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make america healthy again
The Pesticide Industry’s Fingerprints Are All Over the MAHA Commission’s Strategy Report
Instead of delivering real change, the strategy appears to be just another example of the Trump administration putting the financial interests of polluting industries above people’s health.
Sep 10, 2025
When it comes to pesticides, the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, Commission has a serious problem: The Commission's newly released strategy for addressing childhood chronic disease is better for the pesticide industry than for people. Ignoring growing public calls for action, the strategy lays out a milquetoast approach that would protect industry profits at the expense of children’s health.
Back in May, a first report from the MAHA Commission correctly identified exposure to pesticides and other toxic chemicals as one driver of the childhood chronic disease epidemic. The US currently uses over a billion pounds of pesticides annually on our crops, about one-third of which is chemicals that have been banned in other countries. Many have been linked to serious health problems from cancer to infertility to birth defects. Those pesticides contaminate our air, our water, and our bodies. One cancer-linked pesticide, glyphosate, is now found in 80% of adults and 87% of children.
The Commission’s strategy to address pesticide exposure has thus been eagerly awaited by health-conscious moms, environmental advocates, rural Americans like me, and many others. But instead of delivering real change, the strategy appears to be just another example of the Trump administration putting the financial interests of polluting industries above people’s health.
One of the most outrageous elements is a goal to “ensure that the public has awareness and confidence in EPA’s [the Environmental Protection Agency] robust pesticide review procedures.” This is like committing to convince the public that the sky is green—but more dangerous. It’s committing public dollars to a corporate cover-up campaign.
If the EPA’s review process was “robust,” the use of cancer-linked pesticides wouldn’t be increasing in the US; we wouldn’t still be using 85 toxic pesticides that are banned in other countries; and pesticides wouldn’t be green-lit based on “safety” data provided by the very companies seeking approval for their chemicals. In reality, the EPA’s pesticide approval process is notoriously industry-friendly, in large part due to the revolving door between the agency and the industries it’s supposed to regulate. The Trump administration, for example, just appointed a former pro-pesticide lobbyist from the American Soybean Association, Kyle Kunkler, to one of the top positions regulating pesticides at the EPA.
Industry influence has led the EPA to prioritize the approval of new pesticide products at the expense of human health for decades. As one EPA toxicologist explained, “It is the unwritten rule that to get promotions, all pesticides need to pass.” The EPA also regularly uses dangerous loopholes—called conditional registration and emergency exemptions—to allow pesticide products on the market without ever putting them through a full safety review process.
Rather than trying to sell the public industry-friendly myths about the EPA, the MAHA Commission should aim to fix the EPA’s flawed pesticide approval process.
The result is that the US lags behind the rest of the world when it comes to protecting people from pesticides. One of the pesticides most widely used in the US, atrazine, is banned in all 27 countries of the European Union. The chemical is infamous for disrupting hormonal functioning and decreasing fertility. Because the US uses over 70 million pounds a year, atrazine contaminates the drinking water of an estimated 40 million Americans.
Rather than trying to sell the public industry-friendly myths about the EPA, the MAHA Commission should aim to fix the EPA’s flawed pesticide approval process. It should propose sensible, much-needed reforms like prioritizing independent science over industry-backed studies, closing the conditional registration and emergency exemption loopholes, and outlining a plan to close the revolving door once and for all.
Another disappointment in the strategy? It barely mentions organic farming, despite the fact that organic is the clearest pathway to transforming our food system into one that is healthy and nontoxic. The US Department of Agriculture organic seal prohibits more than 900 synthetic pesticides allowed in conventional agriculture. Just one week on an organic diet can reduce pesticide levels in our bodies up to 95%. Synthetic food dyes—a key issue for the MAHA movement—are all prohibited by the organic seal, along with hundreds of other food additives and drugs otherwise allowed in livestock production. Research also shows that organic food can be higher in some nutrients.
Expanding organic farming in the US would be a clear home run for making America healthier. But aside from one lackluster recommendation about “streamlining” the organic certification process, the Commission’s strategy ignores organic. Instead, it leans into promoting industry-friendly “precision agriculture”—the use of AI, machine learning, and digital tools on farms to optimize inputs—which primarily benefits corporate giants like Bayer. To make America’s children healthy, we need better than precision agriculture. We need increased organic research, technical and financial assistance for farmers to transition to organic, the development of new markets and processing infrastructure for organic products, and more.
In short, the strategy is deeply disappointing for the Americans across the political spectrum—including members of the MAHA movement, and including many rural Americans like myself—who have been clamoring for real change. It serves Trump’s pro-industry agenda instead of America’s children. Those of use who care about pesticides are left wondering if the MAHA Commission will ever walk the walk and put our health ahead of the profits of the chemical industry.
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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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'No More Conspiracy Theories. Kennedy Must Resign,' Says Sanders Amid CDC Fallout
Make America Healthy Again is "a great slogan," the senator wrote. "The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the opposite."
Aug 30, 2025
"Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is endangering the health of the American people now and into the future. He must resign."
That's how US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) began a New York Times op-ed on Saturday, amid mounting calls for Kennedy to leave the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), by choice or force, following the ouster of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez.
As Sanders detailed in the Times—and a Thursday letter to Senate HELP Committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) demanding a congressional probe—Monarez was fired after reportedly refusing to "act as a rubber stamp for his dangerous policies." Her exit led to resignations and a staff walkout at the CDC, which is now being led by Jim O'Neill, a Kennedy aide and biotech investor.
Sanders and other lawmakers—including former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a polio survivor and the only Republican to vote against Kennedy's confirmation in February—have long warned about the consequences of letting RFK Jr. hold a key health policy position in President Donald Trump's second administration.
"Mr. Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again," Sanders noted Saturday. "That's a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the opposite."
"Despite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, Secretary Kennedy has continued his long-standing crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts," the senator wrote. "It is absurd to have to say this in 2025, but vaccines are safe and effective. That, of course, is not just my view. Far more important, it is the overwhelming consensus of the medical and scientific communities."
Sanders pointed to guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and World Health Organization, and called out Kennedy's comments on autism, Covid-19 and polio vaccines, and immunizations in general.
"The reality is that Secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of HHS, he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health, and on truth itself," he wrote, warning that in the "short term, it will be harder for Americans to get lifesaving vaccines," including for Covid.
However, "Covid is just the beginning. Mr. Kennedy's next target may be the childhood immunization schedule, the list of recommended vaccines that children receive to protect them from diseases like measles, chickenpox. and polio," the senator continued. He also sounded the alarm over the secretary "defunding the research that could help us prepare for the next pandemic."
Sanders, a leading advocate of Medicare for All, also took aim at the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed last month.
"America's healthcare system is already dysfunctional and wildly expensive, and yet the Trump administration will be throwing an estimated 15 million people off their health insurance through a cut of over $1 trillion to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act," he noted. "This cut is also expected to result in the closing of or the decline in services at hundreds of nursing homes, hospitals, and community health centers. As a result of cuts to the Affordable Care Act, health insurance costs will soar for millions of Americans. That is not Making America Healthy Again."
"Secretary Kennedy is putting Americans' lives in danger, and he must resign," Sanders concluded. "In his place, President Trump must listen to doctors and scientists and nominate a health secretary and a CDC director who will protect the health and well-being of the American people, not carry out dangerous policies based on conspiracy theories."
Bernie Sanders is right—RFK Jr. must resign. His leadership is an assault on science, public health, and truth. We’re not just talking politics; we’re talking lives. #ResignKennedy #ScienceFirst”www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/o...
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— Elizabeth (@elizathewell.bsky.social) August 30, 2025 at 10:30 AM
Doctors, journalists, and others praised the senator's op-ed, with Trauma surgeon Mark Hoofnagle saying that "Bernie nails it."
Pennsylvania State University professor and A Desire Called America author Christian Haines wrote on the social media platform Bluesky that the piece was "clear and incisive, though I wish it didn't need to be said."
Also sharing the post on Bluesky, former Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse said: "It's delusional for anyone to think that RFK Jr. and Donald Trump are making America healthy again. With Kennedy's war against science, truth, and vaccines and Trump's war against Medicaid, their movement should be called MAKING AMERICA UNHEALTHY AGAIN."
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