Problem? Or no Problem? Another plastic rant

I discovered today that the yogurt we buy for our girls--Yo Baby Yogurt--is packaged in a polystyrene product (Recycle number 6). I wrote the company about my concerns and in all fairness, this is the reply I received within hours (the formatting is a little off, ignore that some of the words run together, it was a byproduct of copy/paste):

Hello ,

Thanks for your inquiry about our packaging. We appreciate hearing from you. Because the use of any plastic can have an adverse effect on the environment, we continuously search for packaging materials with lower environmental impacts. For now, we believe the best option for our small cups is polystyrene.

Simply put, the best way to minimize the environmental impacts of our packaging is by reducing the overall amount of packaging material we use -less packaging means less consumption of resources, less pollution and less solid waste. We have significantly reduced the amount of packaging we use through a series of design changes, such as eliminating the lids on our 6oz. containers. The switch of our 4 oz. multi-packs to polystyrene was another step. By switching to polystyrene cups, we were able to reduce the packaging by 37% and prevent the manufacture and disposal of over 2.5million lbs of material. In addition, we are molding the cups at our New Hampshire facility, which eliminates the need to have empty cups shipped to us. This saves fuel, reduces pollution including global warming gases and eliminates additional packaging used to ship the empty cups.

From a food safety perspective, polystyrene has been determined by the both the U.S. FDA and the European Union (EU) to be safe for packaging that is in direct contact with food. The FDA requires the styrene content of the packaging be less than 5,000 parts per million (ppm). The styrene content in Stonyfield Farm’s polystyrene packaging does not exceed 400 ppm, or 92%less than the allowable limit. If the low levels of styrene in our cups still concern you, our yogurt can also be purchased in 32 oz. containers made of polypropylene.

Sincerely,
The folks at Stonyfield Farm

We’re passionately committed to making the best-tasting, healthiest yogurts available, and trying to do some good in the world while we’re at it. Visit us at Stonyfield.com!

Of course, I'm never comforted by the fact that the FDA approved such plastics. Frankly, the FDA does what's right for the economy more often than for people's health. If that were true, polycarbonates would not be available for infant bottles.

The jury is still out whether I'll continue to buy the Yo Baby yogurt; I may just switch to their other product for safety.