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Progressives Blast MAHA Report That 'Echoes the Pesticide Industry's Talking Points'
One critic called the report "a slap in the face to the millions of Americans, from health-conscious moms to environmental advocates to farmers, who have been calling for meaningful action on pesticides."
Sep 09, 2025
Health and environmental advocates are hammering a new report issued Tuesday by the Trump administration's Make America Health Again Commission for papering over dangers posed by pesticides and replicating the positions of powerful corporate interests.
According to StatNews, the MAHA report takes a "cautious line" on pesticides, and even includes a section recommending that the Environmental Protection Agency work "with food and agricultural stakeholders... to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence in [the Environmental Protection Agency's] pesticide robust review procedures."
As StatNews noted, this section in particular drew the ire of organic food advocate Elizabeth Kucinich—the spouse of Dennis Kucinich, who served as presidential campaign manager for Trump Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who said that it "reads like it was written by Bayer and Monsanto."
Zen Honeycutt, founder of the pro-MAHA group Moms Across America, similarly told StatNews that "we are deeply disappointed that the committee allowed the chemical companies to influence the report," even as she praised other parts of it.
Public interest advocacy groups, meanwhile, slammed the MAHA report, which they called wholly deferential to major industries.
"The MAHA Commission report is a gift to Big Ag," said Food & Water Watch senior policy analyst Rebecca Wolf. "Its deregulatory proposals read like an industry wish list. The truth is, industrial agriculture is making us sick. Making America healthy again will require confronting Big Ag corporations head on—instead, the Trump administration has capitulated."
Wolf added that the MAHA report lacks "any real action on toxic pesticides linked to rising cancer rates nationwide" and called it "shameful but not surprising" that the report barely mentioned so-called "forever chemicals" contaminating drinking water "while disregarding how elsewhere in the administration common-sense water safety rules are being weakened and canceled."
Sarah Starman, senior food and agriculture campaigner at Friends of the Earth, was even more scathing in her assessment of the report, which she called "a slap in the face to the millions of Americans, from health-conscious moms to environmental advocates to farmers, who have been calling for meaningful action on pesticides."
Like other critics, Starman heaped particular scorn upon the report's section on pesticides.
"Laughably, the report calls the EPA's lax, flawed, and notoriously industry-friendly pesticide regulation process 'robust,'" she said. "This, in spite of the fact that EPA currently allows more than 1 billion pounds of pesticide use on US crops each year, including the use of 85 pesticides that are banned in other countries because of the serious risks they pose to human health and the environment."
The Center for Food Safety (CFS) said that the MAHA report offered "a few crumbs" to health advocates, but was mostly filled with "hollow rhetoric."
George Kimbrell, legal director and co-executive director of CFS, also called out the report's claims about the EPA having a "robust" procedure for approving pesticides.
"There is nothing 'robust' about EPA's regulation of pesticides," he said. "In reality it is the antithesis of robust: it is an oversight system filled with data holes and regulation loopholes, lacking in public transparency, which has instead required decades of dogged public interest litigation to get EPA to do its most basic duties."
Environmental Working Group co-founder and president Ken Cook said that the report made a mockery of Kennedy's past promises to use his power to take on powerful industries.
"It looks like pesticide industry lobbyists steamrolled the MAHA Commission's agenda," he commented. "Secretary Kennedy and President Trump cynically convinced millions they'd protect children from harmful farm chemicals—promises now exposed as hollow."
Cook also took aim at the leaders of the MAHA movement, whom he described as "grifters exploiting the hopes and fears of health-conscious Americans in their quest for power jobs in Washington."
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'Outrageous': New Roundup Is 45 Times More Toxic
"With the new formulations of Roundup, Bayer had the opportunity to make us safer, but it did the opposite," one expert said.
Oct 22, 2024
Facing tens of thousands of lawsuits after it acquired Monsanto, Bayer promised to remove cancer-linked glyphosate from its commercial Roundup weed killers by 2023. But an analysis published by Friends of the Earth on Tuesday reveals that the replacement is even more dangerous.
The environmental group found that many residential Roundup products still do contain glyphosate, and those that don't have replaced it with a chemical cocktail that is 45 times more toxic to human health following long-term exposure.
"With the new formulations of Roundup, Bayer had the opportunity to make us safer, but it did the opposite," Kendra Klein, deputy director of science for Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. "Bayer's willingness to deceive the public and disregard our health as it continues to cash in on the Roundup brand name is outrageous."
"In short, the new Roundup is not the old Roundup—it's worse."
Roundup weed killer was first commercially released by Monsanto 50 years ago. Since then, tens of thousands of people say they have come down with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma after repeated use of the product and its active ingredient glyphosate, which the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer says is "probably carcinogenic to humans." Despite the risk, it is so widely used that it has been found in 80% of a test of U.S. urine samples.
"The human toll of Roundup is enormous—tens of thousands of people have lost their lives and their health because of this toxic weed killer," Klein said.
In response to both legal challenges and popular pressure, Bayer announced in 2021 that it would remove glyphosate from residential Roundup sold in the U.S. within two years.
To track how well Bayer kept that promise, Friends of the Earth assessed the Roundup products for sale at Lowe's and Home Depot—the largest home and garden stores in the U.S.—between June and October of 2024.
It found that seven of the Roundup products for sale still contained glyphosate, while the eight that did not used chemicals "of dramatically greater concern."
Bayer has replaced glyphosate with a combination of four chemicals—fluazifop-P-butyl, triclopyr, diquat dibromide, and imazapic—the latter two of which are banned in the European Union. All four chemicals are even more dangerous to health than glyphosate on average following chronic exposure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) analysis of safety studies. The new ingredients have been linked to kidney and liver damage; reproductive, birth, and development problems; and allergic reactions or irritation that impact the eyes, skin, and respiratory system.
While all four are toxic, one stands out: Diquat dibromide is 200 times more toxic than glyphosate and is considered a "highly hazardous pesticide."
The new ingredients also pose a greater risk to the environment. They are, on average, more likely to threaten bees, birds, worms, and fish and other aquatic life. They are also less likely to break down in the environment, and therefore more likely to infiltrate groundwater and pollute rivers and drinking water.
"In short, the new Roundup is not the old Roundup—it's worse," Friends of the Earth concluded in the report.
The environmental group also criticized Bayer for not providing a warning to consumers about the altered ingredients, as well as lax federal law that does not require pesticide makers to alert shoppers when they change the ingredients of a known brand. While pesticide makers do have to list the active ingredients of a pesticide on the container, the average consumer may not be aware of the relative toxicity of these chemicals. A frequent Roundup user is also likely to assume that anything sold under that brand is similarly toxic to products they have used before.
"Drug companies are not allowed to replace the aspirin in a brand-name pain reliever with oxycontin or fentanyl, and for good reason," Friends of the Earth senior campaigner Sarah Starman said. "It is unconscionable that the Environmental Protection Agency allows this toxic sleight of hand and unethical that Bayer is exposing consumers to dramatically greater risks with no warning."
Friends of the Earth called on Bayer to develop safer chemicals and retire toxic brands like Roundup. At the very least, it urged the company to sell the new formulations under a different brand and warn buyers of the new products' health and environmental risks.
Home and garden retailers, the group argued, should also step up by removing all Roundup products from their stores and online catalogs, or at least selling them with clear warnings of the new risks; phase out toxic pesticides; and offer safer and more organic options.
Finally, the group called on the EPA to toughen its regulations by requiring ingredient-specific safety warnings on commercial pesticides, mandating that new formulations be sold under a new brand, and banning chemicals that harm human health and the environment from consumer products.
"Bayer, like other chemical companies, cannot be trusted to protect our health," Starman said. "We need serious reform at the EPA to ensure that the agency does its duty to protect people and the environment from dangerous pesticides."
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Early US Fumbles in Tortilla War With Mexico Over GMO Corn
The U.S. government ignores the trade numbers and misconstrues Mexican policy when it comes to glyphosate and American corn destined for human consumption across the border.
Jun 27, 2024
An international battle over tortillas is taking place this week. For an ingredient in tacos, the United States gins up a trade dispute with Mexico. Last year, in a Decree Mexico outlawed genetically modified (GMO) corn for human consumption. The U.S. argues that this violates trade obligations. Worried about its GMO corn exports, it formed a trade panel under the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA). Hearings started Wednesday.
The controversy is overstuffed and a sloppy mess. So far, American and Mexican legal filings contain 586 pages, 758 exhibits, and nearly 2,000 footnotes. Arguments span over 20 separate USMCA provisions and multiple annexes. Extra submissions come from Canada and non-governmental organizations. It’s hard to follow, whether you’re a trade expert, scientist, or just care about food safety.
The U.S. position has two weaknesses: economic errors and misrepresentations about the Decree. These are basic mistakes, from a Trade 101 class, regarding injuries and policy. The fumbles stand out from the legalese and scientific jargon in the filings. And let's be clear: he U.S. should drop the case.
A good place to start making sense of the fight is the actual Decree. Article 6 outlaws GMO corn for human consumption, precisely defined as corn for tortillas or masa (dough). It stops approvals for GMO corn for these two items. That is it. The Decree is explicit in not touching GMOs in animal feed or industrial use—the kind U.S. corn farmers mostly export.
Decree motivations include protecting human health, biodiversity, and food security. The prohibition responds to risks from glyphosate, an herbicide needed to grow GMO corn. It has been found to be a likely cause of cancer by international health agencies and U.S. courts. Next, Mexico is corn’s center of origin and diversity, a scientific designation indicating extreme genetic vulnerability. In 2021, Mexico’s Supreme Court found that GMOs threaten to permanently damage this biodiversity. More immediate, corn provides half of the daily protein intake for Mexicans.
With Article 6, Mexico reduces these threats by outlawing GMOs in the tortillas and masa, eaten by millions every day. For these scientifically established risks, Mexico tailored the Decree to only impact two food staples.
The U.S. ignores this. Recent economic figures explain. Mexican corn imports from the U.S. have increased since the Decree. Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported a “record-high” for corn exports to Mexico for 2023 and 2024 and forecasts similar trends next year. This confirms earlier reports citing increases by 20 percent.
Put simply, the Decree has no real impact on trade in corn. Why? Because American farmers overwhelmingly export corn for animal feed and not for human consumption. Mexico has explained this since enacting the Decree. Let’s be clear, the U.S. fights as exports increase. It makes no sense.
Furthermore, the U.S. mispresents the Decree. The U.S. says Mexico imposes a “Tortilla Corn Ban.” Wrong. It suspends approvals for human consumption. GMO corn can still be imported but cannot be destined for tortillas. Mexico describes this as an “End Use Limitation,” since it regulates how corn is used. This applies to GMO corn from anywhere including from Mexican farms.
Next, the U.S. exaggerates what the Decree does. It quibbles about non-issues. What it coins “Substitution Instructions” to force replacing GMO corn in animal feed. The complaint is that instructions are unclear.
Problem: the Decree does not mandate substitution. It does describe future actions and the prerequisites needed to replace GMO feed. Article 7 expressly says Mexico’s commission on sanitary risk will continue approving GMO corn in animal feed, so long as it is not for tortillas. It clarifies that federal agencies will conduct any possible substitution. By implication state governments in Mexico have no role.
Article 8 confirms this, explaining what is necessary before any replacement. It designates the parameters to eventually substitute GMO corn for animals. Pre-conditions include determining national food security and any impacts on human health. In two filings, Mexico explains that the prerequisites have not occurred. As such, it has not set any date for substitution, much less any guidance.
Nowhere does the Decree demand alternatives for GMOs. American complaints miss the mark. There is no there there. The Decree does not touch corn for livestock.
The dispute just started warming up the comal (skillet used to heat tortillas). A final panel report comes in November. Until then, expect a mess with more scientific and legal arguments piled on. In the simplest terms, the U.S. ignores commercial reality and misrepresents the Decree. Basic blunders compounding obstacles in the USMCA’s food safety rules.
All this should inspire resolution versus repeating trade defeats. American farmers and Mexican eaters deserve better. Ending the dispute secures a corn buyer in a neighbor. It promotes public health in Mexico. The current course only produces uncertainty.
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