Banza’s mission is to inspire people to eat more chickpeas — for their positive impact on human health and the environment. Eating beans is linked to longevity and reduced risk of heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. We want to make it easier for people to eat healthy foods. We also know that trust in the food industry is low right now. We believe transparency about what’s in our foods is key to earning—and keeping—your trust. Today, we’re proud to share that Banza is one of the first companies–and the first pasta brand–to receive the CleanScan certification from The Detox Project. CleanScan verifies that our foods were tested for over 400 pesticides, including glyphosate, by  an ISO 17025 accredited third-party lab. All certified products, including ours, must show non-detectable levels for every pesticide tested. We’re committed to transparency. That means we’ll publish all pesticide test results, no exceptions. You’ll be able to access them by scanning the CleanScan QR on our packaging, which leads to a landing page showing certified products and the latest test results. You’ll see this on shelves in the coming months.

 

CleanScan raises the bar for food transparency. While certifications like USDA Organic provide restrictions on how ingredients are grown—such as prohibiting the use of synthetic pesticides—they don’t require testing finished products like pasta for pesticide residue. CleanScan tests and publishes results for the actual food that ends up on your plate. Their tolerance for pesticide residue is 0.01ppm, which is more stringent than USDA Organic, EWG, the EU and Japan. If we compare the residue tolerance for glyphosate on chickpeas across all major regulatory bodies around the world, CleanScan’s standard is 16x lower than the EWG, 40x lower than USDA Organic, 500x lower than Japan, 800x lower than the US, and 1000x lower than the EU. Testing finished products like pasta is important because the reality of both conventional and organic farming is that unintentional contamination can happen. Pesticides can drift from neighboring farms, travel through shared water systems, or show up during post-harvest handling. These factors can result in trace residue, even when synthetic pesticides weren’t applied. In a situation where unintentional contamination happens, USDA Organic follows the EPA’s tolerance for pesticide residue. Under these rules, a product can still qualify as organic even if test results show residue up to 5% of that limit. Using chickpeas as an example, glyphosate residue up to 0.4ppm could be present in organic chickpeas as long as contamination is unintentional and unavoidable. CleanScan’s tolerance is 25 times stricter. In cases where any pesticide residue is detected, we’ll follow an investigative approach similar to the National Organic Program's: work with our farming partners to identify the source and resolve the issue.

 

CleanScan is just one part of our commitment to transparency about what’s in our food and where it comes from. You can read more about what we’re doing here. If you have any questions, we’d love to hear from you: info@eatbanza.com.