Economic and immigration enforcement pressures on Latino households have shrunk the U.S. cooking oil market, and the situation is unlikely to improve soon, the owner of the Mazola brand said, according to the Guardian.

George Weston, the chief executive of Associated British Foods (ABF), which owns the iconic cooking oil brand, told London City analysts that cooking oil sales were dipping in the U.S., according to a July 1 report. Weston said that “our heavy use consumer is that Hispanic population who are under financial pressure, who are under pressure from ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and are feeling a bit miserable.”

ICE made nearly 400,000 arrests across the U.S. in the first 14 months of the Trump administration, systematically and consistently targeting Latinx and Black neighborhoods, according to the Legal Defense Fund, among many other sources.

That has caused many people fearful of racial profiling, which was temporarily ruled to be a legal tactic of immigration enforcement by the U.S. Supreme Court's shadow docket in September 2025, to stay indoors, and Weston said Hispanic customers were reusing cooking oil more frequently.

According to the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. government's public health agency, an estimated 11.3 million undocumented immigrants currently live in the U.S., with 74% being Hispanic or Latinx, the vast majority from Mexico.

“Typically that population will be using oils three times before they throw it out, we think it’s gone to four in many cases,” said the CEO of ABF, which also owns brands such as Twinings tea, Kingsmill and the fashion retailer Primark. “We don’t think that that’s going to change into 2027.”

Weston also said Stratas Foods, ABF’s U.S. joint venture supplying oils to the food service sector, was being hit by the rapid uptake of appetite-suppressing drugs. “We are undoubtedly seeing the consequences of GLP-1s on foodservice demand, particularly for fried food,” he said.

ABF’s overall grocery sales rose 1% in the three months to 20 June, with lower U.S. oils sales offset by growth in brands such as Twinings.