Girl Scouts Cookies. Photo: Girl Scouts
A New York woman has filed a lawsuit against Girl Scouts of the USA claiming that they are selling cookies contaminated with heavy metals.
The plaintiff, Amy Mayo, filed the class action complaint on Monday, March 10, asking for $5 million from Girl Scouts and their cookie manufacturers, Ferrero and ABC Bakers. In the suit, Mayo claims that Girl Scouts “produce and distribute Products which are contaminated with dangerous heavy metals, including aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury…and pesticides, including glyphosate.”
The suit continues, pointing to “extensive testing” conducted in 2024 that claimed that “100% of the Products contained at least four out of five Heavy Metals” and other “extremely problematic” results. The tested cookies came from California, Iowa and Louisiana to “ensure the validity of the testing and mitigate for confounding variables” but the results were “similar or the same,” according to the filing.
Girl Scouts selling Girl Scouts Cookies. Courtesy of Girl Scouts of the USA
Girl Scouts released a statement on Feb. 6 in response to the concerns. The announcement claims that “Girl Scout Cookies are safe to consume and are manufactured in accordance with all food safety regulations” and that heavy metals can occur naturally in soil and trace amounts of glyphosate is found in produce. “These metals are not added to our Girl Scout Cookies,” the statement reads.
The study, conducted by consumer groups GMOScience and Moms Across America, tested 25 boxes of cookies. They tested 11 types of cookies: Adventurefuls, Caramel deLites (also known as Samoas), Peanut Butter Sandwich (also known as Do-si-dos), Girl Scout S’mores, Lemonades, Lemon-Ups, Peanut Butter Patties (also known as Tagalongs), Thin Mints, Toast-Yay!, Toffee-tastic and Trefoils.
The lawsuit mentions that the organization sells $1 billion of cookies annually and that the desserts are marketed to and sold by children.
The study’s controversial findings circulated on TikTok earlier this year, with some social media users claiming that the FDA recalled the cookies, but a Forbes article said this is untrue. The same article put some of the findings into perspective, explaining that the study compared the findings to EPA water safety standards, which do not apply to food, rather than FDA food safety standards.
“The FDA and USDA both allow residues of pesticides and metals in foods at levels deemed non-harmful,” the article continued, saying that “based on current FDA regulations, there is no evidence that the cookies pose a health risk.”
