproducing problems.
“This alarming rate of decline may mean that the human race will be unable to reproduce if the trend continues,” writes Dr. Swan in the book.
These problems are not caused by “something that is inherently wrong with the human body, since it has evolved over time,” she writes.