Apeel Sciences has filed a lawsuit on August 29, 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida against wellness influencer Robyn Openshaw and her company GreenSmoothieGirl.com, Inc., accusing them of waging a years' long disinformation campaign intended to harm Apeel's business and reputation.
The lawsuit asserts claims for false advertising under the Lanham Act; defamation; trade libel; disparagement of perishable agricultural products; tortious interference with business relationships; and unfair and deceptive trade practices.
According to the complaint, Openshaw—known online as the "Green Smoothie Girl"—began posting false claims about the company in July 2023. Between then and May 2025, she published at least 60 posts across Instagram, YouTube, X, Rumble, her website, and elsewhere online falsely stating the company's plant-based coating is toxic and that its products are made with solvents and heavy metals.
© Apeel Sciences
The lawsuit alleges that Openshaw used those claims to rally her "Green Smoothie Girl Army" of followers to boycott Apeel, urging them to pressure retailers such as Costco, suppliers such as Limoneira and Driscoll's, and others to abandon Apeel-protected produce. She published the personal contact information of executives at grocery chains, encouraged phone, email, and in-store campaigns, and sold a downloadable "wallet card" listing stores that did not sell Apeel-treated produce.
In some posts, Openshaw falsely claimed the company used a chemical found in "gasoline" in its process, and in others, she said the company's products contained "palladium, arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury." The complaint says Openshaw's statements misrepresented FDA filings and omitted facts showing the company's commercial process has never used the solvents Openshaw described.
The company also points to a blog article Openshaw published in June 2024 titled, "GreenSmoothieGirl Gets Apeel Shut Down at Billion-Dollar Produce Company," in which she celebrated the alleged success of her campaigns.
The lawsuit follows actress Michelle Pfeiffer's July 31, 2025 retraction of inaccurate social media claims about the company and its connection to Bill Gates. Pfeiffer acknowledged reposting false information and emphasized the importance of accuracy in public conversations about food safety.
The company said the case is part of a larger disinformation campaign that began in April 2023, when dozens of coordinated posts spread across Facebook, X and Telegram warned consumers not to "eat anything with the Apeel sticker on it." Those posts falsely linked to a safety sheet for an unrelated industrial cleaner manufactured by a wholly different company based in the United Kingdom, presenting it as if it described Apeel's products.
The complaint states that Openshaw amplified those narratives to her hundreds of thousands of followers, repeating them at least 60 times and intentionally mischaracterizing Apeel's FDA submissions. Independent fact checks by Reuters, AP, USA Today and Politifact later confirmed the claims were false and that the company's products are safe and FDA-approved.
For more information:
Apeel Sciences
[email protected]
www.apeel.com
