McDonald's, the largest fast-food chain in the world and the largest buyer of potatoes in the United States, is under pressure from shareholders to do something about pesticide use on the potatoes it buys.
To avoid a shareholder resolution on the subject, McDonald's has agreed to a survey that will determine its potato producers' pesticide practices and recommend those best practices to its global suppliers. It's too early to say whether there would be any impact on price. There wouldn't be any change in taste; a potato is a potato.
Potatoes have been on or near the list of the Environmental Working Group's dirty dozen foods with the most pesticide residue for years. That means, according to a government analysis, that after a typical person buys a typical potato and prepares it in a typical way, it's among the fruits and vegetables most likely to be laced with pesticides. (The government regulates pesticide residue, so any chemical left on food is deemed to pose no health risk; that said, pesticides are designed to kill something -- a bug, worm, fungus, or weed -- and most people don't like the idea of taking each meal with a little drop of poison.)
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