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.

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. 

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.

TAKE ACTION, BOYCOTT and/or CALL

Boycott General Mills and divert your dollars to independent organic brands or, better yet, local regenerative organic farms.

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 newsletter or sharing this article.

Like, Share & Comment On Our Social Media Posts Telling General Mills to Keep Its Pledge to Reduce Pesticides:

Organic Consumers Association on Facebook
Millions Against Monsanto on Facebook
Organic Consumers Association on Instagram
Organic Consumers on X
Organic Consumers Association on LinkedIn

by Leticia Urieta, Civil Eats:

“As more families visit food pantries in search of free ingredients and affordable meal ideas, some social media creators are developing content that helps people feed themselves in creative, accessible, and culturally relevant ways. Unlike food influencers with big-brand deals and expensive ingredients, these creators destigmatize seeking support from food pantries, clipping coupons, and cooking frugal dinners. Many use the trending term ‘recession meals.’

Some creators, for example, make unboxing videos with items from the food bank, a contrast to the luxury unboxing videos of expensive products. Many share meals that are made on a shoestring budget. Others dig into recipes and kitchen hacks of the past to help viewers develop cooking skills—since making it yourself will nearly always save money.

What also makes these creators so popular is that they invite viewers into their kitchens with warmth, not judgement.”

Along with recipes and shopping ideas, they’re sharing genuine care.

by Charlotte Vallaeys, Dr. Kendra Klein, Sarah Starman, Friends of the Earth:

“A growing number of food labels claim to verify that foods are regeneratively grown. But with no widely accepted definition of regenerative agriculture, and each label offering its own interpretation of what qualifies, what do these labels really mean? 

To help consumers navigate this crowded landscape, we evaluated how ten labeling programs stack up in terms of phasing out harmful pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, building soil health, verifying farmer practices, and tracking products from farm to shelf. 

We found that regenerative labeling programs vary dramatically in what they require — and some of the most rigorous standards meeting regenerative principles don’t use the term at all. 

Importantly, while many consumers reasonably assume that ‘regenerative’ food is grown without toxic pesticides, that’s not always the case. The report found wide variation across three critical areas: toxic pesticide and synthetic fertilizer use, soil health practices, and standard integrity related to verification and traceability.”

Read the full guide and the press release.

Press Release, Cranville University:

“New research into plant-based food and drinks has found a prevalence of mycotoxins – naturally occurring poisonous compounds produced by fungi – in hundreds of vegetarian and vegan products. 212 plant-based meat alternatives (PMBAs) and plant-based beverages (PBBs) from UK shelves were tested – and all of them contained at least one of 19 mycotoxins, with multiple products containing more than one.

The study, led by the University of Parma in Italy and co-authored by Cranfield University, tested a broad spectrum of products readily available to UK consumers such as burgers, vegetarian chicken pieces, vegan sausages, oat-, almond- and soy-based milks.

Mycotoxins are particularly prevalent in plant-based foods because the raw materials those foods are made from – such as grains, legumes and seeds – can be exposed to mold during cultivation and storage.”

A significant concern arises when new foods enter the market, as there are currently no established regulations to monitor mycotoxins. 

TAKE ACTION: Tell Sec. Kennedy to Ban Quorn!

Source: Institut Pasteur, Science Daily:

“To better understand the link between pesticides and cancer, researchers created detailed models showing how agricultural chemicals spread across the country. The analysis included 31 widely used pesticides. None of these are classified as known human carcinogens by the World Health Organization (WHO), yet their combined presence in the environment was carefully tracked.

‘We first modeled the dispersion of pesticides in the environment over a six-year period, from 2014 to 2019, which allowed us to create a high-resolution map and identify areas with the highest risk of exposure,’ explains Jorge Honles, PhD in epidemiology at the University of Toulouse.

The team then compared these exposure maps with health data from more than 150,000 cancer patients recorded between 2007 and 2020. This comparison revealed a clear pattern.”

In these areas, the likelihood of developing cancer was about 150% greater on average.

Read & Share: EPA’s Systematic, Long Term Failure to Warn the Public About Pesticides Linked to Cancer

TAKE ACTION: Ban the Pesticides Behind America’s Rural Cancer Crisis

Can Washington be the third state to legalize therapeutic psilocybin use? It might be possible thanks to Senate Bill 5201, which aims at developing a system of psilocybin use inspired by what Oregon and Colorado have been working on. The research on the clinical side can hardly be overlooked because of the positive results shown by Johns Hopkins when dealing with depression, anxiety, and end-of-life issues.

It should be noted, however, that psilocybin is not an unknown substance since it was used by indigenous people all over the world for hundreds of years in various ways including Mazatec ritual in Mexico or Amazonian ceremonial usage. In the meantime, scientists call for collaboration rather than exploitation.

The legal status is not currently the key issue preventing patients from accessing therapeutic psilocybin use. As was seen in Oregon and Colorado, it is actually the price factor because it was the most important barrier when patients tried to get some help, and without insurance coverage, therapeutic psilocybin remains out of reach for most people who need it.

Read this article by Elisabeth McHugh at The Daily UW to get the full story.

Pamela Ferdinand, U.S. Right to Know (USRTK):

“‘I only look at the ingredients for my own skin type. As long as a product is on the market and from a big corporation or reliable brand, I feel like it shouldn’t contain too much [to be worried about],’ Deng said. ‘I trust the manufacturers.’

But a small study shows that assumption may not hold. Routine decisions about everything from mascara to moisturizer matter when it comes to shaping your chemical exposure and health risks, the researchers suggest.

On average, women use 13 personal care products a day, containing more than 100 unique ingredients, and men use about 11. Roughly 1 in 10 adults uses more than 25 products daily. Late last year, the FDA reported that more than 1,700 cosmetic products contain PFAS — so-called ‘forever chemicals’ tied to serious health risks including cancer, birth defects and liver disease.”

The findings indicate that switching from conventional personal care products to nontoxic alternatives can rapidly and significantly reduce exposure to harmful chemicals.

Max Goldberg, Organic Insider:

Something is happening on social media that demands a direct response.

“A growing number of very large content creators, influencers and self-appointed food experts on Instagram have been attacking organic with increasing intensity — calling it ‘the greatest gaslight of all time,’ ‘worthless,’ and ‘a scam.’ They present themselves as truth-tellers cutting through industry propaganda.

They are not. And it is time to say so plainly.

This is not a good-faith critique of a flawed system. When it comes to presenting an alternative farming method to organic, no better framework is proposed and no constructive path forward is laid out. There is only destruction — and the monetization of that destruction. Every click, every share, every outraged comment helps to put money in their pocket. Organic is simply the vehicle. They do not appear to care about it at all.

What these influencers fail to grasp is that the organic system they are tearing down governs with federal certification, soil standards, a prohibition on synthetic pesticides and genetically-engineered ingredients, annual certifier inspections, chain-of-custody requirements and fraud enforcement. Tens of thousands of farmers, certifiers, inspectors and brands operate within these agreed rules every single day.”

And if organic were to disappear, what would we be left with?

If you believe in the importance of independent organic food journalism, please consider becoming a subscriber to Organic Insider+.

The organic and environmental community lost one of its most tireless voices when Mitchel Cohen, coordinator of the No Spray Coalition and author of The Fight Against Monsanto’s Roundup: The Politics of Pesticides, passed away at the end of April after many years of work devoted to fighting the corporate poisoning of our food, land, and communities.

If you never had the pleasure of knowing Mitchel’s work, it is not too late. His book remains a must-read for anyone serious about understanding the politics behind pesticide use, and thankfully his website The Politics of Pesticides means his voice is still very much with us.

Mitchel continued to write until the end. The last of his articles for Counterpunch were published in the final month of his life. In addition to reading his books and articles, a great way to get to know Mitchel is by watching the following interviews with him.

Mitchel Cohen Interviewed by Karl Grossman (includes photos of Mitchel going back to his days as a student activist).

Mitchel Cohen Interviewed by Organic Consumers Association’s Alexis Baden-Mayer (part of our Secret Military History of Monsanto series, we discussed his article, “War Within the War: The Fight Over Land and Genetically Engineered Agriculture”).

He will be deeply missed.

It’s great to see our new Certified Regenerative label featured in Friends of the Earth’s assessment guide of regenerative labels. The Regeneration International Standard was developed by our sister organization, Regeneration International, in collaboration with us here at the Organic Consumers Association. We have partnered with the Organic Food Chain, an Australian certifier that has begun certifying farmers to this standard.

Most certification standards have become so complicated and expensive that the farmers who need them most simply can’t access them. The Regeneration International Standard was built to change that, keeping things simple, flexible, and grounded in what actually works for real farmers, including those in the developing world.

But this is bigger than a certification. It’s about shifting agriculture away from systems that deplete and destroy, toward ones that bring soil, communities, and ecosystems back to life, with farmers themselves leading the way.

Learn more about our Regeneration International Standard and spread the word!

With your support, this tool can help farmers lead the kind of change that heals soil, restores ecosystems, and puts healthy food on tables around the world. Help us help them make that change, one farm at a time.

Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Make a tax-deductible donation to Regeneration International, our international sister organization

Have you considered making a gift from your IRA?

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Sargassum Is Flooding Florida Beaches — And It Might Become a Food Ingredient

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America’s Forests Are Being Bombarded With Roundup

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