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pesticides
Critics Say RFK's MAHA Report Offers 'Half-Baked Finger-Pointing' Instead of Real Policy Solutions
"To be meaningful, the findings of the report must translate into concrete actions that truly advance a healthier, more sustainable food system for America's farmers and consumers."
May 23, 2025
Hours after Republicans in the U.S. House passed a budget reconciliation package Thursday that would slash hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare and federal food assistance programs for low-income Americans, the nation's top health agency released a highly anticipated report on chronic diseases in children—one that had nothing to say about the impacts those cuts will have on millions of children and instead offered a litany of complaints about families' lifestyles, vaccines, and "overmedicalization," with few solutions.
Led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the so-called "Make America Healthy Again" Commission released The MAHA Report, urging the federal government to "act decisively" to reverse "the childhood chronic disease crisis by confronting its root causes—not just its symptoms."
But longtime campaigners in the food safety realm said that while the report's partial focus on the wide use of pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals—many of which are banned in Europe—is a positive step, the document gave little indication that Kennedy and other Trump administration officials plan to listen to scientists who warn that these chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, and immune function.
As Civil Eats reported in April, dozens of GOP lawmakers wrote to Kennedy and other commission members including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, warning that a push to limit pesticides in food was being pushed by "activist groups promoting misguided and sometimes malicious policies masquerading as health solutions."
"Protecting children's health and building a healthy food system must trump pesticide corporations' profits," said George Kimbrell, legal director of Center for Food Safety, in a Thursday statement. "Policy and governance must be based on sound science and reject fearmongering and lobbying influence alleging that these toxins are needed for a healthy food system or agricultural economy."
The report also includes numerous mentions of health guidelines and standards in Europe, but Zeldin was clear in a call with reporters as the document was released that ensuring the health of American children "cannot happen through a European mandate system that stifles growth."
The commission suggested that U.S. farmers will continue to use 300 millions of pounds of glyphosate and 70 million pounds of atrazine per year—herbicides that, respectively, have been the subject of thousands of lawsuits filed by cancer patients and contaminate the drinking water of 40 million Americans.
While the World Health Organization has classified glyphosate as a probable carcinogen and numerous countries have banned the weed-killer, the MAHA Commission said "human studies are limited" regarding glyphosate and similar products. The report allowed that "a selection of research studies... have noted a range of possible health effects."
Even that language was enough to anger agricultural groups and the Republican politicians who are allied with them, with the American Soybean Association accusing the commission of "glaring misinformation and anti-farmer findings" on Friday.
Kimbrell said the report "falls woefully short of providing any next steps in how the government is going to stop this health epidemic from continuing."
"To be meaningful, the findings of the report must translate into concrete actions that truly advance a healthier, more sustainable food system for America's farmers and consumers," he said.
The report also makes no mention of factory farming and its link to antibiotic resistance via corporate farmers' widespread antibiotic use; the leading causes of death for children in the U.S., gun violence and car accidents; and dental cavities, which is one of the most common chronic health problems in children.
Kennedy has spearheaded an effort to remove fluoride from public drinking water, saying in the report that exposure to high levels of fluoride is linked to low IQ in children. Widespread community water fluoridation has been linked to a sharp decrease in tooth decay among children, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hailing the practice, now used in 60% of the country, as a major public health achievement.
Medical organizations have said concerns about fluoridation raised by Kennedy and others are unfounded.
During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy dismissed the idea that healthcare should be a human right—falsely claiming Americans prefer the for-profit health insurance industry to government-run systems that have been shown to be far less costly and have better outcomes. The report also makes no mention of the harms of tying healthcare to profit, even as it compared U.S. life expectancy and healthcare costs unfavorably to those in other wealthy nations.
In a video posted to social media, dietician Jessica Knurick emphasized that Kennedy is right to point out the nation's "chronic disease problem."
"But he gets the causes and the solutions completely wrong," she said. "His causes are not evidence-based and they play into the idea of scientific and regulatory corruption to erode trust in science. And his solutions distract from evidence-based solutions that could actually help while actively undermining public health."
With the MAHA Report focusing heavily on sedentary lifestyles and low-income people's reliance on ultraprocessed, inexpensive food, Food and Water Watch (FWW) senior policy analyst Rebecca Wolf said the document amounts to "half-baked finger-pointing that blames the sick."
"Improving public health in America cannot happen without reigning in corporate control. It is a grave mistake to exclude Big Ag from culpability," said Wolf. "Any administration serious about public health must strictly regulate the corporations putting our food and water supplies at risk."
Policy solutions that went ignored in the report, said Wolf, include:
- Closing the "Generally Recognized as Safe" loophole that allows corporations to self-certify the safety of food additives without Food and Drug Administration approval;
- Canceling plans to roll back existing regulations for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS;
- Fully funding and staffing food safety agencies, which have been slashed by the Trump administration; and
- Stopping state legislatures from passing laws called "Cancer Gag Act legislation" by opponents, which would limit pesticide manufacturer liability in health-related lawsuits.
"The report is right to highlight the health impacts of ultraprocessed foods, microplastics, PFAS, and pesticides," said FWW, "but falls short of directing real policy recommendations capable of reigning in corporate polluters."
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In Win for Agribusiness, Trade Panel Backs US Challenge to Mexican GM Corn Ban
"Trade agreements should not allow multinational pesticide and biotech companies to imperil the health of people and the environment," one campaigner said.
Dec 21, 2024
A trade dispute panel under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement ruled on Friday that Mexico violated the trade accord with its ban on genetically modified corn for human consumption.
The decision was a win for the agribusiness industry and the Biden administration, which called for the panel in August of last year after negotiations with the Mexican government failed. However, civil society groups condemned the ruling, saying it overlooked threats to the environment, public health, and Indigenous rights while overstating potential harm to U.S. corn exporters.
"The panel ignores the mountains of peer-reviewed evidence Mexico presented on the risks to public health and the environment of genetically modified (GM) corn and glyphosate residues for people in Mexico who consume more than 10 times the corn as we do in the U.S. and do so not in processed foods but in minimally processed forms such as tortillas," Timothy A. Wise, an investigative journalist with U.S. Right to Know, told Common Dreams. "Mexico's precautionary policies are indeed well-grounded in science, and the U.S. and the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) have no business using a trade agreement to undermine a domestic policy that barely affects trade between the two countries."
"This ruling will make winners out of agrochemical corporations and losers out of everyone else."
Then-Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) first announced a ban on GM corn and glyphosate in 2020, to go into effect by 2024. This was then amended in February 2023 to scratch the 2024 deadline for animal feed and industrial uses of corn, but immediate ban GM corn for tortillas and tortilla dough. While the deleted deadline was widely seen as a concession to pressure from the Biden administration, the U.S. still went ahead with challenging the rule under the USMCA.
In response to Friday's decision, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack commended the panel for affirming that "Mexico's approach to biotechnology was not based on scientific principles or international standards."
"Mexico's measures ran counter to decades' worth of evidence demonstrating the safety of agricultural biotechnology, underpinned by science- and risk-based regulatory review systems," Vilsack continued. "This decision ensures that U.S. producers and exporters will continue to have full and fair access to the Mexican market, and is a victory for fair, open, and science- and rules-based trade, which serves as the foundation of the USMCA as it was agreed to by all parties."
Yet several U.S. environmental groups backed Mexico's case and said the science used by the U.S. to establish the safety of GM corn was out-of-date and insufficient. For example, the U.S. relies on studies from when GM or genetically engineered corn was first introduced to the market and does not account for how pesticides and herbicides are currently used on the corn.
"Trade agreements should not allow multinational pesticide and biotech companies to imperil the health of people and the environment," said Kendra Klein, PhD, deputy director of science at Friends of the Earth U.S. "The science is clear that GMO corn raises serious health concerns and that production of GMO corn depends on intensive use of the toxic weedkiller glyphosate."
Mily Treviño-Sauceda, the executive director of the Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, condemned Friday's decision.
"Mexico's policies to ban the use of GM corn and glyphosate were enacted to protect biodiversity, cultural heritage, and the rights of Indigenous people," Treviño-Sauceda said. "This decision will continue to adversely impact the quality and nutritional value of food reaching Mexican households. This is just another step in the direction of consolidating agricultural power to the U.S. agro-industrial complex that we will continue to challenge until we see real change for the benefit of the public and our health."
Other trade justice and agricultural advocates said the decision was a missed opportunity to transform trade and food systems beyond Mexico.
"The USMCA was hailed as a new kind of trade agreement, taking some steps forward on issues like labor rights and investment," said Karen Hansen-Kuhn, director of trade and international strategies at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. "This dispute shows how far we still need to go. Mexico has every right to try to transform its food system to better feed its people and enhance rural livelihoods and biodiversity. The U.S. was wrong to challenge that initiative, and the panel is wrong to back them up"
Farm Action President Angela Huffman added: "We are disappointed in the panel's ruling today, which shows the U.S. successfully wielded its power on behalf of the world's largest agrochemical corporations to force their industrial technology onto Mexico. Mexico's ban GM corn and glyphosate presented a tremendous premium market opportunity for non-GM corn producers in the U.S. Instead of helping U.S. farmers transition to non-GM corn production, our government has continued to force GM corn onto people who don't want it and propped up agrochemical corporations based in other countries—such as Germany's Bayer and China's Syngenta. This ruling will make winners out of agrochemical corporations and losers out of everyone else."
Business interests, on the other hand, reacted positively to the news.
"This is the clearest of signals that upholding free-trade agreements delivers the stability needed for innovation to flourish and to anchor our food security," Emily Rees, president of plant-science industry group CropLife International, said, as Reuters reported.
The president of the U.S. National Corn Growers Association, Kenneth Hartman Jr., also celebrated the news, saying, "This outcome is a direct result of the advocacy efforts of corn grower leaders from across the country," according to The Associated Press.
The Mexican government said it disagreed with the decision, but would abide by the panel's ruling.
"The Mexican government does not agree with the panel's finding, given that it considers that the measures in question are aligned with the principles of protecting public health and the rights of Indigenous communities," the country's Economy Department said. "Nonetheless, the Mexican government will respect the ruling."
The decision comes as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to set a 25% tariff on all imports to the U.S. from Mexico and Canada unless the two countries decrease the number of migrants and the amount of fentanyl that enters the U.S. via their borders. As this would likely violate the USCMA, it puts additional pressure on Mexico to abide by the agreement in order to reinforce norms against Trump's challenge.
Wise criticized the panel for ruling against Mexico when real threats to trade governance loom on the horizon.
"At a time when the U.S. president-elect is threatening to levy massive tariffs on Mexican products, a blatant violation of the North American trade agreement, it is outrageous that a trade tribunal ruled in favor of the U.S. complaint against Mexico's limited restrictions on genetically modified corn, which barely affect U.S. exporters," Wise said in a statement.
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Pesticide Scorecard Exposes Which Food Retailers Are Failing Bees
"Under the incoming Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency will likely do even less to mitigate the damage of pesticides, putting even more onus on companies to address the escalating risks," said one climate advocate.
Dec 10, 2024
A report released Tuesday from the environmental group Friends of the Earth finds that the U.S. food retail sector's use of pesticides on just four crops—almonds, apples, soy, and corn—could result in over $200 billion worth of financial, climate, and biodiversity risks for the industry between 2024 and 2050. Pollinators, including bees, form a crucial link between pesticide use and these risks.
The report was released in tandem with the group's annual retailer scorecard, which ranks the largest U.S. grocery stores on the "steps they are taking to address the use of toxic pesticides in their supply chains and to support the expansion of organic agriculture and other ecological solutions."
While it highlights some industry leadership on this issue, the authors of the scorecard say that, on the whole, retailer action to curb the impact of pesticides falls short. The following retailers received an "F" grade from Friends of the Earth: Wakefern, Publix, Dollar General, 7-Eleven Inc., Hy-Vee, Walgreens, H-E-B, BJ's, Amazon, and Wegmans.
Although its owner, Amazon, received an F grade, the grocery store Whole Foods was the only retailer that was given an A grade.
A handful of the companies, including Whole Foods, have made time bound pledges to address pesticide use by requiring fresh produce suppliers to adopt ecological farming methods and to confirm their practices through third-party verifications. Eight companies have created policies that encourage suppliers to reduce the use of "pesticides of concern—including neonicotinoids, organophosphates, and glyphosate—and to shift to least-toxic approaches," according to the scorecard.
Friends of the Earth's report on risks associated with pesticide use explains why scrutiny around retailers' use of pesticides is warranted, and why retailers themselves ought to be motivated to reduce these risks.
For one thing, "under the incoming Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency will likely do even less to mitigate the damage of pesticides, putting even more onus on companies to address the escalating risks," according to Kendra Klein, deputy director of science at Friends of the Earth.
"Food retailers must urgently reduce their use of pesticides and advance organic and other ecologically regenerative approaches. They have the opportunity to lead in the fight against biodiversity collapse and climate change, helping to ensure Americans have continued access to healthy food," she said in a statement.
An estimated one-third of world crops rely on pollination, and a little less than three-fourths of fruit and vegetable crops require pollination from insects and other creatures, according to the report. Pollinators are often studied as an indicator for biodiversity risk and general environmental health—and experts cite pesticides as among the reasons that pollinators are in decline. Research also shows that pesticides poise a threat to healthy soil ecosystems.
According to the report, an estimated one-third of world crops rely on pollination, and a little less than three-fourths of fruit and vegetable crops require pollination from insects and other creatures. Pollinators are often studied as an indicator for biodiversity risk and general environmental health—and experts cite pesticides as among the reasons that pollinators are in decline, per the report. Research also shows that pesticides poise a threat to healthy soil ecosystems, the report states.
The report states that 89% of the almond crop area, 72% of apples, 100% of corn, and 40% of soy receives more than one "lethal dose" of an insecticide that is considered toxic to bees. This "quantification of the risk of pesticides to pollinators" for the four crops "provides the values to conduct the financial analysis in this study."
The document details how the food retail industry's use of pesticides creates direct costs for the industry—for example, the money spent purchasing and applying the pesticides, the CO2 emissions associated with using or producing pesticides, and the impact on crop yields, as well as indirect costs.
When it comes to climate damage costs, the report estimates that U.S. food retailer sales for products that include soy, corn, apples, and almonds will suffer $4.5 billion over the period of 2024-50. Biodiversity risk stemming from using pollinator-harming pesticides on those four crops is valued much higher, at $34.3 billion, over the same time period.
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