Sitting in his attorney’s Camarillo office in December, David Harada explained his decision to initiate a legal battle with one of the world’s largest berry companies.
He couldn’t live with himself, he said, if he didn’t expose how Driscoll’s had prioritized profits over the health of consumers around the world and farms across California.
On June 24, the former Driscoll’s employee filed a lawsuit in Ventura County Superior Court, accusing the company of retaliating against him after he disclosed to his superiors that it was selling produce in violation of state and federal pesticide regulations and Canadian food safety regulations. Harada contends that when he refused to participate in the concealment of information from the public, he was forced to resign.
The 27-page document, which alleges unlawful retaliation in violation of California Labor Code and wrongful termination in violation of public policy, demands unspecified damages and a jury trial.
“I want agriculture to continue in Ventura County and California for as long as possible, but when we make these kinds of mistakes, it gets cast in such a negative light,” the Camarillo resident said in a December interview. “I hope for change.”
In an email to The Star, Driscoll’s denied Harada’s allegations and pledged to defend itself in court.
A spokesperson said that the company encourages employees to raise concerns in good faith and prohibits retaliation against anyone who does so and that the company maintains robust compliance with food safety regulations.
“As a family-owned company, food safety, quality and integrity are fundamental to who we are,” the company said by email.
‘They could lose their harvests’
Harada began working for Driscoll’s in September 2022 as an agronomist based in Ventura County, and one of his primary responsibilities was monitoring pesticide usage on crops.
One month after beginning his role, he discovered that two of Driscoll’s independent growers in California may have exceeded limits on the number of pesticide applications per year, according to the lawsuit.
The majority of Driscoll’s berries come from ranches the company does not own and picked by farmworkers it does not directly employ, but Harada said it is still responsible for ensuring all growers comply with state and federal laws.
He immediately shared his concerns with his superiors.
An executive soon informed Harada that evidence confirmed the growers in question, including at least one in Oxnard, violated legal pesticide limits, according to the lawsuit.
Instead of reporting the findings to the proper authorities, executives instead asked Harada if the company had plausible deniability of the violations so that it could avoid liability, the lawsuit asserts.
In August 2023, Driscoll’s initiated a third-party audit to determine the scope of overapplications. With the assistance of the auditors, Harada ultimately calculated more than 175 overapplications of 12 chemicals from 2021 through 2022 in California strawberries, according to documents reviewed by The Star.
Though the chemicals likely had enough time to break down before harvest and therefore did not pose a risk to human health, Harada said he was concerned about pesticide resistance.
If the pesticides become less effective at controlling insects and fungal diseases, for example, not only are Driscoll’s crops at risk of damage but so are all other crops in the region that the pests could travel or spread to, Harada said.
“If resistance continues to build, it will become that much harder for growers to farm,” he said. “They could lose their harvests, and there’s nothing they can do long term to prevent it.”
‘I don’t know what the lasting effects are’
In March 2024, Harada was promoted to food and safety regulatory compliance manager for the United States and Canada.
Though he was not informed of any compliance issues when he began the role, he became aware of an increasing number of notifications from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency regarding improper pesticide use and reported illnesses in exports in the company’s shipments to Canada, according to the lawsuit.
Harada soon discovered that more than a year earlier, leadership had removed the Canadian pesticide restrictions from its pesticide compliance tracking system, essentially ignoring the country’s laws altogether, according to the lawsuit.
Canada has more strict pesticide restrictions than the U.S. — including guidelines on the number of days that must pass between the last pesticide application and the time the crop can be harvested — and Driscoll’s must adhere to them when exporting.
Throughout the remainder of 2024 and into early 2025, Harada shared his concerns about the lack of compliance with Canadian laws with his superiors, according to the lawsuit. He said that in prioritizing an unfair competitive advantage, the company was selling potentially toxic berries.
“All countries have a right to determine what their limits should be based off their own research, and for Driscoll’s to exceed that is where I get incredibly concerned because I don’t know what the lasting effects are,” he said.
The health impacts of consuming berries with pesticide residue above the legal limits may not manifest for decades, Harada said.
In February 2025, Harada began working with the company’s internal audit team to investigate his concerns, and the team offered him whistleblower protection, according to the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, the group determined that roughly 50% of Driscoll’s shipments to Canada from 2022 to 2024 — valued at nearly $100 million — contained fruit that exceeded Canadian maximum residue limits. Driscoll’s reinstated its Canadian compliance data shortly after the group’s findings.
‘I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself’
In May 2025, Harada shared his food safety concerns with a high-level executive. According to the lawsuit, Harada said he was unwilling to take part in any effort to conceal the legal violations and that the company should publicly disclose the violations and issue a recall of its berries.
“My goal was to sell safe fruit for human consumption, but this wasn’t the goal of a lot of people at the company,” he said. “What scares me is that Driscoll’s is supposed to be one of the biggest and best in this industry and yet they’re making crucial mistakes that can cause potential health issues and so many effects on sustainability.”
After months of sharing his concerns with no responsive action from the company, he began to be ostracized by his coworkers and his duties and career advancement opportunities began to be diminished, the lawsuit states.
Harada was reprimanded by his supervisor for failing to perform his duties and placed on a performance improvement plan for workplace issues that the lawsuit asserts stemmed from his disclosures of state, federal and international law violations and his refusal to participate in the violations.
He sought treatment for anxiety, depression, insomnia and other physical health issues as a result, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit contends that his working conditions were so intolerable that any reasonable employee would have felt compelled to resign. He did so Oct. 1, 2025.
Harada said his motivations behind resigning are the same ones behind his decision to make his concerns known to the public through a lawsuit.
“This was a moral and ethical dilemma because Driscoll’s was violating moral and ethical lines,” he said. “It was completely based on the correct thing to do because I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself otherwise.”
The first hearing for the case is scheduled for Jan. 6.
Makena Huey is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach her at makena.huey@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation’s Fund to Support Local Journalism.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Ventura County lawsuit accuses Driscoll’s of ignoring pesticide laws
Reporting by Makena Huey, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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By Makena Huey, Ventura County Star | USA TODAY Network
