Driscoll’s faces growing legal storm over pesticide safety, ‘forever chemicals’ and social media claims

Watsonville berry giant Driscoll’s is fighting a legal war on three fronts, facing two new consumer lawsuits alleging pesticide cover-ups and undisclosed “forever chemicals” while suing a mobile app startup it says is spreading false claims about its berries on social media.

In the first, a class action suit filed in San Jose federal court in June, consumers from multiple states target the company’s use of the synthetic compounds. That filing closely followed a Ventura County lawsuit by a former employee who claims he was fired for refusing to assist in pesticide cover-ups. Meanwhile, Driscoll’s own lawsuit targets the founders of a farmers market locator app.

Though Driscoll’s first began growing berries in the Pajaro Valley in the early 1900s, the company no longer grows the berries it sells. Instead, it licenses its patented, proprietary berry varieties to a global network of independent growers, who manage their own fields and package strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and blueberries under the Driscoll’s label. While company executives say Driscoll’s works hard to ensure its growers meet high quality standards, food safety standards and legal requirements, critics argue the company isn’t doing enough to enforce those standards, especially when it comes to pesticides. That’s opened Driscoll’s to protests, pickets and litigation.

Former employee alleges retaliation over pesticide warnings

David Harada, who until last fall served as Driscoll’s food and safety regulatory compliance manager for the U.S. and Canada, has accused the company of forcing him to resign after he brought up concerns about pesticides.

In a suit filed in Ventura County Court last month, Harada states that he disclosed to his superiors “knowledge that it was selling and exporting produce in violation of federal and state laws and regulations regarding pesticides, as well as Canadian food safety laws.” 

Harada’s duties included monitoring pesticide usage on Driscoll’s crops by ensuring its compliance with national and international pesticide regulations, which set the maximum amount of pesticide residue that can remain on harvested crops to be considered safe for consumption. These are called “tolerances” or maximum residue limits. Harada’s suit claims he discovered that the company removed the Canadian pesticide regulations from the food safety and compliance tracking system it uses to monitor pesticide usage. 

After becoming concerned that a lack of regulatory compliance was allowing the free flow of potentially harmful products into Canada, Harada alleges he informed his superiors in the fall of 2022 that he believed some of Driscoll’s growers were violating pesticide label limits.

Furthermore, Harada says he discussed his concerns with executives multiple times over multiple months, and alleges that Driscoll’s director of agronomy asked him if the company had “plausible deniability regarding their growers’ application of pesticides over label limits so that [it] could avoid liability.”

After months of continued discussions about his concerns, Harada claims he was asked to fix all the issues with growers who had violated pesticide label laws, and he believed he was “being set up to be the scapegoat for these issues and that he was being retaliated against for his disclosures.”

In time, he said, he began to suffer physical and emotional distress and eventually, he was placed on a performance improvement plan and told that “failure to meet the expectations, including any further refusal to perform assigned work without a Legal Affairs hold, may result in additional corrective action up to and including termination.” Harada resigned in October 2025, as a result of what he says was a campaign of retaliation. 

Driscoll’s representatives deny Harada’s claims.

“While this lawsuit filed by a former employee is fundamentally an employment matter, we reject its allegations and will vigorously defend the company through the legal process,” a spokesperson told Lookout in an email. “We encourage employees to raise concerns in good faith, and we prohibit retaliation against anyone who does so. Any concerns raised are reviewed through established processes, and we are confident in those processes and in the standards we uphold.”

A hearing in Ventura County Superior Court is set for January.

Class action suit filed regarding forever chemicals

At the core of a class action suit filed last month on behalf of consumers in several states is a category of chemicals known as “forever chemicals,” persistent fluorinated pesticide compounds, or PFAS. These chemicals have been linked in recent years to an increased risk of certain cancers and developmental delays in children, and the Environmental Protection Agency has found food to be the biggest source of chemical exposure. Despite that, the federal government has been slow to set enforceable limits, and earlier this month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected a legal petition demanding it set limits on forever chemicals in food.

As part of a class action suit, plaintiffs have accused Driscoll’s of inaccuracy in its marketing, labeling and sale of conventional berries, claiming that the company’s failure to disclose the potential presence of the chemicals stands in contrast to its claims that its fruit is “subject to rigorous food safety and quality standards.”

The plaintiffs argue that Driscoll’s “only the finest berries” tagline is misleading, contradicting what they say are independent tests that have found the presence of PFAS in some berries. Driscoll’s is accused of violating consumer protection laws in Illinois, Massachusetts, California, New Jersey and New York. According to court records, an initial hearing in the case is set for September in front of a San Jose federal judge. 

A spokesperson for Driscoll’s told Lookout in an email statement that “we reject the allegations in this lawsuit and believe they are without merit. As a family-owned company, food safety, quality and integrity are fundamental to who we are. We maintain robust food safety and compliance programs and rigorous standards designed to support compliance with applicable regulatory requirements. For more than 100 years, we have worked to earn the trust of our customers by communicating responsibly about our products and our growing practices, and we remain committed to that responsibility every day.”

Driscoll’s fires back against one company’s social media accusations

Driscoll’s is firing back with legal action of its own. A federal lawsuit filed last month in San Jose accuses a Texas-based company Localize – a farmers market locator app – of running a “coordinated and unlawful social media campaign” to hurt Driscoll’s reputation. The suit alleges Localize co-founders Zephyr Max Van Olphen Zoidis and Grant Stoll used 67 posts over 25 days to “spread false and misleading information about Driscoll’s to drive consumers away from Driscoll’s berries” toward the Localize platform. Driscoll’s is seeking a jury trial for false advertising.

According to Driscoll’s suit, Localize posted claims on social media accounts that “Driscoll’s products caused increased rates of cancer in children,” leading consumers to comment on the posts about their intent to boycott the berries. Localize is also accused of posting “a barrage of content on Instagram, Threads, Facebook, X, and TikTok, leveling inflammatory and baseless accusations about Driscoll’s berries — including that they cause cancer in children — and fomenting hatred toward Driscoll’s employees, including a receptionist and an employee handing out blankets at a community event.”

Localize has until Aug. 11 to file a response, according to court records. After that, the two parties will go before a federal judge to determine next steps in the case. 

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