General Mills is a bastion of ultra-processed, genetically modified foods, but it’s always found ways to make it look like it’s part of the regenerative organic movement.

Its worst greenwashing was when it used its Honey Nut Cheerios brand for a Bring Back the Bees campaign – never mentioning that glyphosate and chlormequat, pesticides used to harvest the cereal’s oats, were implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder.

Of the 40 brands General Mills lists on its website, only five of them use organic, non-GMO, and/or grass-fed ingredients: Annie’s, Autumn’s Gold, Cascadian Farm, EPIC, and Larabar. 

General Mills has never done anything more for regenerative agriculture than to secure the ingredients it uses in these brands, but it’s gotten a lot of mileage out of the environmental benefits of this small part of its business.

Some of the organic brands it bought appear to have been acquired only to be discontinued, like Immaculate Baking, or sold, like Muir Glen.

In 2016, General Mills announced a partnership with Organic Valley to expand its organic yogurt offerings by transitioning dairy farmers to organic. In 2025, it sold its yogurt division. Its organic lines were dropped—along with its organic farmers.

In 2019, General Mills announced it had put “strategies in place to reduce synthetic pesticide use,” but that didn’t stop the company from selling pesticide-soaked breakfast cereals. Worryingly, one of its organic cereals was contaminated with chlormequat, suggesting that General Mills may be buying fraudulent organic oats from overseas.

The latest news is that General Mills has abandoned its commitment to reduce pesticides. This was confirmed by As You Sow in its 2026 Pesticides in the Pantry report.

General Mills used to keep a webpage on everything it was doing to reduce pesticides. Now that page redirects visitors to a “regenerative” page that doesn’t mention pesticides at all. In fact, you won’t find the word “pesticide” on General Mills’ website or in any current public statement. 

We can’t let this slide. It isn’t okay for a company to lure its customers with false promises it’s never going to deliver on.

One option is to boycott General Mills and divert your dollars to independent organic brands or, better yet, local regenerative organic farms.

Another is to give General Mills a piece of your mind. Call the company at 1-800-248-7310.

Please help us spread the word about General Mills’ pesticide reduction fraud by forwarding this article.

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