Banza Petition

Dear Banza,

We at Moms Across America, our team and supporters as signed below, are concerned about the health of our families and community. We are writing to you to request that you switch to sourcing your chick peas only from organic or regenerative organic sources and join us in creating a safer food supply for all.

We agree that chickpeas can be a healthy source of protein and nutrients. We love chickpeas and the idea of chickpea pasta! However, we disagree that chickpeas with any (low or high) levels of glyphosate on them are ever healthy.

We also disagree that just because your products or any food company's products test below FDA allowable maximum residue levels for glyphosate or any pesticide, that your products are safe. Hundreds of studies show that glyphosate and other agrochemicals are not safe at very low levels of exposure. To ignore these studies is irresponsible and misleading to the American public. We know you have no intention of misleading the American public and ask you to do better than the FDA. You can find many of the studies here.

We are also concerned that your letter to the public on your website states that glyphosate cooked down to .1 ppm (100 ppb) when cooked, but you do not state for how long that pasta was cooked. A doctor who communicated with you by email reported that your team stated that the pasta was cooked for 15 minutes to achieve that result. We assert that no one cooks their pasta for 15 minutes unless they have forgotten about it; normal cooking time, according to your package, is 6-9 minutes.

In MAA's testing, cooking the pasta in distilled water for 6 minutes, as recommended, showed 161.5 ppb of glyphosate still present. Neither finding, 100 or 161 ppb is safe. Therefore, it is not accurate to state that your food is safe containing these levels of glyphosate.

In addition, if anyone uses your pasta product dry, as in a casserole recipe, the glyphosate (over 2000 ppb from the box we tested) will not be discarded in the water. It will remain in the casserole dish. Also, for any chickpea pizza crust product you sell, one might expect that all glyphosate residues will remain in the pizza crust if the chickpeas are not first boiled. We ask that you inspect these matters and take action to provide safe products.

We know it is not your intention to have glyphosate in your food products, but continuing to allow it is unconscionable. We ask you to join with us in petitioning the EPA to disallow glyphosate as a drying agent on food and feed crops. In the meantime, we also ask that you switch suppliers to organic and/or regenerative organic farmers and require that future suppliers do not spray glyphosate or any other harmful agrochemical on the ingredients you use in any food product. 

We hope you will agree to these two reasonable and healthy requests.

ありがとうございました。

敬具、

Moms Across America and supporters as signed below.