Vons Agrees to Halt Claims of Pesticide-Free Produce

Vons Cos. has been charged by the Federal Trade Commission with falsely claiming that its produce is free of pesticides and has agreed not to misrepresent its products in the future, the FTC said Monday.

In January, 1989, the chain, which has 328 grocery stores in California and Nevada, distributed a two-page brochure in its supermarkets that claimed the store sold “pesticide-free produce,” said Steven Shaffer, an FTC staff attorney.

“The brochure represented that none of Vons’ produce had pesticides,” Shaffer said. “In fact, some Vons produce did have detectable levels of some pesticides. They were within the levels permitted by law.”

Vons, based in Arcadia, signed a consent decree last week agreeing not to make such claims in the future. In signing the document, the store admitted no violation of the law, Shaffer said, adding that the company voluntarily pulled the brochures from its markets.

Leanne McKenzie, a Vons spokeswoman, said the brochures were only in company produce departments for a matter of days, and that the pesticide-free claim was the result of a proofreading error.

“In January, 1989, we put out a brochure on produce,” McKenzie said. “Someone put in the headline, ‘Vons sells pesticide-free produce.’ When they were reading all the fine print, they overlooked the headline. So it was a proofreading error.”

The company immediately pulled the offending brochures, but not before a consumer group forwarded one to the FTC, McKenzie said.

“There was never any lawsuit or penalties,” she said. “We apologized and took the brochures off immediately. We never intended to claim that we have pesticide-free produce.”

A spokesman from the Consumer Pesticide Protection Project, which complained to the FTC early in 1989, could not be reached for comment.

Barry J. Cutler, director of the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a written statement that the settlement is an example of the growing interest in environmental claims.

“Diapers and lawn bags have gotten much of the attention,” Cutler said, “but there are environmental claims in other areas as well.”