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MAHA advocates are rallying against GOP “traitors” who passed the farm bill

Moms Across America founder Zen Honeycutt: “If the Republicans lose the midterm elections … this will be one of the reasons why”

Written by Alyssa Tirrell

Published 09/17/26

This week, the Senate Agriculture Committee passed the farm bill, a policy package that has repeatedly faced opposition from the “Make America Healthy Again” movement.

While the farm bill was being considered, MAHA advocates urged their followers to contact senators to vote “no,” arguing that the bill's language would fail to hold pesticide manufacturers accountable. Following the bill’s passage, advocates expressed frustration with Republican senators, highlighting tensions between a key faction of President Donald Trump's base and the broader GOP prior to the midterms.

This week: MAHA vs. the farm bill

As the Senate Agriculture Committee reconsidered the farm bill, MAHA advocates asked their followers to call senators and urge them not to pass a package that would delay pesticide reviews and cut funding for regenerative agriculture, a pesticide-free farming method.

Several major MAHA accounts, including Moms Across America, Kelly Ryerson (known online as Glyphosate Girl) and Courtney Swan, joined in a September 14 post on Instagram urging their followers to contact five Republican senators — Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville, Iowa’s Joni Ernst, Kansas’ Roger Marshall, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, and West Virginia’s Jim Justice — and tell them to vote “no” on the farm bill.

MAHA activist Alexandra Munoz shared the post and commented, “This bill must be stopped! Don’t let them deregulate pesticides more!” The post was further shared in an Instagram story by MAHA podcaster Alex Clark, and the MAHA Mom Coalition included the call to action in a series of posts critical of the bill.

Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America, posted a video Tuesday morning encouraging her audience to call their senators to vote “no” on the bill. In an additional video posted the following day, Honeycutt elaborated, “We just want to let them know we will be watching their vote.”

She added, “If the Republicans lose the midterm elections and they are voting — doing things like this, like voting party lines instead of listening to their constituents — this will be one of the reasons why."

On Wednesday, the farm bill passed the Senate Agriculture Committee in a vote along party lines. The stalemate was broken by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has been privately dealing with health issues since at least June and reportedly returned to the Senate in part to break the deadlock.

MAHA advocates responded by expressing frustration, particularly with Republican senators.

Vani Hari (known online as the Food Babe), Munoz, Ryerson, and Swan shared a post condemning the passage of the farm bill. Hari wrote, “What happened with the Farm Bill today is absolutely insulting to the American people. Congress had an opportunity to demand MORE accountability for the chemicals being sprayed on our food.” The caption included a “Traitor list” naming a dozen Republican senators.

Ryerson also separately posted an image of McConnell returning to the Senate with the caption, “Ailing Sen McConnell dragged in from medical leave to VOTE TO DEFUND REGEN AG and POSTPONE GLYPHOSATE REVIEW.”

In a new video, Honeycutt said, “We're very disappointed. I’m going to read the Republicans who voted for the farm bill, which is not what their constituents want.” She also claimed that McConnell “did not have the wherewithal, he was not in mental or physical fitness to be able to do that vote, that should absolutely not be allowed.”

She then read a list of Republican senators who voted to pass the bill, adding, “Folks, the Republicans need to hear from you.”

Recap: MAHA vs. glyphosate

This spring, the herbicide ingredient glyphosate became a particular rallying point for MAHA advocates as the Supreme Court prepared to hear a case that would shield Bayer, the manufacturer of the glyphosate-based Roundup, from liability. As CNBC reported, “The Environmental Protection Agency does not classify glyphosate as a carcinogen and does not require labels to disclose cancer risk, but the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015 said the chemical is ‘probably carcinogenic to humans.’”

The issue was further charged in March after the Trump administration, which had signed an executive order promoting glyphosate production in February, wrote an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of Bayer.

In response, MAHA advocates organized “The People vs. Poison” rally in D.C. on April 27. The protest prompted the House of Representatives to remove language from the farm bill that MAHA figures said would also have shielded pesticide manufacturers from liability. The bill passed the House without the pesticide protections just a few days later, and MAHA celebrated the win.

The victory was short-lived, however. In late June, the Supreme Court decided in favor of Bayer, finding that “that the company can't be sued in state courts because federal regulations have found a cancer link unlikely and do not require a warning label.”

Then, in early August, Senate Republicans voted down a Democrat-led amendment to the farm bill that would have allowed injured parties to file suit against pesticide companies. The legislation then stalled in committee, according to The Hill, thanks primarily to Democratic members who oppose a “provision in the bill that would require states to help cover the cost of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding.”

MAHA moms are taking on data centers

06/10/26

MAHA and wellness advocates sound the alarm after the primary defeat of Rep. Thomas Massie

05/21/26

MAHA is outraged over Supreme Court ruling that shields Monsanto owner Bayer from cancer liability

06/26/26

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mma

SHAWN RYAN CRITICIZES HHS SEC RFK JR OVER IMMUNITY FOR PESTICIDE COMPANIES: "HOW THE FUCK IS THAT MAKING AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN?"

05/04/26

https://www.mediamatters.org/robert-f-kennedy-rfk-jr/shawn-ryan-criticizes-hhs-sec-rfk-jr-over-immunity-pesticide-companies-how)

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Paraquat is an herbicide banned in more than 70 countries, including China, Brazil, and throughout the European Union. President Donald Trump’s own Environmental Protection Agency warns that “one sip can kill,” and MS NOW reports that it is often used in suicides because it’s cheap and fatal. The stuff is so virally toxic that even wearing special gear and respirators doesn’t fully protect applicators from exposure.

The chemical hits particularly hard in many agricultural states that tend to vote Republican. This includes Mississippi, where one county saw high rates of Parkinson’s disease deaths, in the top 7 percent of all U.S. counties that reported Parkinson’s deaths between 2018 and 2024.

“Troves of evidence have long linked paraquat to Parkinson’s, the world’s fastest-growing – and incurable – neurodegenerative disease,” reports MS Today, adding that a Sipcam Agro plant that processes the toxic herbicide sits within that county and is the “largest single emitter of paraquat.”

“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that we’re all victims of our environment,” said Ashton Pearson Sr., a life-long Mississippi resident who was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2013, at 58 years old.

“Since 2018, three facilities across the country have reported releasing paraquat into the air to the EPA: the Sipcam plant in Mississippi, a Syngenta subsidiary in Georgia and a hazardous waste facility in East Chicago, Indiana,” reports MS Today. “The Georgia plant, which is owned by Syngenta subsidiary Adama in Tifton, released 10 pounds into the air in 2020. The Indiana waste site, which has been penalized for improper storage, reported releasing one pound of paraquat into the air in 2023.”

When it was owned by Odom Industries, the Mississippi plant’s paraquat air emissions hovered around 500 pounds per year, said MS NOW, growing to 1,500 pounds in 2022. But they spiked massively in 2023, when Sipcam Agro took over the facility and announced plans to expand – thanks in part to tax credits provided by the Mississippi Development Authority.”

By 2024, under Sipcam Agro, airborne emissions soared to over 47,000 pounds.

But the revolving door between industry and the Trump administration “threatens to undermine” state efforts to restrict the poison, reports MS NOW.

“Kelsey Barnes, current senior adviser to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, is a former manager of federal government relations for Syngenta. Language introduced in the Farm Bill would pre-empt state bills and prevent state and local bodies from regulating chemicals like paraquat. Organizers’ efforts to remove the language earlier this year were unsuccessful.”

“We’re very concerned,” said Andi Fristedt, executive vice president with the Parkinson’s Foundation. Fristedt added that restraints on state-level regulation are extra concerning when the federal government has continued to resist taking action.

“The most important thing is pushing the EPA to ban paraquat,” said Fristedt. “They could end paraquat use tomorrow.”

Trump is losing his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) supporters, the health-conscious predominantly female coalition that, largely due to Trump's lax take on banning dangerous pesticides.

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pesticide-use-and-cancer-risk-rise-together-across-americas-heartland

MANY PIX GFX NO LNX

Investigative / Enterprise:Health

Pesticide use and cancer risk rise together across America’s heartland

America’s farmers and farmworkers, their families and neighbors, are being diagnosed with cancer at rates higher than the national average. A growing body of research indicates that pesticides are partly to blame.

by Ben Felder, Investigate Midwest

February 18, 2026

Why you can trust Investigate Midwest

Lisa Lawler wasn’t surprised when diagnosed with breast cancer in 2025. Her mother had breast cancer and died in 2016. It seemed like cancer had become a common diagnosis for many of her neighbors and friends.

“With how many people seem to get cancer in our community, you just assume you will get it,” said Lawler, who lives in rural Hardin County, Iowa. “But no one really talks about what’s causing it.”

After 10 rounds of radiation and a surgery to remove the tumor, Lawler’s cancer was in remission. Last year, she took a test to determine if her cancer was likely genetic, meaning a high chance of recurrence, which could lead her to have her entire breast removed.

She was surprised by the results.

“The genetic test they ran for me was one that covered 81 genes that are typically related to breast cancer,” Lawler said. “After the test, they told me my cancer is likely not genetic, but likely environmental, based on these 81 genes.

“Your next thought is, then what’s in the environment that caused my cancer?”

Increasingly, pesticides are being blamed for rising cancer rates across America’s agricultural communities.

Hardin County, home to around 800 farms, has a pesticide use rate more than four times the national average and a cancer rate among the highest in the state.

Most of the 500 counties with the highest pesticide use per square mile are located in the Midwest. Sixty percent of those counties also had cancer rates higher than the national average of 460 cases per 100,000 people, according to an analysis of data from both the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Cancer Institute.

Last year, Investigate Midwest, in partnership with the University of Missouri, investigated the link between agrichemicals and cancer in Missouri, finding that many were rural communities that already lacked access to healthcare.

This story was produced as part of the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship.

Investigate Midwest expanded on that coverage by analyzing data across the country, along with interviewing more than 100 farmers, environmentalists, lawmakers and scientists as part of a partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship. The result was the picture of a nation at a crossroads in dealing with this public health crisis that has not just been ignored by state and federal health officials, but aided.

This story was also supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

“Cancer is everywhere and it’s an experience that is unfortunately all too common,” said Kerri Johannsen, senior director of policy and programs at the Iowa Environmental Council, a Des Moines-based nonprofit that has been studying the state’s growing cancer rate.

Agrichemicals have helped America become a crop-producing power, increasing yields of commodity crops — such as corn and soybeans — used for food, fuel and animal feed.

Sprayed from airplanes, drones, tractors and handheld devices, these chemicals can drift through the air or run off into nearby rivers and streams.

And for decades, some farmers and pesticide users have developed neurological and respiratory issues. Thousands of lawsuits have alleged that pesticides and the companies that make them were to blame.

Kerri Johannsen, senior director of policy and programs at the Iowa Environmental Council

Pesticide manufacturers often rejected those claims while sometimes concealing research by their own employees that raised similar concerns. These companies — such as Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva and BASF — have also spent millions to lobby federal and state lawmakers for laws that would limit their legal liability and continue to allow them to sell agrichemicals.

“This is one of the most transparently reviewed products ever,” said Jessica Christiansen, the head of crop science communications for Bayer, speaking about her company’s production of Roundup, a glyphosate-based pesticide. “This product is so well studied … been on the market for over 50 years with thousands and thousands of studies. There is no linkage to cancer, there just isn’t.”

Under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture have also hired dozens of former pesticide executives and lobbyists, some of whom have already pushed for deregulation of their industry. The Department of Health and Human Services has also altered its own reports to downplay the harm of pesticides.

Two states — North Dakota and Georgia — recently passed laws limiting their residents’ ability to sue pesticide companies, and at least a dozen other states will consider similar laws in the coming months.

“We’ve gotten to a point in the U.S. … where we’ve stopped treating pesticides as if they are dangerous tools,” said Rob Faux, who manages a small Iowa farm and has advocated against pesticide liability shield laws. “Instead, these companies tell these stories that these pesticides are completely safe and we are encouraged to use them anytime. We’ve been convinced that we must use them or we are not going to have enough food to eat.”

In Iowa, a state with heavy pesticide use — 53 million pounds last year — and the nation’s second-highest cancer rate, doctors and health officials have been sounding an alarm for years.

The state has become ground zero in the fight to limit the impact of pesticides on health and the environment. Farmers have gathered at the state Capitol to advocate for increased laws and funding to address the rising cancer rate. That advocacy likely helped defeat a bill last year that would have protected pesticide makers from some lawsuits.

I call myself a Republican, but this is not about politics; this is about money, about the almighty dollar.”

Bill Billings, a resident of Red Oak, Iowa, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2024

“I believe the groups wanting this (bill) to go through didn’t expect any substantial resistance, but there was enough resistance,” said Faux, who also works for the Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network, a nonprofit advocating for less agrichemical use.

The Iowa bill was strongly opposed by environmental and health organizations, which have traditionally been left-leaning. But there was also strong opposition from many conservative residents and farmers.

“I call myself a Republican, but this is not about politics; this is about money, about the almighty dollar,” said Bill Billings, a resident of Red Oak, Iowa, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2024.

Initially, doctors told Billings, then 61, he would likely be dead in a matter of months after discovering lymphoma in his lungs. A health enthusiast and hospital administrator, Billings had been a regular user of Roundup, the popular Bayer pesticide used on farms and residential properties.

“The cancer specialist said, very directly, (my) cancer is a result of being exposed to chemicals,” Billings said. “In my records, it literally says that I have cancer as a result of exposure to Roundup and agrochemicals.”

Billings was prescribed a five-drug regimen, along with chemotherapy. In September, he was declared cancer-free.

Last year, he hired a lawyer to file a lawsuit against Bayer.

“The irony is … Bayer Pharmaceuticals makes one of the drugs that treated my cancer,” Billings said. “It’s disturbing to find out you are in this financial circle — not only as a consumer, but as a patient.”

Bill Billings, his home, and surrounding neighborhood in Red Oak, Iowa, photographed Jan. 21, 2026. photos by Geoff Johnson, for Investigate Midwest

Research increasingly links pesticides to growing cancer risk

Cancer is a complex disease and can be caused by numerous environmental and genetic factors. Some links have been clear — such as smoking and lung cancer — while other forms can be impossible to trace back to an original cause.

But scientific research linking pesticides with certain types of cancers has been growing.

“Our findings show that the impact of pesticide use on cancer incidence may rival that of smoking,” scientists wrote in a 2024 study, which was published in Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society.

The study linked pesticides to prostate, lung, pancreas and colon cancers. Pesticides have also been associated with lymphoma and Parkinson’s disease, the study claimed.

Many doctors in agricultural communities say the link with pesticides is hard to deny.

“Iowa has a super high rate (of cancer) and when you look at all of our modifiable risk factors … tobacco, obesity, too many calories, highly processed foods, lack of physical activity, alcohol consumption, getting vaccinated for HPV, sun exposure, and so on, Iowa doesn’t really stand out dramatically at any of those,” said Dr. Richard Deming, medical director at MercyOne Cancer Center in Des Moines. “But one thing that distinguishes Iowa from other states is our environmental exposure to agricultural chemicals.”

Richard Deming, medical director at MercyOne Cancer Center in Des Moines

Deming and other health experts also point to Iowa’s high radon levels, a naturally occurring radioactive gas produced by uranium and radium.

The state also has high levels of fertilizer-derived nitrate in its water, which has been associated with increased cancer risk.

“But we use tons of ag chemicals that make it quite likely that the volume of these chemicals is contributing to what we’re seeing in Iowa in terms of the increased incidence of cancer,” Deming said.

A direct correlation can be difficult to determine, as cancer development times can range from months to decades. Overlaying cancer rates onto a map, however, highlights the nation’s top crop and vegetable growing regions, where pesticide use is highest.

The Midwestern states of Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Missouri — leading corn-growing states — had the highest rates, while rates were also high in California and Florida, high fruit-growing states.

Lawler, who developed breast cancer in Hardin County, grew up on her family’s 400-acre farm, where her father grew corn and used 2,4-D, a pesticide made by Dow Chemicals. She and her siblings moved out of state after high school, but Lawler returned in 2010.

Pesticides have become indispensable in farming, Lawler acknowledged, but she wishes more people would ask questions about the risks.

“We change products all the time when we learn about the health impacts,” Lawler said.

These family photos show Lisa Lawler with her mother and siblings over the years. Lawler was recently diagnosed with breast cancer; her mother later died after a cancer diagnosis. The family believes years of farm pesticide and herbicide exposure may have contributed. All photo provided by Lisa Lawler.

As lawsuits mount, Bayer pushes state laws to limit liability

In early 2022, Rodrigo Santos had just been promoted to the head of Bayer’s crop sciences division, a prestigious position within the German-based chemical company. But a global pandemic, climate change and a pending war in Ukraine were disrupting the global production and sale of crops — a direct hit to the company’s pesticide sales.

“The global food system is in crisis,” Santos wrote in a column for the World Economic Forum, going on to say that the world needed to grow more food without a significant increase in the amount of land devoted to crops.

But beyond the pandemic and war, another crisis presented an existential threat to one of the company’s top-selling products. Roundup, the glyphosate-based weed killer produced by Monsanto, which Bayer bought in 2018, had been blamed for causing cancer in thousands of lawsuits.

In 2019, a California jury ordered Bayer to pay $2 billion in one lawsuit (the amount was later reduced). Since then, more than 65,000 lawsuits have been filed against the company, according to Bayer, and the company has agreed to pay more than $12 billion in settlements.

Since purchasing Missouri-based Monsanto, Bayer’s stock price has dropped more than 90% over five years.

This investigation looks at the relationship between pesticide use and rising cancer rates across the heartland. It’s the first in a series and part of a larger reporting effort that takes time, data, and sustained work.

In recent years, Bayer executives, including Santos, openly discussed discontinuing glyphosate production. We are “evaluating all the alternatives that we have for the business,” Santos told investors last year when asked about a possible sale of its Roundup division.

But while Bayer publicly said it was reconsidering its glyphosate business, a review of lobbying disclosure statements, campaign finance records, state legislative records and other documents reveals the world’s largest pesticide company remains committed to expanding its sales.

Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the EPA regulates the warning labels on pesticide products. While state-level lawsuits have claimed that federal labeling is insufficient, pesticide companies, including Bayer, have argued that federal regulations should trump state laws.

Bayer, along with other corporate agriculture groups, has pushed for bills in more than a dozen states that would codify the view that federal labeling regulations are sufficient warning, effectively voiding state-level lawsuits.

Jessica Christiansen, head of crop science communications for Bayer

Christiansen, the head of crop science communications for Bayer, disputed that these laws will stop lawsuits and said courts have yet to begin interpreting those that have passed.

“Folks can still sue a company, and they should if there’s a problem,” Christiansen said. “But the litigation industry has a lot to lose with these (bills) that are out there.”

Founded by Bayer, the Modern Ag Alliance has lobbied for these bills and promoted opinion articles downplaying the health impacts of pesticides.

“If farmers lose access to crop protection products because of misguided ideological agendas, U.S. agriculture would be upended, potentially forcing many family farms to shut down and driving up food costs for every American,” said Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, executive director of the Modern Ag Alliance.

The Modern Ag Alliance has spent more than a quarter of a million dollars on state lobbying since 2024.

In Idaho, the organization spent one in four lobbyist dollars last year. In Iowa, Bayer has spent $209,750 on lobbying since 2023, double what the company spent in the previous decade.

Most of the bills came up short in 2025, but Georgia and North Dakota passed liability shields that will complicate local lawsuits.

Georgia’s Senate Bill 144, which took effect Jan. 1, received some bipartisan support but was mostly approved by the Republican majority and opposed by Democrats.

Similar bills have been filed in at least 10 states for this year’s legislative sessions.

In 2024, the Iowa bill was passed by the state Senate with a 30-to-19 vote. Ahead of a vote in the House last year, farmer and environmental groups lobbied against the bill.

The session ended without the House taking up a vote. The bill could return in 2026, but Faux, the Iowa farmer, said he also worries about it being “snuck into” another bill or budget agreement.

“I don’t think we can just assume this fight is over,” Faux said.

In other states, backlash seemed to stop liability shield bills before they got started.

Rep. Dell Kerbs, R-Oklahoma

In Oklahoma, Rep. Dell Kerbs, a Shawnee Republican, authored a pesticide liability shield bill he said was meant to end “frivolous” lawsuits against pesticide makers.

“What’s happened in our country is we have … judges that have decided they need to be in the labeling business,” Kerbs said when introducing his bill at a Feb. 11, 2025, hearing of the House agriculture committee.

State Rep. Ty Burns, another Republican, asked Kerbs why he chose to author the bill.

“I was first approached by Bayer,” Kerbs responded.

“But this is a labeling bill; it is not an immunity bill. It is just clarifying on EPA labeling regulations,” Kerbs added. “There is nothing that prevents a lawsuit from any single person. This is not giving a free pass to kill people. This simply is saying that a frivolous lawsuit to potentially pad the pocket of somebody who was not reading the label is not a justification to add that to a label through a state district court.”

But when Burns asked Kerbs about opposition to the bill, especially from many farmers, Kerbs denied receiving any complaints.

“That is hard to believe,” Burns told Kerbs, “because I have been bombarded.”

The bill was never presented to the House for a vote.

After early promises, MAHA walks back pesticide oversight

While liability shield laws have been largely advanced by Republican lawmakers, the push to further regulate pesticides has transcended partisan lines.

Both left-leaning environmental groups and conservative health movements, which have targeted agrichemicals and some vaccines, have called for reducing or eliminating the use of pesticides.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been a longtime critic of pesticides. In a May 2025 report, his Make America Healthy Again commission linked pesticide overuse to children’s health issues, which drew praise from both political camps.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. makes remarks at an event announcing the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) Commission on May 22, 2025, in the East Room of the White House. photo by Joyce N. Boghosian, The White House

George Kimbrell, co-executive director of the Center for Food Safety, which has advocated for stronger pesticide regulations, called the initial report a “baby step” forward and said he was encouraged after decades of inaction by the federal government.

“Going back my entire career, 20-plus years now of doing this work, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Democratic administration or a Republican administration, they have been beholden to and done the wishes of the pesticide industry,” Kimbrell told Investigate Midwest last year. “So, this is a unique moment where … there’s a chance that there could be some positive change in terms of responsible oversight for these toxins.”

Corporate agriculture groups heavily criticized the report, including the American Farm Bureau Federation and CropLife America, a national organization representing many large agrichemical companies, including Bayer, Corteva Agriscience and Syngenta.

Many of those groups and companies had been large financial backers of Trump. But Kennedy downplayed any concerns that the president would avoid taking a hard position against pesticide companies because of that support.

“I’ve met every president since my uncle was president, and I’ve never seen a president (like Trump), Democrat or Republican, that is willing to stand up to industry when it’s the right thing to do,” Kennedy said at a May 22, 2025, MAHA commission meeting as the president sat smiling to his right.

Three months later, Kennedy’s MAHA commission published its final report, which contained no calls to further regulate pesticides. In fact, it called for the federal government to work with large agrichemical companies to ensure public “awareness and confidence” in the EPA’s current pesticide regulations.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment from Kennedy.

MAHA-Report-The-White-House

Many of the groups that expressed optimism over the initial report were outraged over the change.

“This report is … a clear sign that Big Ag, Bayer, and the pesticide industry are firmly embedded in the White House,” said David Murphy, the founder of United We Eat and a former finance director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

The Trump administration has employed several pesticide executives, researchers and lobbyists at the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Kyle Kunker, who was a registered lobbyist for the American Soybean Association, an organization that has advocated for the legal liability shield laws at the state level, was hired last year to oversee pesticide policy at the EPA.

Three weeks later, the EPA recommended expanded use of dicamba-based herbicides, which federal courts had previously restricted. The EPA proposal was closely aligned with the position of the American Soybean Association.

In 2025, the EPA also hired Nancy Beck and Lynn Ann Dekleva, both of whom worked with the American Chemistry Council.

Last month, a coalition of MAHA supporters called for the removal of Lee Zeldin, administrator of the EPA.

Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, testifies during his Senate Environment and Public Works confirmation hearing on Jan. 16, 2025. photo by Tom Williams, CQ Roll Call via AP Images

Recent EPA decisions around pesticides “will inevitably lead to higher rates of chronic disease, greater medical costs, and tremendous strain on our healthcare system,” the group stated in a petition circulating online.

Several prominent MAHA influencers have joined the petition, posting anti-pesticide messages on social media under handles such as The Glyphosate Girl and the Food Babe. “The EPA is acting like the Everyone Poisoned Agency,” wrote Kelly Ryerson, on her Glyphosate Girl Instagram feed.

As the EPA advances pesticide use, the Trump administration has also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that federal labeling laws invalidate state-level lawsuits.

“After careful scientific review and an assessment of hundreds of thousands of public comments, EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans, and the agency has repeatedly approved Roundup labels that did not contain cancer warnings,” Trump’s solicitor general wrote in an amicus brief with the Supreme Court.

However, one of the studies the EPA has often cited in claiming pesticides are safe was recently retracted due to concerns about its authorship and potential conflicts of interest.

The report, published in 2000 by the scientific journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, claimed Roundup “does not pose a health risk to humans.” The report has been the foundation for numerous other studies, court cases and policy decisions.

The journal retracted the study last year, noting that court cases had revealed that Monsanto employees had contributed to the study. “This lack of transparency raises serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented,” the retraction stated.

“This is just one example of how the current process of certifying these chemicals is broken in the U.S.,” said Colleen Fowle, water program director at the Iowa Environmental Council. “At the very least, we’re hoping that this (retraction) eliminates this specific research article from being cited in the future and concentrates more on independent peer-reviewed research as our basis to determine the safety of glyphosate.”

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“Our findings show that the impact of pesticide use on cancer incidence may rival that of smoking,” scientists wrote in a 2024 study, which was published in Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society.

The Modern Ag Alliance has spent more than a quarter of a million dollars on state lobbying since 2024.

In Idaho, the organization spent one in four lobbyist dollars last year. In Iowa, Bayer has spent $209,750 on lobbying since 2023, double what the company spent in the previous decade.

Most of the bills came up short in 2025, but Georgia and North Dakota passed liability shields that will complicate local lawsuits.

Georgia’s Senate Bill 144, which took effect Jan. 1, received some bipartisan support but was mostly approved by the Republican majority and opposed by Democrats.

Similar bills have been filed in at least 10 states for this year’s legislative sessions.

In 2024, the Iowa bill was passed by the state Senate with a 30-to-19 vote. Ahead of a vote in the House last year, farmer and environmental groups lobbied against the bill.

The session ended without the House taking up a vote. The bill could return in 2026, but Faux, the Iowa farmer, said he also worries about it being “snuck into” another bill or budget agreement.

“I don’t think we can just assume this fight is over,” Faux said.

WHOLE REPORT?

MAHA-Report-The-White-House

The report, published in 2000 by the scientific journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, claimed Roundup “does not pose a health risk to humans.” The report has been the foundation for numerous other studies, court cases and policy decisions.

The journal retracted the study last year, noting that court cases had revealed that Monsanto employees had contributed tothe study. “This lack of transparency raises serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented,” the retraction stated.

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desmog jan

https://www.desmog.com/2023/01/17/pesticides-vicious-cycle-climate-change-panna/

New Report Highlights Pesticides' Overlooked Climate Connection

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book nat'l hist of future

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-july-27-2022/

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AAAS Runs Dishonest Glyphosate Story, Then Deletes It. Is Politics to Blame?

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is one of the foremost pro-science organizations in the world. Not only does it advocate for good science and science policy, it publishes Science, the prestigious journal read globally by millions. Unfortunately, AAAS has gotten a bit weird in recent months.

UK Parliament Endorses E-Cigarettes to Help Smokers. Will U.S. Follow?

U.S. public health agencies struggle to endorse an obvious solution to a true public health menace. Hopefully, the UK Parliament will provide a much-needed boost to the forces of common sense.

Glyphosateand Pesticides: Et Tu, Live Science?

Normally a reliable source of information, Live Science published an article that is a dream for anti-pesticide and anti-chemical fearmongers.

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"Big 6" pesticide and GMO corporations are BASF, Bayer, Dupont, Dow Chemical Company, Monsanto, and Syngenta. They are so called because they dominate the agricultural input market -- that is, they own the world’s seed, pesticide and biotechnology industries.^[1][2]

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), corporate concentration of the agricultural input market "has far-reaching implications for global food security, as the privatization and patenting of agricultural innovation (gene traits, transformation technologies and seed germplasm) has been supplanting traditional agricultural understandings of seed, farmers' rights, and breeders' rights."^[3]

For more information, see the Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA) resource here.

intercept 921

:{ EPA’s Rationale for Banning Chlorpyrifos May Make it Harder to Eliminate Other Brain-Harming Pesticides:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

Sharon Lerner

===

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosulfan

Endosulfan is an off-patent organochlorine insecticide and acaricide that is being phased out globally. The two isomers, endo and exo, are known popularly as I and II. Endosulfan sulfate is a product of oxidation containing one extra O atom attached to the S atom. Endosulfan became a highly controversial agrichemical^[2] due to its acute toxicity, potential for bioaccumulation, and role as an endocrine disruptor. Because of its threats to human health and the environment, a global ban on the manufacture and use of endosulfan was negotiated under the Stockholm Convention in April 2011. The ban has taken effect in mid-2012, with certain uses exempted for five additional years.^[3] More than 80 countries,^[4] including the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, several West African nations,^[5] the United States,^[6][7] Brazil,^[8] and Canada^[9] had already banned it or announced phase-outs by the time the Stockholm Convention ban was agreed upon. It is still used extensively in India, China despite laws banning it, and few other countries. It is produced by Makhteshim Agan and several manufacturers in India and China. Although, the Supreme Court had, by an order dated 13.05.2011, put a ban on the production and sale of endosulfan in India till further orders.^[10]

Uses

Endosulfan has been used in agriculture around the world to control insect pests including whiteflies, aphids, leafhoppers, Colorado potato beetles and cabbage worms.^[11] Due to its unique mode of action, it is useful in resistance management; however, as it is not specific, it can negatively impact populations of beneficial insects.^[12] It is, however, considered to be moderately toxic to honey bees,^[13] and it is less toxic to bees than organophosphate insecticides.^[14]

Production

The World Health Organization estimated worldwide annual production to be about 9,000 metric tonnes (t) in the early 1980s.^[15] From 1980 to 1989, worldwide consumption averaged 10,500 tonnes per year, and for the 1990s use increased to 12,800 tonnes per year.

Endosulfan is a derivative of hexachlorocyclopentadiene, and is chemically similar to aldrin, chlordane, and heptachlor. Specifically, it is produced by the Diels-Alder reaction of hexachlorocyclopentadiene with *cis*-butene-1,4-diol and subsequent reaction of the adduct with thionyl chloride. Technical endosulfan is a 7:3 mixture of stereoisomers, designated α and β. α- and β-Endosulfan are configurational isomers arising from the pyramidal stereochemistry of the teravalent sulfur. α-Endosulfan is the more thermodynamically stable of the two, thus β-endosulfan irreversibly converts to the α form, although the conversion is slow.^[16][17]

History of commercialization and regulation

Early 1950s: Endosulfan was developed.
1954: Hoechst AG (now Sanofi) won USDA approval for the use of endosulfan in the United States.^[18]
2000: Home and garden use in the United States was terminated by agreement with the EPA.^[14]
2002: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended that endosulfan registration should be cancelled,^[19] and the EPA determined that endosulfan residues on food and in water pose unacceptable risks. The agency allowed endosulfan to stay on the US market, but imposed restrictions on its agricultural uses.^[14]
2007: International steps were taken to restrict the use and trade of endosulfan. It is recommended for inclusion in the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent,^[20] and the European Union proposed inclusion in the list of chemicals banned under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Such inclusion would ban all use and manufacture of endosulfan globally.^[21] Meanwhile, the Canadian government announced that endosulfan was under consideration for phase-out,^[22] and Bayer CropScience voluntarily pulled its endosulfan products from the U.S. market^[23] but continues to sell the products elsewhere.^[24]
2008: In February, environmental, consumer, and farm labor groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council,^[25] Organic Consumers Association, and the United Farm Workers^[26] called on the U.S. EPA to ban endosulfan. In May, coalitions of scientists,^[27] environmental groups, and arctic tribes asked the EPA to cancel endosulfan,^[28] and in July a coalition of environmental and workers groups filed a lawsuit against the EPA challenging its 2002 decision to not ban it.^[29] In October, the Review Committee of the Stockholm Convention moved endosulfan along in the procedure for listing under the treaty,^[30] while India blocked its addition to the Rotterdam Convention.^[31]
2009: The Stockholm Convention's Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee (POPRC) agreed that endosulfan is a persistent organic pollutant and that "global action is warranted", setting the stage of a global ban.^[32] New Zealand banned endosulfan.^[33]
2010: The POPRC nominated endosulfan to be added to the Stockholm Convention at the Conference of Parties (COP) in April 2011, which would result in a global ban.^[34] The EPA announced that the registration of endosulfan in the U.S. will be cancelled^[7][35] Australia banned the use of the chemical.^[36]
2011: The Supreme Court of India banned manufacture, sale, and use of toxic pesticide endosulfan in India. The apex court said the ban would remain effective for eight weeks during which an expert committee headed by DG, ICMR, will give an interim report to the court about the harmful effect of the widely used pesticide.^[37]
2011: the Argentinian Service for Sanity and Agroalimentary Quality (SENASA) decided on August 8 that the import of endosulfan into the South American country will be banned from July 1, 2012 and its commercialization and use from July 1, 2013. In the meantime, a reduced quantity can be imported and sold.^[38]

Health effects

Endosulfan is alleged to be responsible for many fatal pesticide poisoning incidents around the world by NGOs opposing pesticide usage.^[39] Endosulfan is also a xenoestrogen—a synthetic substance that imitates or enhances the effect of estrogens—and it can act as an endocrine disruptor, causing reproductive and developmental damage in both animals and humans.^[40] It has also been found to act as an aromatase inhibitor.^[40] Whether endosulfan can cause cancer is debated. With regard to consumers' intake of endosulfan from residues on food, the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations has concluded that long-term exposure from food is unlikely to present a public health concern, but short-term exposure can exceed acute reference doses.^[41]

Toxicity

Endosulfan is acutely neurotoxic to both insects and mammals, including humans. The US EPA classifies it as Category I: "Highly Acutely Toxic" based on a LD~50 value of 30 mg/kg for female rats,^[14] while the World Health Organization classifies it as Class II "Moderately Hazardous" based on a rat LD₅₀ of 80 mg/kg.^[42] It is a GABA-gated chloride channel antagonist, and a Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺ ATPase inhibitor. Both of these enzymes are involved in the transfer of nerve impulses. Symptoms of acute poisoning include hyperactivity, tremors, convulsions, lack of coordination, staggering, difficulty breathing, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, and in severe cases, unconsciousness.^[18] Doses as low as 35 mg/kg have been documented to cause death in humans,^[43] and many cases of sublethal poisoning have resulted in permanent brain damage.^[18] Farm workers with chronic endosulfan exposure are at risk of rashes and skin irritation.^[14]

EPA's acute reference dose for dietary exposure to endosulfan is 0.015 mg/kg for adults and 0.0015 mg/kg for children. For chronic dietary expsoure, the EPA references doses are 0.006 mg/(kg·day) and 0.0006 mg/(kg·day) for adults and children, respectively.^[14]

Endocrine disruption

Theo Colborn, an expert on endocrine disruption, lists endosulfan as a known endocrine disruptor,^[44] and both the EPA and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry consider endosulfan to be a potential endocrine disruptor. Numerous in vitro studies have documented its potential to disrupt hormones and animal studies have demonstrated its reproductive and developmental toxicity, especially among males.^[14][18] A number of studies have documented that it acts as an antiandrogen in animals.^[40][45] Endosulfan has shown to affect crustacean molt cycles, which are important biological and endocrine-controlled physiological processes essential for the crustacean growth and reproduction.^[46] Environmentally relevant doses of endosulfan equal to the EPA's safe dose of 0.006 mg/kg/day have been found to affect gene expression in female rats similarly to the effects of estrogen.^[47] It is not known whether endosulfan is a human teratogen (an agent that causes birth defects), though it has significant teratogenic effects in laboratory rats.^[48] A 2009 assessment concluded the endocrine disruption in rats occurs only at endosulfan doses that cause neurotoxicity.^[49]

Reproductive and developmental effects

Some studies have documented that endosulfan can also affect human development. Researchers studying children from many villages in Kasargod District, Kerala, India, have linked endosulfan exposure to delays in sexual maturity among boys. Endosulfan was the only pesticide applied to cashew plantations in the villages for 20 years, and had contaminated the village environment. The researchers compared the villagers to a control group of boys from a demographically similar village that lacked a history of endosulfan pollution. Relative to the control group, the exposed boys had high levels of endosulfan in their bodies, lower levels of testosterone, and delays in reaching sexual maturity. Birth defects of the male reproductive system, including cryptorchidism, were also more prevalent in the study group. The researchers concluded, "our study results suggest that endosulfan exposure in male children may delay sexual maturity and interfere with sex hormone synthesis."^[50] Increased incidences of cryptorchidism have been observed in other studies of endosulfan exposed populations.^[51][52]

A 2007 study by the California Department of Public Health found that women who lived near farm fields sprayed with endosulfan and the related organochloride pesticide dicofol during the first eight weeks of pregnancy are several times more likely to give birth to children with autism.^[53] However a 2009 assessment concluded that epidemiology and rodent studies that suggest male reproductive and autism effects are open to other interpretations, and that developmental or reproductive toxicity in rats occurs only at endosulfan doses that cause neurotoxicity.^[49]

Cancer

Endosulfan is not listed as known, probable, or possible carcinogen by the EPA, IARC, or other agencies. No epidemiological studies link exposure to endosulfan specifically to cancer in humans, but in vitro assays have shown that endosulfan can promote proliferation of human breast cancer cells.^[54] Evidence of carcinogenicity in animals is mixed.^[18]

In a 2016 study^[55] by the Department of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore published in Carcinogenesis, endosulfan was found to induce reactive oxygen species (ROS) in a concentration and time-dependent manner leading to double-stranded breaks in the DNA and also found to favour subsequent erroneous DNA repair.

Environmental fate

Endosulfan is a ubiquitous environmental contaminant. The chemical is semivolatile and persistent to degradation processes in the environment. Endosulfan is subject to long-range atmospheric transport, i.e. it can travel long distances from where it is used. Thus, it occurs in many environmental compartments. For example, a 2008 report by the National Park Service found that endosulfan commonly contaminates air, water, plants, and fish of national parks in the US. Most of these parks are far from areas where endosulfan is used.^[56] Endosulfan has been found in remote locations such as the Arctic Ocean, as well as in the Antarctic atmosphere.^[57] The pesticide has also been detected in dust from the Sahara Desert collected in the Caribbean after being blown across the Atlantic Ocean.^[58] The compound has been shown to be one of the most abundant organochlorine pesticides in the global atmosphere.^[57]

The compound breaks down into endosulfan sulfate, endosulfan diol, and endosulfan furan, all of which have structures similar to the parent compound and, according to the EPA, "are also of toxicological concern…The estimated half-lives for the combined toxic residues (endosulfan plus endosulfan sulfate) [range] from roughly 9 months to 6 years." The EPA concluded, "[b]ased on environmental fate laboratory studies, terrestrial field dissipation studies, available models, monitoring studies, and published literature, it can be concluded that endosulfan is a very persistent chemical which may stay in the environment for lengthy periods of time, particularly in acid media." The EPA also concluded, "[e]ndosulfan has relatively high potential to bioaccumulate in fish."^[14] It is also toxic to amphibians; low levels have been found to kill tadpoles.^[59]

In 2009, the committee of scientific experts of the Stockholm Convention concluded, "endosulfan is likely, as a result of long range environmental transport, to lead to significant adverse human health and environmental effects such that global action is warranted."^[60] In May 2011, the Stockholm Convention committee approved the recommendation for elimination of production and use of endosulfan and its isomers worldwide. This is, however, subject to certain exemptions. Overall, this will lead to its elimination from the global markets.^[61]

Status by region

...

In the United States, endosulfan is only registered for agricultural use, and these uses are being phased out.^[7] It has been used extensively on cotton, potatoes, tomatoes, and apples according to the EPA.^[88] The EPA estimates that 626 thousand kg of endosulfan were used annually from 1987 to 1997.^[14] The US exported more than 140,000 lb of endosulfan from 2001 to 2003, mostly to Latin America,^[89] but production and export has since stopped.

In California, endosulfan contamination from the San Joaquin Valley has been implicated in the extirpation of the mountain yellow-legged frog from parts of the nearby Sierra Nevada.^[90] In Florida, levels of contamination the Everglades and Biscayne Bay are high enough to pose a threat to some aquatic organisms.^[91][92][93]

In 2007, the EPA announced it was rereviewing the safety of endosulfan.^[94] The following year, Pesticide Action Network and NRDC petitioned the EPA to ban endosulfan,^[95] and a coalition of environmental and labor groups sued the EPA seeking to overturn its 2002 decision to not ban endosulfan.^[29] In June 2010, the EPA announced it was negotiating a phaseout of all uses with the sole US manufacturer, Makhteshim Agan, and a complete ban on the compound.^[7]

An official statement by Makhteshim Agan of North America (MANA) states, "From a scientific standpoint, MANA continues to disagree fundamentally with EPA's conclusions regarding endosulfan and believes that key uses are still eligible for re-registration." The statement adds, "However, given the fact that the endosulfan market is quite small and the cost of developing and submitting additional data high, we have decided to voluntarily negotiate an agreement with EPA that provides growers with an adequate time frame to find alternatives for the damaging insect pests currently controlled by endosulfan."^[96][97]

...

Brazil decreed total ban of the substance from July 31, 2013, being forbidden imports of the product from July 31, 2011, date in which national production and utilization begins to be phased out gradually.^[103]

===

cf an 521 trump epa blind eye?

pesticide linked to brain damage in children could finally be banned

Reynard Loki Independent Media Institute

A federal appeals court has ruled that unless the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can prove that the pesticide chlorpyrifos is safe, it must be banned. The chemi...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-epa-allows-continued-use-of-a-neurotoxin-found-to-harm-kids-brains/

an 920

EPA allows continued use of a neurotoxin found to harm kids’ brains

Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams

no lnx 2 cid one pbs newshour

Dismissing extensive scientific evidence showing that even low levels of chlorpyrifos damage children’s brains, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a risk assessment calling the toxic pesticide’s effects “unresolved” and allowing its continued use in a wide variety of agricultural products pending a future final decision on its use.

Reacting to the EPA’s move, Patti Goldman, managing attorney at Earthjustice, accused the agency of “ignoring decades of science by leading universities and in doing so, neglecting its duty to protect children from pesticides.”

“Ignoring the demonstrated harm to children doesn’t make chlorpyrifos safe, it just shows a commitment to keep a toxic pesticide in the market and in our food at all cost,” Goldman added.

The EPA’s third risk assessment (pdf) for chlorpyrifos, which is theresult of litigation by environmental groups, stated that “the science addressing [the pesticide’s] neurodevelopmental effects remains unresolved.” This, despite the study finding some dietary risks to adults, children, and handlers of the chemical, as well dangers to animals.

Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate pesticide applied to crops, animals, and buildings to eliminate insects and worms, killing them by attacking their nervous systems through acetylcholinesterase enzyme inhibition. Invented by Dow Chemical Company in 1966, it is classified as “moderately hazardous” (pdf) to humans by the World Health Organization. Chlorpyrifos was banned in 2000 for most household uses but is still applied to dozens of crops on over 40,000 farms.

Last December, the European Union voted to effectively ban chlorpyrifos. Thailand also tried to ban the pesticide, but backed down last year under pressure from the Trump administration to continue buying it.

In 2016 under the Obama administration, EPA scientists found that chlorpyrifos poisons food and drinking water and recommended a ban on the pesticide, citing extensive research of its effects on children and agricultural workers. The pesticide has poisoned farmworkers, and researchers at Columbia University (pdf), Stanford University (pdf), the University of California at Berkeley (pdf), and elsewhere have shown that it is neurotoxic and damages children’s brains by, among other harms, delaying development, damaging memory, lowering IQ, and reducing attention span.

However, in March 2017 then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt rejected his own agency’s scientific findings and issued a ruling (pdf) upholding use of the neurotoxin. The American Academy of Pediatrics said it was “deeply alarmed” by Pruitt’s decision, which came after consultations with lobby groups including the American Farm Bureau Association.

Corteva Inc., which is owned by Dow Chemical and is the largest producer of chlorpyrifos, has also been lobbying the EPA, according to Earthjustice, one of the groups suing to ban the chemical. Progressive Farmer reported Wednesday that Corteva will phase out chlorpyrifos production, citing declining demand as the primary factor in its decision.

In 2017, the attorneys general of seven states—New York, California, Washington, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Vermont—formally called on the EPA to take immediate action to ban chlorpyrifos. Absent action from the Trump administration, Hawaii in 2018 became the first state to ban pesticides containing the chemical, although the ban won’t go into effect until 2022. California and New York followed suit, while lawmakers in several other states have introduced bills to ban it.

In a major victory for chemical corporations, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced in July 2019 that the agency would not ban chlorpyrifos, prompting a lawsuit by a coalition of health and labor organizations.

“Trump’s EPA might want to dismiss the science and the law to protect corporate profit, but we are confident the courts won’t stand for this,” said Dr. Elena Rios, president of the National Hispanic Medical Association, at the time.

Many scientists have expressed alarm that the U.S. government is upholding chlorpyrifos use.

“Strong evidence now supports the notion that organophosphate pesticides damage the fetal brain and produce cognitive and behavioral dysfunction through multiple mechanisms, including thyroid disruption,” wrote Leonardo Trasande, a professor of pediatrics, environmental medicine, and population health at New York University School of Medicine, in 2017.

“A regulatory ban was proposed, but actions to end the use of one such pesticide, chlorpyrifos, in agriculture were recently stopped by the Environmental Protection Agency under false scientific pretenses,” Trasande added. “Scientists have a responsibility to rebut and decry these serious challenges to human health and scientific integrity.”

“There are all these studies that have been done of kids showing that chlorpyrifos harms their brains especially as they’re young or fetuses as they’re developing,” Erik D. Olson of the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC)—one of the groups fighting for a chlorpyrifos ban—told The Hill on Tuesday. “The very young are at much greater susceptibility than older people, and also more exposed.”

NRDC said that “EPA political appointees are pushing to not only ignore the epidemiological studies showing children are harmed by real-world uses of chlorpyrifos, but to also strip away the ‘uncertainty factors’ that are routinely applied to add a measure of protection for children, and to address uncertainties in the risk assessment.”

The EPA’s final decision on chlorpyrifos will be made at a future date, with most experts believing the latest risk assessment points to approval or an inadequate offer to limit its use.

“With how toxic it is you can’t mitigate the harm enough to make sure not really impacting people’s lives and health and the environment,” Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Hill.

===

ew 620

federal court overturned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) approval of dicamba Wednesday, meaning the controversial herbicide can no longer be sprayed in the U.S.

ew 220

https://www.ecowatch.com/highly-hazardous-pesticides-investigation-2645202101.html

Poor people in developing countries are far more likely to suffer from exposure to pesticides classified as having high hazard to human health or the environment, according to new data that Unearthed analyzed.

The analysis shows that the world's top five pesticide makers are making billions, accounting for more than 36 percent of their income, from chemicals that are proven to hazards to humans and the environment and are contributing to the precipitous demise of bee populations, as Unearthed reported.

The researchers found that the sale of these highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs), disproportionately occurred in poorer nations, which often have fewer regulations than industrialized nations, according to The Guardian. In India, for example, sales of HHPs were nearly 60 percent, while in the UK it was just 11 percent.

The report from the investigative team at Unearthed focused on the practices of Bayer, BASF, Corteva (formerly Dow and DuPont), FMC and Syngenta, which are continuing to sell HHPs like neonicotinoids and glufosinate that have been banned in other parts of the world, according to the produce industry publication Fresh Produce Journal.

Unearthed dove into data collected by Phillips McDougall, the leading agribusiness analysts, from buyer surveys that concentrated on the best sellers in the top 43 pesticide buying countries, as The Guardian reported.

While regulations have stopped the sale of certain pesticides in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, it has hardly slowed down chemical companies, which sold $4.8 billion worth of products containing HHPs in 2018,as The Guardian reported. guk] Bayer called the analysis "misleading" but did not offer proof of that assessment.

Since the investigation focused on just 43 countries, it covered less than half of the companies' global sales. That suggests that the companies actually made billions more from pesticides that regulatory agencies have said pose hazards like acute poisoning or chronic illness in people, or high toxicity to bees and other wildlife, according to Unearthed.

The investigation found that pesticide manufacturers sold the majority of its highly hazardous pesticide in low- and middle-income countries like Brazil and India, where experts say the risks posed by using these chemicals are greatest, according to Unearthed. The biggest market for HHPs were for corn and soya crops.

About a quarter of sales were from products known to be human carcinogens or dangerous to reproductive health.Another 10 percent were toxic to bees. An additional 4 percent of chemicals sold are acutely toxic to humans. Every year, nearly 200,000 suicides are linked to pesticide poisoning, almost entirely in developing countries, according to The Guardian.

"This investigation shows that there is a huge disconnect between what those companies are saying in the international policy arena and what they are actually doing," Meriel Watts, a senior science and policy advisor to the Pesticide Action Network, said to Unearthed.

Baskut Tuncak, the United Nations' special rapporteur on toxic substances and human rights, told Unearthed, "There is nothing sustainable about the widespread use of highly hazardous pesticides for agriculture."

"Whether they poison workers, extinguish biodiversity, persist in the environment, or accumulate in a mother's breast milk, these are unsustainable, cannot be used safely, and should have been phased out of use long ago," Tuncak said....

https://earthjustice.org/features/what-you-need-to-know-about-chlorpyrifos

220 yay

m**ajor chemical company discontinues brain-damaging pesticide**

The largest producer of chlorpyrifos in the United States announced it will stop selling the nerve agent pesticide, which is linked to brain damage in children. Yet the Trump administration still refuses to ban it entirely, leaving many vulnerable.

ref many lnx grafs

uneaRTHED

INVESTIGATION

A tea plantation worker sprays pesticides at Tata's Periakanal estate in Kerala, India. Photo: Vivek M. / Greenpeace

Revealed: The pesticide giants making billions on toxic and bee-harming chemicals

Groundbreaking joint investigation reveals enormous sales of ‘highly hazardous pesticides’ by leading members of the CropLife International lobby group

The world’s five biggest pesticide manufacturers are making more than a third of their income from leading products selling chemicals that pose serious hazards to human health and the environment, a joint investigation by Unearthed and Public Eye has found.

Analysis of a huge database of 2018’s top-selling “crop protection products” has revealed the world’s leading agrochemical companies made more than 35% of their sales from pesticides classed as “highly hazardous” to people, animals or ecosystems.

The investigation identified billions of dollars of income for agrochemical giants BASF, Bayer, Corteva, FMC and Syngenta from chemicals found by regulatory authorities to pose health hazards like cancer or reproductive failure.

It also found more than a billion dollars of their sales came from chemicals – some now banned in European markets – that are highly toxic to bees. Over two thirds of these sales were made in low- and middle-income countries like Brazil and India.

By far the most valuable markets for the highly hazardous pesticides sold by these companies were the commodity crops soya and corn, grown in large part to provide animal feed for the meat industry.

Visualisations by Nadieh Bremer

Industry database

The database, obtained from leading agribusiness intelligence firm Phillips McDougall, covers $23.3bn in pesticide sales across 43 different countries.These sales represent the leading products in the world’s highest-spending pesticide markets, and amount to around 40% of the global agrochemical market.

Unearthed and Public Eye, an NGO that investigates human rights abuses by Swiss companies, combed this dataset for sales of chemicals on the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International list of highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs).

The investigation found that close to half (41%) of the leading products of the agrochemical giants BASF, Bayer, Corteva, FMC and Syngenta contained at least one HHP.

There is a huge disconnect between what those companies are saying and what they are actually doing

Between them these companies control close to two thirds of the global agrochemicals market, and comprise five out of six members of the influential lobby group CropLife International.

Of the $13.4bn of sales by the CropLife companies in the dataset, $4.8bn went on chemicals found by regulatory agencies to pose hazards like acute poisoning or chronic illness in people, or high toxicity to bees and other wildlife.

The group’s full annual income from these chemicals will be billions of dollars greater, because the data analysed covered less than half of total global sales.

The investigation’s key findings include that:

The CropLife members made 10% of their leading products income ($1.3bn) from chemicals classed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as highly toxic to bees.These include neonicotinoids produced by Germany’s Bayer and Switzerland-based Syngenta, which were permanently banned from outdoor use in the European Union in 2018. Brazil was their main market for these chemicals.

CropLife members made almost $3bn (22% of sales) from chemicals found by regulators to pose chronic health hazards. Among their top sellers were BASF’s weedkiller glufosinate and Corteva’s fungicide cyproconazole, both classed by EU regulators as damaging to fertility, sexual function or the unborn child. But by far CropLife’s biggest seller was glyphosate, classed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a “probable human carcinogen”. Glyphosate manufacturer Bayer and various regulators have rejected this classification.

CropLife members made $596m (4%) of sales from pesticides classed as highly toxic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) or as fatal if inhaled. Syngenta accounted for a large majority of these sales, with its top sellers including paraquat, a herbicide so toxic that a single sip can kill, which has long been banned in Europe and Switzerland.

The CropLife group made the majority of its highly hazardous pesticide sales in low- and middle-income countries like Brazil and India, where experts say the risks posed by using these chemicals are greatest.

These companies’ biggest markets for highly hazardous pesticides were the commodity crops soya and corn. These two crops alone accounted for around half of CropLife HHP sales.

These five companies alone accounted for almost half (48%) of all HHPs identified in the Phillips McDougall database.

Meriel Watts, a senior science and policy advisor to PAN, told Unearthed: “This investigation shows that there is a huge disconnect between what those companies are saying in the international policy arena and what they are actually doing.”

What is CropLife International?

CropLife International is an influential trade association and lobby group for the world’s major agrochemical and agricultural biotech companies.Its members Syngenta, Bayer Crop Science, BASF, Corteva Agriscience, and FMC are the five biggest pesticide companies in the world by agrochemical turnover. CropLife’s sixth member is the Japanese company Sumitomo Chemical, the world’s 8th biggest pesticide company. Sumitomo is not included in this investigation.

In international negotiations on pesticide regulation, the CropLife International lobby group is a well-funded and influential voice. Its members include the five leading agrochemical companies by turnover, plus the Japanese company Sumitomo.

CropLife argues that HHPs are an “important tool to fight against crop losses” and should be used as a last resort to help farmers “produce enough food for a growing population”.

But the group says the majority of HHPs sold in developing countries are not manufactured by its members, and that its own members have “led by example” with measures like training millions of people in risk reduction techniques, such as wearing protective equipment.

Soya, corn and cotton make Brazil world leader for hazardous pesticides

However, Baskut Tuncak, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on toxic substances and human rights, rejected the idea that the risks posed by HHPs could be managed safely.

The impacts are unquestionable, but the system is rigged so that they are also unprovable

“There is nothing sustainable about the widespread use of highly hazardous pesticides for agriculture,” Tuncak told Unearthed. “Whether they poison workers, extinguish biodiversity, persist in the environment, or accumulate in a mother’s breast milk, these are unsustainable, cannot be used safely, and should have been phased out of use long ago.”

Unearthed and Public Eye’s investigation found that the CropLife companies made on average 27% of sales income from HHPs in high-income countries; but for low- and middle-income countries the proportion rose to 45%. In their most important LMIC markets, Brazil and India, HHPs made up 49% and 59% of sales respectively.

Tuncak commented: “We are in the midst of an invisible explosion of pesticide use in low-and middle-income countries that are ill-equipped to manage such hazards.

“Governments do not have enough capacity to monitor conditions on countless farms and plantations, analyse food and environmental samples, track the health of seasonal and migrant workers, investigate allegations of gross misconduct on farms and plantations, or verify the integrity of the information being provided by industry-funded scientists.

“From the testimonies of workers to the collapse of biodiversity, the impacts are unquestionable, but the system is rigged so that they are also unprovable.”

CropLife itself says that its members reviewed their entire portfolios between 2015 and 2016 and concluded that only 15% of their products were HHPs.

Further, they found that 10% were HHPs “that can be used safely and responsibly” and only 2.5% “required risk mitigation measures or were withdrawn from the market”.

What are highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs)?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) define HHPs as “pesticides that are acknowledged to present particularly high levels of acute or chronic hazards to health or the environment according to internationally accepted classification systems”. Environmental hazards include problems like water source contamination, or “disruption of ecosystem functions” like pollination. However, they have never produced a list of HHPs. To fill this gap Pesticide Action Network International produces the only consolidated list, which is based on classifications made by the WHO, the European Chemicals Agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and the US EPA.

CropLife International declined to tell Unearthed which of its members’ products it classed as HHPs. However, its director of international regulatory affairs Christoph Neumann said their analysis had probably differed because they used different criteria to the Pesticide Action Network for defining HHPS.

In particular the group objects to the use of what it calls “environmental” criteria by PAN.

“The criteria cited by PAN are often environmental criteria that are not agreed or yet endorsed” by the FAO and the WHO, he explained.

Driven toward extinction

The only detailed classifications the UN agencies have so far agreed for HHPs concern effects on human health, like acute poisoning or cancer.

This has led pesticide companies to argue that there are in effect no globally agreed standards for classing a pesticide as highly hazardous on environmental grounds.

This argument may not last. A 2019 publication by the FAO and the WHO suggests there are strong grounds for classing neonicotinoid insecticides as highly hazardous.

We are losing wildlife, particularly insects. The crisis is driven by a combination of factors but there is no doubt that pesticides are harming pollinators

There is, it states, a “rapidly growing body of evidence” that “existing levels of environmental contamination” by neonicotinoids “are causing large-scale adverse effects on bees and other beneficial insects”.

“The need to severely restrict their use and prevent future registration is gaining a large consensus,” it continues. “The European Union has already issued a complete and permanent ban on all outdoor uses of the three most commonly used neonicotinoid pesticides: clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam.”

Three quarters of the world’s food crops depend at least in part on pollinators, and a growing number of pollinator species worldwide are being “driven towards extinction”, according to a global 2016 study.

UN special rapporteur Baskut Tuncak told Unearthed that the threat neonicotinoid pesticides “present to our food security and our biodiversity is a human rights concern, in and of itself”.

A dead bee. There is growing evidence that the use of neonicotinoids is adversely affecting bees on a large scale. Photo: Greenpeace

The neonicotinoid thiamethoxam was Syngenta’s biggest selling HHP in 2018, our investigation found, accounting for 7% of the company’s sales ($242.5m). Similarly, imidacloprid was in Bayer’s top ten biggest selling HHPs, with sales of $101m. In both cases, the main market was Brazil – a country that hosts up to 20% of the world’s remaining biodiversity.

In addition to these neonicotinoids, Unearthed and Public Eye identified a further 37 chemicals sold by the CropLife companies that are classed as highly toxic to bees.

Among them were chlorfenapyr and fipronil – another chemical linked to mass bee deaths – manufactured by the German chemicals giant BASF.

Syngenta and BASF both declined to comment directly for this story. Syngenta – which was responsible for close to half (42%) of CropLife’s $1.3bn of bee-toxic pesticide sales – has recently argued that journalists are “overstating the science that clearly exists” on insect declines.

However, University of Sussex biology professor Dave Goulson told Unearthed: “There is overwhelming evidence that we are in the middle of a biodiversity crisis, with extinction roughly 1,000 times the natural rate.

“We are losing wildlife, particularly insects. The crisis is driven by a combination of factors but there is no doubt that pesticides are harming pollinators.”

Demand for animal feed is driving the hazardous pesticide industry, data reveals

The toxic top 10

The most common category of hazard in the CropLife members’ top sellers is chronic health effects like cancer, birth defects, or endocrine disruption.

Chemicals classed as posing these hazards accounted for $3bn (22%) of the CropLife sales we analysed, and seven of the group’s top ten HHPs.

It is absolutely clear that glyphosate can cause cancers in experimental animals

By far the biggest of these was glyphosate, the world’s most popular weedkiller, which accounted for $1.1bn of CropLife sales. Bayer alone accounted for $840m of those sales, as a result of its controversial 2018 takeover of Roundup manufacturer Monsanto.

A spokesman for Bayer Crop Science told Unearthed it was “incorrect” to class the herbicide as highly hazardous simply on the strength of its IARC classification as a “probable human carcinogen”.

He added that “leading health regulators around the world” – including the USEPA and the European Food Safety Authority – had “repeatedly concluded that our glyphosate-based products can be used safely as directed and that glyphosate is not carcinogenic”.

Glyphosate is currently authorised in the EU until 2022, but various countries including Germany have announced their intention to ban it by 2023 even if the EU extends its licence.

Chris Portier, a former director of the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry who worked on the IARC’s review of glyphosate, said he believed the agency’s classification was “exactly right”. “It is absolutely clear that glyphosate can cause cancers in experimental animals,” he told Unearthed.

“And the human evidence for an association between glyphosate and cancer is also there, predominantly for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”

In the US, which is Bayer’s biggest glyphosate market according to our investigation, the company is facing lawsuits from tens of thousands of plaintiffs who allege Roundup gave them cancer. Fortune magazine recently reported that the company may anticipate spending $10bn to resolve current and future claims.

Pesticides are sprayed form a helicopter over vineyards in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Photo: Getty

The CropLife members’ highly hazardous top ten also includes $336m sales of the herbicide glufosinate, $245m of the fungicide cyproconazole, and $191m of the fungicide epoxiconazole, all of which are classed as “reproductive toxicants” in the EU, believed capable of damaging fertility, sexual function, or the unborn child.

Many HHPs have now been phased out in the EU,which has some of the toughest pesticide regulations in the world. That, however, is not the case for BASF’s epoxiconazole, which includes Germany and the UK among its four most important markets, the investigation found.

Elsewhere, the CropLife HHP top ten includes a clutch of chemicals manufactured and sold by European companies that have long been banned in their home markets.

Among these are the herbicides paraquat and atrazine, both sold by several CropLife companies but mainly Syngenta. Both of these chemicals have been around since the 1960s, and are now banned in the EU and Switzerland.

Accidental or deliberate ingestion of even a small amount of paraquat is frequently fatal, and it is a leading means of suicide in poor and rural areas where it remains available.

Atrazine was banned in Europe over concerns about groundwater contamination, but it is also classed by the EU as an endocrine disruptor, and researchers in the US have found it “wreaks havoc with the sex lives of male frogs”.

The top ten also shows Bayer selling $125m of acetochlor, a weedkiller that was banned in the EU over concerns about contamination of drinking water and genotoxicity. The EU ban also cited a “high acute risk” to birds from contaminated drinking water.

Unearthed submitted detailed questions to all the companies mentioned in this article, but all except Bayer allowed Croplife to respond on their behalf.

A spokesman for Bayer Crop Science said the company did not agree with the classification of Bayer products as HHPs, because these products were neither classified as highly toxic to humans by the WHO, nor listed for control under the Stockholm Convention, the Rotterdam Convention, or the Montreal Protocol.

This amounts to just four of the eight categories of HHPs that have already been agreed by the FAO and the WHO. But the Bayer spokesman said that for the other categories – including pesticides proven or presumed to be mutagens, reproductive toxicants, or carcinogens – there was “currently no internationally responsible body for classification”.

He added that it was “not correct” that the Phillips McDougall data treated all Monsanto sales from 1 January 2018 as Bayer sales, when the takeover was completed on 7 June 2018.

After this story was published on 20 February 2020, Bayer published a statement expanding on why it disagreed with the classifications used by PAN. The statement added that Bayer was in the process of withdrawing products containing the pesticides methiocarb and carbendazim. Methiocarb is classed as acutely toxic by the WHO, while carbendazim is classed by the ECHA as presumed mutagen and reproductive toxicant.

CropLife International’s director of international regulatory affairs Christoph Neumann added that of the 19 chemicals our investigation identified as its members biggest selling HHPs, 12 were registered for use in the EU and 18 were registered for use in the US.

He continued: “CropLife International members support the International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management and agree with the principle of pesticide risk reduction. We support countries to identify, and if necessary, remove HHPs from their markets.”

He added: “When risk mitigation measures or good marketing practices are insufficient to ensure that the product can be handled without unacceptable risks to humans and the environment, then market withdrawal should be considered.”

How we did it

This investigation is based on analysis of a huge dataset of pesticide sales from the agribusiness intelligence company Phillips McDougall. This company conducts detailed market research all over the world and sells databases and intelligence to pesticide companies. The data covers around 40% of the $57.6bn global market for agricultural pesticides in 2018. It covers 43 countries, which between them represent more than 90% of the global pesticide market by value. And it focuses on sales of leading products in the most valuable “market segments” (an example of a market segment would be insecticides for cotton in India).

We used the same methodology that pesticide industry analysts use to break up the value of product sales by active ingredient (in cases where a product included more than one active chemical), and we then established which of these chemicals had been classified by recognised authorities as posing environmental hazards like toxicity to bees, or hazards to humans, like acute toxicity, or chronic exposure risks like cancer.

For the final stage we used the 2019 highly hazardous pesticides list created by Pesticide Action Network International, which collates all pesticides that have been ascribed one of these hazard categories by the World Health Organisation, the European Chemicals Agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, or the US Environmental Protection Agency.

In June 2018 the agrochemicals company Monsanto was taken over by Bayer. The Phillips McDougall data treats all Monsanto sales in the early part of 2018 as Bayer sales.

Any reference to the group of CropLife companies or CropLife members in this article refers only to BASF, Bayer Crop Science, Corteva Agriscience, FMC, and Syngenta.

Visualisations by Nadieh Bremer / Visual Cinnamon

Update: This story was updated at 1.35pm on 20 Feb 2020, to add details of Bayer’s supplementary statement.

REPORTER’S NOTE

Behind Big Pesticide’s Playbook

The introduction three decades ago of a new class of insecticides called neonicotinoids — derived from nicotine — dazzled farmers: It promised insect-killing efficiency with precision application. Before long, neonics became one of the most widely used insecticides, applied to agricultural crops, ornamental trees, and home gardens in every corner of the globe.

Problems began almost immediately. Neonicotinoids have been blamed for killing bees. But while the European Union moved to ban the insecticide, little has been done in the U.S.

What’s different here? Industry lobbying documents and emails obtained by The Intercept show a vast strategy by the pesticide industry to influence academics, beekeepers, and regulators, and divert attention away from the potential harm caused by pesticides and push the public into focusing only on other factors that could harm bees and other insects.

As a result, the pesticide industry has largely prevailed and continues to reap massive profits. Revenue has doubled over the past decade; the global neonic industry generated $4.42 billion in 2018. And in the meantime, the effects are being seen in massive die-offs of several insect species; the poison is even reaching birds and potentially large mammals. Certain species are nearing extinction.

no lnx many

Lee Fang

January 18 2020,

IN SEPTEMBER 2009, over 3,000 bee enthusiasts from around the world descended on the city of Montpellier in southern France for Apimondia — a festive beekeeper conference filled with scientific lectures, hobbyist demonstrations, and commercial beekeepers hawking honey. But that year, a cloud loomed over the event: bee colonies across the globe were collapsing, and billions of bees were dying.

Bee declines have been observed throughout recorded history, but the sudden, persistent and abnormally high annual hive losses had gotten so bad that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had commissioned two of the world’s most well-known entomologists — Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a chief apiary inspector in Pennsylvania, then studying at Penn State University, and Jeffrey Pettis, then working as a government scientist — to study the mysterious decline. They posited that there must be an underlying factor weakening bees’ immune systems.

At Le Corum, a conference center and opera house, the pair discussed their findings. They had fed bees with extremely small amounts of neonicotinoids, or neonics, the most commonly used class of insecticides in the world. Neonics are, of course, meant to kill insects, but they are marketed as safe for insects that aren’t being directly targeted. VanEngelsdorp and Pettis found that even at nonlethal doses, the bees in the trial became much more vulnerable to fungal infection. Bees carrying an infection will often fly off to die, a virtuous form of suicide designed to protect the larger hive from contagion.

“We exposed whole colonies to very low levels of neonicotinoids in this case, and then challenged bees from those colonies with Nosema, a pathogen, a gut pathogen,” said Pettis, speaking to filmmaker Mark Daniels in his documentary, “The Strange Disappearance of the Bees,” at Apimondia. “And we saw an increase, even if we fed the pesticide at very low levels — an increase in Nosema levels — in direct response to the low-level feeding of neonicotinoids.”

The dosages of the pesticide were so miniscule, said vanEngelsdorp, that it was “below the limit of detection.” The only reason they knew the bees had consumed the neonicotinoids, he added, was “because we exposed them.”

Bee health depends on a variety of synergistic factors, the scientists were careful to note. But in this study, Pettis said, they were able to isolate “one pesticide and one pathogen and we clearly see the interaction.”

The evidence was mounting. Shortly after vanEngelsdorp and Pettis revealed their findings, a number of French researchers produced a nearly identical study, feeding minute amounts of the same pesticide to bees, along with a control group. The study produced results that echoed what the Americans had found.

Drifting clouds of neonicotinoid dust from planting operations caused a series of massive bee die-offs in northern Italy and the Baden-Württemberg region of Germany. Studies have shown neonicotinoids impaired bees’ ability to navigate and forage for food, weakened bee colonies, and made them prone to infestation by parasitic mites.

In 2013, the European Union called for a temporary suspension of the most commonly used neonicotinoid-based products on flowering plants, citing the danger posed to bees — an effort that resulted in a permanent ban in 2018.

In the U.S., however, industry dug in, seeking not only to discredit the research but to cast pesticide companies as a solution to the problem. Lobbying documents and emails, many of which were obtained through open records requests, show a sophisticated effort over the last decade by the pesticide industry to obstruct any effort to restrict the use of neonicotinoids. Bayer and Syngenta, the largest manufacturers of neonics, and Monsanto, one of the leading producers of seeds pretreated with neonics, cultivated ties with prominent academics, including vanEngelsdorp, and other scientists who had once called for a greater focus on the threat posed by pesticides.

[Automobiles pass Syngenta AG's headquarters at dawn in Basel, Switzerland, on Feb. 4, 2015. Syngenta, the world's largest maker of crop protection chemicals, forecast stable earnings this year as the benefits of a cost-cutting program offset unfavorable currency shifts. Photographer: Philipp Schmidli/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesSyngenta AG’s headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, on Feb. 4, 2015. Photo: Philipp Schmidli/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

The companies also sought influence with beekeepers and regulators, and went to great lengths to shape public opinion. Pesticide firms launched new coalitions and seeded foundations with cash to focus on nonpesticide factors in pollinator decline.

“Position the industry as an active promoter of bee health, and advance best management practices which emphasize bee safety,” noted an internal planning memo from CropLife America, the lobby group for the largest pesticide companies in America, including Bayer and Syngenta. The ultimate goal of the bee health project, the document noted, was to ensure that member companies maintained market access for neonic products and other systemic pesticides.

CLA Pollinator Issue Management Plan

10 pages

The planning memo, helmed in part by Syngenta regulatory official John Abbott, charts a variety of strategies for advancing the pesticide industry’s interests, such as, “Challenge EPA on the size and breadth of the pollinator testing program.” CropLife America officials were also tapped to “proactively shape the conversation in the new media realm with respect to pollinators” and “minimize negative association of crop protection products with effects on pollinators.” The document, dated June 2014, calls for “outreach to university researchers who could be independent validators.”

The pesticide companies have used a variety of strategies to shift the public discourse.

“America’s Heartland,” a PBS series shown on affiliates throughout the country and underwritten by CropLife America, portrayed the pollinator declines as a mystery. One segment from early 2013 on the crisis made no mention of pesticides, with the host simply declaring that “experts aren’t sure why” bees and butterflies were disappearing.

Another segment, released in January 2015, quickly mentions pesticides as one of many possible factors for honeybee deaths. A representative of the “North American Bee Care Program,” Becky Langer, appeared on the program to discuss the “exotic pests that can affect the bees.”The program does not mention Langer’s position as a spokesperson for Bayer focused on managing fallout from the bee controversy.

Michael Sanford, a spokesperson for PBS KVIE, which produces “America’s Heartland,” wrote in an email to The Intercept that “consistent with strict PBS editorial standards and our own,” sponsors of the show provided no editorial input.

Bayer’s advocacy, designed to position the firm as a leader in protecting bee health, included a roadshow around the country, in which Bayer officials handed out oversized ceremonial checks to local beekeepers and students. The firm hosts splashy websites touting its leadership in promoting bee health and sponsors a number of beekeeping associations.

Meanwhile, Bayer has financed a series of online advertisements that depict individuals who fear that its pesticide products harm nontarget insects as deranged conspiracy theorists.

Honeybees have captured almost all the attention for the dangers of neonics, but they are hardly the only species in decline because of the chemical.

Other forms of influence have been far more covert.

Communications staff with CropLife America compiled a list of terms to shape on search engine results, including “neonicotinoid,” “pollinators,” and “neonics.” One of the consulting firms tapped to coordinate the industry’s outreach, Paradigm Communications, a subsidiary of the public relations giant Porter Novelli, helped lead the effort to shift how pesticide products were portrayed in search engine results.

A slide prepared by Paradigm Communications showcases its push to decouple Google search results for bee decline with neonic pesticides.

The greatest public relations coup has been the push to reframe the debate around bee decline to focus only on the threat of Varroa mites, a parasite native to Asia that began spreading to the U.S. in the 1980s. The mite is known to rapidly infest bee hives and carry a range of infectious diseases.

CropLife America, among other groups backed by pesticide companies, has financed research and advocacy around the mite — an effort designed to muddy the conversation around pesticide use. Meanwhile, research suggests the issues are interrelated; neonics make bees far more susceptible to mite infestations and attendant diseases.

Bayer even constructed a sculpture of the Varroa mite at its “Bee Care Center” in North Carolina and at its research center in Germany, hyping its role as the primary force fueling the decline of pollinators.

[pix FILE -- A model of honeybee with a varroa mite on its back at Bayer's Bee Care Center in Monheim am Rhein, Germany, Nov. 19, 2013. Scientists and biotechnology companies are developing a way to kill insects, like the mite, which is believed to be partly responsible for the mass die-offs of honeybees, by disabling their genes. (Joanna Nottebrock/The New York Times) -- EDITORIAL USE ONLYA model of honeybee with a Varroa mite on its back at Bayer’s Bee Care Center in Monheim am Rhein, Germany, on Nov. 19, 2013. Photo: Joanna Nottebrock/The New York Times via Redux]

The stunningly successful campaign has kept most neonic products in wide circulation in commercial agriculture as well as in home gardens. The result is a world awash in neonics — and massive profits for companies such as Syngenta and Bayer, which now counts Monsanto as a subsidiary.

Millions of pounds of the chemical are applied to 140 commercial crops every year. In the U.S., nearly all field-planted corn and two-thirds of soybean use neonic-coated seeds. The chemical is found in soil samples from coast to coast, in waterways and in drinking water. Neonics, which are water soluble, have been detected in the American River in California, the River Waveney in England, tap water in Iowa City, and hundreds of other streams and rivers across the world. In Brazil last year, after President Jair Bolsonaro’s government approved dozens of new pesticides, the use of neonics caused the death of more than 500 million bees across the country.

In August, a study publishing in peer-reviewed journal PLOS One found that the American landscape has become 48 times more toxic to insects since the 1990s, a shift largely fueled by the rising application of neonics.

Honeybees have captured almost all the attention for the dangers of neonics, but they are hardly the only species in decline because of the chemical. Studies have tied neonics to the disappearance of native bees, butterflies, mayflies, dragonflies, amphipods, and a range of waterborne insects, as well as earthworms and other insect invertebrates. Several species of bumblebees in the U.S. and Europe are approaching extinction, a die-off researchers say is tied to the use of neonics and other pesticides.

In September, a study released in the academic journal Science revealed that migrating songbirds suffered immediate weight loss following the consumption of only one or two seeds treated with neonics. Previous research had linked disappearing insect life to dwindling food sources for birds in the Netherlands, but the Science study provided the evidence that bird species were directly affected by the chemical.

Another groundbreaking study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports showed that neonics are likely causing serious birth defects in white-tailed deer, the first time research has shown that the chemical compound could endanger large mammals.

“Bees are the canary in the cornfield,” said Lisa Archer, from Friends of the Earth. “The science linking pesticides to the extinction crisis has grown.”

Scientists are only now taking a closer look at the potential impact of neonics on humans and other mammals.

“Bees are the canary in the cornfield,” said Lisa Archer, the food and agriculture program director at Friends of the Earth. “The science linking pesticides to the extinction crisis has grown.”

Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, told The Intercept, “I think perhaps we are reaching a tipping point where people finally begin to appreciate the importance of insects, the scale of their decline, and that blitzing the landscape with pesticides is not sustainable or desirable.”

Bayer and Syngenta reject any claim that their neonic products are harming the environment.

“Neonicotinoid products are critically important tools for farmers, and are approved for use in more than 100 countries due to their strong safety profile when used according to label,” said Susan Luke, a spokesperson for Bayer Crop Science North America, in a statement to The Intercept. “This is why Bayer continues to strongly support their continued safe use, even though the manufacture of neonic products is not a major part of our business.”

“Research claims that have been made questioning neonic safety all share common flaws, such as exposure levels that far exceed real-world scenarios, and the flawed idea that exposure to substances in the environment necessarily means harm,” adds Luke. “It does not, otherwise no one would go swimming in chlorine or drink caffeinated coffee.”

“Since neonicotinoids were introduced in the 1990s, honey bee colonies have been increasing in the United States, Europe, Canada and indeed around the world,” Chris Tutino, a spokesperson for Syngenta, claimed in a statement to The Intercept. He added that “most scientists and bee experts agree that bee health is affected by multiple factors, including parasites, diseases, habitat and nutrition, weather and hive management practices.”

Tutino, in his email, noted that the neonic compound thiamethoxam, used in popular Syngenta products such as Cruiser and Dividend, had undergone “extensive tests evaluating effects on pollinators,” and providedlinks to five studies, all of which were produced by Syngenta consultants or employees.

Neither company responded directly to questions about the role of neonic products in fueling declines of butterflies, dragonflies, and other insect species beyond bee populations. Both companies highlighted company funding for honeybee health research.

The chemical industry’s comments were disputed by Willa Childress, an organizer with Pesticide Action Network North America.

While it’s true, Childress noted, that managed honeybee hive populations are growing, that is because of the commercial value of honeybees in pollinating a vast array of American agriculture. Beekeepers on average now lose around 40-50 percent of hives every year, well up from historical averages of 10 percent. Many commercial beekeepers are forced to constantly divide hives and buy queens to maintain hive populations, with many relying on government subsidies to scrape by.

“So no, honeybees aren’t doing ‘better than ever,’” said Childress. “And the scientists do agree that multiple interacting factors are driving pollinator decline, including, as chemical companies neglect to mention, pesticide use.”

“Honeybees will not go extinct in our lifetimes,” noted Childress. But, she added, “data on native bees and wild pollinators is far more ‘apocalyptic’ than even the most concerning reports on honey bee losses. Unprecedented numbers of wild pollinators are facing extinction — and we have very limited data on a number of other pollinators that are at risk.”

NOT LONG AGO, action in the U.S. to restrict neonics seemed imminent.

The pressure began to build in 2010 after Tom Theobald, a beekeeper in Boulder, Colorado, obtained an internal Environmental Protection Agency report showing that the agency’s own scientists had sharply criticized the research used to permit the sale of one of the most popular lines of neonic products.

In 2003, Bayer had secured the temporary right to use clothianidin, a neonic used widely for corn and canola, from the EPA — under the condition that the company conduct a “chronic life cycle study” showing how use of the neonic would affect honeybees by the end of the following year.

The Bayer-funded study, led by Cynthia Scott-Dupree, an environmental sciences professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, placed hives in clothianidin-treated fields of canola and hives in untreated fields of canola. The tests found little variation between the two sets of hives, but researchers later pointed out that the hives in the study were placed only 968 feet apart from one another. Honeybees forage for pollen up to six miles from their hives.

Scott-Dupree was later appointed the “Bayer CropScience Chair in Sustainable Pest Management” at the University of Guelph. Regulators in Canada and at the EPA used the study to clear clothianidin for unconditional use. Internally, however, EPA scientists expressed concerns.

The memo, written by two EPA scientists, noted that the previous Bayer-funded study failed baseline guidelines for pesticide research and warned that clothianidin posed a “major risk concern” to “nontarget insects (that is, honey bees).”

A dizzying array of research began pointing to problems with neonics. Despite claims that the compound represents a form of precision agriculture, a growing body of research shows that the chemical strays far from targeted crops, often traveling with the wind during planting operations, remaining in the soil for long periods of time, leaching into waterways, and causing acute problems for a wide variety of insect and animal life.

In 2014, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, introduced legislation to compel the EPA to take steps to suspend the pesticides. That year, in response to growing controversies around bee decline and the demands for greater accountability over loosely regulated pesticide use, President Barack Obama issued an executive memorandum calling attention to the “significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies.”

Activists picketed the White House demanding action. Beekeepers and environmentalist groups filed lawsuits challenging the registration status of major neonic products, claiming that EPA had violated its own protocols when licensing products from Bayer and Syngenta. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a decision to phase out neonics in wildlife refuge areas in the Pacific region.

Around the country, legislators in states across the country proposed bills to restrict neonics. In Minnesota, a bill was signed into law to prevent nurseries from marketing plants as pollinator-friendly if they had been treated with neonics.

For a while, the movement seemed to be gaining traction, which some hoped would lead the U.S. to mirror the EU in moving to regulate the widely used insecticide.

In the end, little changed. The settlements related to the lawsuits removed small-market neonics. The private-public partnerships that grew out of the Obama memorandum lacked any enforcement mechanism to restrict neonic use in agriculture. President Donald Trump rescinded the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule. Minnesota legislators quickly repealed the labeling requirement a year after it was passed.

After a hearing in which he pointed to pesticides, Jeffrey Pettis told the Washington Post that he was criticized him for failing to follow “the script.”

In almost every other state, with the exception of Vermont, Connecticut, and Maryland, lobbyists from the pesticide and agribusiness industry successfully killed any significant restriction on neonic products. The scientific community, once focused on studying the impact of pesticides, became splintered, with many of the leading voices going to work for industry or industry-backed nonprofits.

Critics of neonics were quickly sidelined. In April 2014, the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture — then chaired by Rep. Austin Scott, a Georgia Republican — convened a hearing to discuss the pollinator crisis. The event featured David Fischer, a Bayer official, and Jeff Stone, lobbyist for commercial nurseries. Both men used the hearing to warn against any restrictions on neonics in response to bee decline. The third, Dan Cummings, a representative of the Almond Board, a trade group for almond growers, focused on the threat of the Varroa mite.

A fourth witness, the Department of Agriculture researcher Jeffrey Pettis — the scientist who had collaborated with vanEngelsdorp — noted that unlike traditional pesticides, neonics are found in pollen, increasing exposure to bees. Under questioning from Scott, the committee chair, Pettis reiterated that even without mites, bees would still be in decline, and pesticides raise concern “to a new level.”

After the hearing, Pettis told the Washington Post that he spoke privately with Scott, who criticized him for failing to follow “the script.”

CropLife America, notably, celebrated the hearing performance for its heavy focus on nonpesticide-related factors for bee decline. “One thing that we hope was made clear during the hearing was the crop protection industry’s commitment to addressing this issue,” Jay Vroom, then the president of CropLife America, said in a statement.

Campaign finance records show that CropLife America, just weeks after the hearing, gave $3,500 to Scott, who then sponsored legislation to solve the bee crisis through exemptions to expedite the approval of pesticides used to control the Varroa mite.

And two months after the hearing, according to the Post, Pettis was demoted, losing his role managing the USDA bee lab in Beltsville, Maryland. Pettis later left the government and now serves as president of Apimondia.

[BROOKINGS,SD-JAN 11: Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren is a USDA scientist who is struggling to get out his research that may provide some answers to the dwindling honey bee population. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)BROOKINGS,SD-JAN 11: Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren is a USDA scientist who is struggling to get out his research that may provide some answers to the dwindling honey bee population. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren, who is researching answers for what might be causing the dwindling honeybee population, on Jan. 9, 2016.Photos: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images]

The Post also details the story of a prominent USDA scientist, Jonathan Lundgren, who researched the dangers posed by neonics to pollinators and spoke publicly about the issue. In 2015, Lundgren suddenly faced suspensions and an internal government investigation over misconduct, a push he believes was motivated by industry for his role in speaking out on pesticides.

“I guess I started asking the wrong questions, pursuing risk assessments of neonicotinoids on a lot of different field crop seeds used throughout the U.S. and how they were affecting non-target species like pollinators,” Lundgren told The Intercept.

The USDA did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment. It told the Post that the suspensions had nothing to do with his research. They were for “conduct unbecoming a federal employee” and “violating travel regulations.”

Lundgren now runs Blue Dasher Farm in South Dakota, a research effort to develop ways to rotate diverse sets of crops as a way to increase yields and suppress pests naturally.There are few institutions, he noted, where researchers can pursue science independent of industry influence. “Universities have become dependent on extramural funds, entire programs are bankrolled by these pesticide companies, chemical companies,” he added.

The regulatory system in the U.S. assumes chemical products are generally safe until proven hazardous.

“Generally, we see the U.S. waiting longer than the EU to take action on a variety of pesticides and other chemicals,” said Childress, the organizer with Pesticide Action Network North America. Part of the divergence, Childress continued, stems from a regulatory system in the U.S. that assumes chemical products are generally safe until proven hazardous. In contrast, the EU tends to use the “precautionary principle,” removing products that may cause harm, and requiring proof of safety before allowing them to return to market.

Another major factor, Childress noted, is the widespread corporate capture of American regulatory institutions. The EPA, for instance, employs 11 former lobbyists — including its administrator, Andrew Wheeler,who previously worked for coal interests in opposition to climate regulations — in senior positions.

The pesticide industry also maintains a long history of underhanded methods to discredit its critics.

Monsanto deployed aggressive tactics to punish critics of Roundup,the most widely used herbicide in the world and the company’s marquee product over the last several decades. Emails released through ongoing litigation in California last year showed that the firm used its lobbyists to orchestrate a campaign in Congress to criticize and defund scientists with the World Health Organization’s cancer research affiliate, after that body had declared that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is a “probable carcinogen.” Many of the documents detailing Monsanto’s role in shaping the public discourse around glyphosate were released during the course of class-action lawsuits filed by cancer victims who blame the company for their illnesses.

Syngenta became infamous after its tactics against University of California, Berkeley Professor Tyrone Hayes were reported. Hayes’s research showed that the company’s signature herbicide, atrazine, appeared to disrupt the sexual development of frogs.

The company dispatched people to follow and record Hayes at public speaking events, commissioned a psychological profile of the professor, and worked with a variety of writers to smear Hayes as “non-credible” and a liability to academics who considered working with him. The effort to sideline Hayes and his research, which included coordination with industry-friendly academics, was revealed in a series of court documents that were disclosed over litigation involving claims that Syngenta had polluted local water sources with atrazine.

In the two lawsuits against Syngenta and Monsanto, subpoenaed documents revealed that both Syngenta and Monsanto maintain a list of “third party stakeholders,” including free market think tanks and scientists the industry could turn to for messaging support.

Many of the think tanks and individuals included in the roster now play a prominent role in the neonic debate. The American Council on Health and Science,which has relied on corporate funding from Monsanto, Bayer, and Syngenta, has published over a dozen articles disputing the dangers posed by neonics.

In one email revealed through the Monsanto-Roundup litigation, Daniel Goldstein, a Monsanto official, wrote to colleagues in all-caps to support the council’s work: “I can assure you I am not all starry eyed about ACSH- they have PLENTY of warts- but: You WILL NOT GET A BETTER VALUE FOR YOUR DOLLAR than ACSH.” The bottom of the email included hyperlinks to articles criticizing demands to regulate both glyphosate and neonic pesticides.

The Heartland Institute, one of the think tanks in Syngenta’s third-party stakeholder list, which has received Bayer donations in the past, has published articles deriding research critical of neonics as “junk science.”

“The pesticide industry is using Big Tobacco’s PR tactics to try and spin the science about their products’ links to bee declines and delay action while they keep profiting,” said Archer, whose group, Friends of the Earth, has documented the lobbying tactics of pesticide makers.

WHEN NEONICS HIT the market three decades ago, they were the first new class of insecticide invented in nearly 50 years, and their use skyrocketed.

As early as the late 17th century, farmers found that they could grind tobacco plants and use nicotine extract to kill beetles on crops. Nicotine acts as an organic insecticide, binding to nerve receptors and causing paralysis and death in aphids, white flies, and other plant-eating insects.

Attempts to use nicotine for a mass-market pesticide, however, frustrated scientists. In early research, sunlight diluted the effectiveness of nicotine-based products. But that changed just over three decades ago, when Bayer scientists at Nihon Bayer Agrochem, the firm’s Japanese subsidiary, first synthesized neonicotinoids in the 1980s — a compound that not only withstood heat and sunlight, but could be applied to the root or seed of a plant and remain effective for that plant’s entire lifespan.

Neonics were hailed as the “Goldilocks compound” because they are “not too hard, not too soft, but just right.”

The new chemical came just in time. Farmers and regulators were seeking alternatives to another class of pesticides — organophosphates, nerve agents sprayed on crops — that had been found to cause cancer in humans. Initial studies of neonics showed that the compound was acutely toxic to insects but unlikely to cause harm to mammals.

As one scientist for Bayer described the invention in a 1993 Science magazine article hailing the introduction of the new class of chemicals, neonics were the “Goldilocks compound” because they are “not too hard, not too soft, but just right.”

And because seeds could be pretreated with neonics, which were absorbed and expressed through the tissue, nectar, and pollen, they could be also produced on an industrial scale, providing agriculture crops with an efficient insect-killing capability without the need for expensive spray treatments or constant reapplication.

In other words, farmers could soak the ground and seeds with enormous amounts of the compound to avoid problems from pests in the future. The delivery mechanism saved money for farmers but set the conditions for chronic overuse of the pesticides.

[Imidacloprid-layout-3-tint-1579299443Estimated agricultural use of imidacloprid. Information compiled from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pesticide National Synthesis Project. Map: USGS National Water-Quality Assessment, The Intercept]

The first commercial neonic, imidacloprid, was registered with the EPA in 1994 and sold as a potato seed treatment. Business boomed as neonic products spread worldwide to Japan, France, Germany, and South Africa. In the U.S., it became a popular standard seed and root treatment for corn, cotton, soybeans, almonds, and a range of fruits and vegetables.

Neonics were even used for household applications. Bayer produced imidacloprid as a flea treatment on pets throughout the U.S. The Advantage line of flea control took off, with a marketing campaign featuring the Jack Russell terrier “Eddie” from the television show “Frasier” and a 30-foot inflatable flea in Times Square.

Chemical Week called the introduction of neonics a “renaissance for the U.S. insecticides industry” providing “environmentally friendly products.” The Columbus Dispatch, in an article for home gardeners about ways to deliver a “surgical strike” against pests, called for consumers to consider Bayer’s Merit soil treatment, which the paper called “virtually non-toxic.”

The swift adoption of the compound instantly made Bayer, which had previously profited largely from its pharmaceutical line of products, a worldwide player in the agrochemical industry.

“Imidacloprid is our most important product,” the head of Bayer’s pesticide division told investors in 2008.

In 2003, at a forum hosted by Goldman Sachs, Bayer listed Confidor, Premise, and Gaucho, several seed treatments based on neonic compounds, among its top-performing products in a presentation outlining the company’s performance metrics. Another investor presentation, given by Bayer executives in Lyon, France, projected rapid growth from the neonic products, estimating that the firm, which had sales of close to 400 million euros from the portfolio in 1998, would more than double to 850 million euros by 2010.

“Imidacloprid is our most important product,” Friedrich Berschauer, then-head of Bayer’s pesticide division, told investors during a conference call in 2008, according to a transcript of his remarks. Company disclosures underscore Berschauer’s remarks: During that fiscal year, the company reported 932 million euros in sales for its top two neonic compounds.

In 2009, the global neonic market brought in $2.1 billion dollars for the largest pesticide producers. Other agribusiness interests invested heavily in the market. Monsanto began offering neonic-based seed treatments through its popular Acceleron product for corn, soybeans, and cotton. Switzerland-based Syngenta rolled out two neonic seed treatments, Actara and Cruiser, quickly positioning itself as a leading insecticide firm alongside Bayer. Many of the early compounds of neonics are no longer patent-protected, allowing other businesses to compete for the market. Valent, BASF (which acquired part of Bayer’s neonic portfolio as a condition of its merger with Monsanto), and Sumitomo Chemical are also leading neonic producers.

The first restrictions on neonics in the EU, announced late in 2013, raised alarm in the industry.“The number for the full year as a consequence of the suspension is about $75 million,” noted John Mack, then-Syngenta’s chief executive officer on a call with investors the following year, referring to the decrease in revenue as a result of the decision. The executives were quick to point out, however, the full brunt of the restriction had been limited because many EU states obtained exemptions from the suspension rule.

In another call with investors, Mack declared that there “is no relationship between” the use of neonics “and the causality of bee decline,” and said he was certain regulators in the U.S. would not take the European approach.

Speaking with investors 2018, Liam Condon, a Bayer executive in charge of pesticide products, warned that the neonic ban in France alone had cost the firm 80 million euros. The wider restrictions imposed on the chemical, Condon continued, “drags our entire European results down.”

Bayer no longer breaks out individual product revenue in its investor reports. Previous financial reporting has suggested that neonics represent as much as 20 percent of its sales. The company’s annual report in 2018 showed that the company’s insecticide division produced more than 1.3 billion euros in revenue.

Werner Baumann, chair of Bayer’s board, announcing its acquisition of Monsanto in 2016, declared that the deal would create “a global leader in the agricultural industry,” delivering insecticides and seed treatments.

The global neonic market generated $4.42 billion in revenue in 2018, roughly doubling over the previous decade, according to new figures provided to The Intercept from Agranova, a research firm that tracks the industry.

[ pix Beekeepers take part in a demonstration at the Esplanade des Invalides in Paris on June 7, 2018, during a national day of action of French beekeepers. - The National Union of French Apiculture (Union Nationale de lApiculture Francaise - UNAF) and the French Federation of Professional Beekeepers (Federation Française des Apiculteurs Professionnels - FFAP) have called for a national day of action to ask the State and the President of the Republic to launch an exceptional support plan for French beekeepers and to restore a viable environment for bee colonies and pollinators. (Photo by FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP) (Photo credit should read FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP via Getty Images)Beekeepers take part in a demonstration at the Esplanade des Invalides in Paris on June 7, 2018, during a national day of action of French beekeepers. Photo: Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images]

THE EVIDENCE ENTANGLING neonicotinoids with bee die-offs began to surface almost as soon as they hit the market.

In the early 1990s, in France, several bee hives near fields planted with neonicotinoids collapsed suddenly, and beekeepers observed mass bee die-offs in the vicinity of sunflower fields treated with Bayer’s imidacloprid-based Gaucho.

The French beekeepers mounted a sustained pressure campaign, including demonstrations of hundreds marching in Paris and outside of Bayer’s factory in Cormery, in central France.

The beekeepers observed that their bees were disoriented and unable to forage, and weakened to a point where disease and parasitic infections spread rapidly, destroying thousands of hives. Beekeepers found bees trembling and dying on the ground, a syndrome they nicknamed “mad bee disease.” They blamed neonics, but Bayer maintained that the chemicals caused no harm.

“We don’t believe the insecticide poses any risks,” Peter Brain, a regulatory affairs official with Bayer, told reporters.

In 1999, facing mounting pressure from farmers, the French government moved to temporarily ban the use of imidacloprid, though other neonicotinoids continued to be used. Annual hive loss continued.

In 2008, officials in Italy, Germany, and Slovenia observed that the sowing of fields with neonic-treated seeds correlated with nearby mass bee die-offs. In one region of Germany, beekeepers reported the loss of 11,500 bee colonies following the planting of nearby canola fields with neonic-treated seeds. Similar observations across the continent led to the temporary restriction of commonly used neonic products in all three countries that year.

The following year, a group of 70 scientists, including prominent biologists, toxicologists, entomologists, and other specialists in Europe formed the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, an ad hoc group to study neonics and other systemic pesticides. The task force worked to conduct research independent of industry.

Over the years, more and more research appeared to confirm that neonics were not only endangering nontarget insects. In the journal Science, a study confirmed that field-realistic applications of neonics reduced bumblebee fertility by 85 percent. The United Kingdom-based advocacy group BugLife released research that compiled years of academic studies showing that neonicotinoids appeared to be damaging the populations of honeybees, native bees, and other nontarget invertebrates.

The Task Force on Systemic Pesticides brought together over a thousand peer-reviewed studies, concluding that wide-scale use of neonics, along with fipronil, another popular systemic pesticide, were causing “widespread, chronic impacts upon global biodiversity.” The group noted that neonic pesticides linger for long periods in the soil and were found to be contaminating fields and waterways far from agricultural sites. The scientists called for an urgent reduction in the use of the chemicals.

Growing backlash against neonics pushed the EU into action. In 2012, the European Food Safety Authority, the leading pesticide regulator in the EU, released a risk assessment finding that the three most widely used neonicotinoids posed acute risks to bees. The finding set into motion an effort backed by most EU states to suspend the use of neonicotinoids on outdoor flowering plants for two years.

The mounting pressure created a need for the pesticide industry to push back with its own research. In fact, one of the greatest victories for the industry was its effort to cultivate the most influential bee scientists in the U.S.

[bees019034-1579302860Dennis vanEngelsdorp. Photo: David Yellen]

THE FIRST WAVE of headlines in the U.S. about the rapid decline of bees started in 2006 as beekeepers in Pennsylvania reported drastic hive losses.Other beekeepers also reported staggering losses over the winter that year, at an average ranging around 30 percent, wiping out more than a fourth of the 2.4 million colonies in the country.

The mysterious crisis was termed “colony collapse disorder” in the media. Dennis vanEngelsdorp, then-serving as Pennsylvania acting chief apiary inspector and studying at Penn State University, found himself at the center of the story. “It’s just causing so much death so quickly that it’s startling,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. He started with autopsies of dead bees in Pennsylvania, but soon came into contact with beekeepers in Georgia, Florida, and California reporting similar losses.

A team of other prominent bee experts, including vanEngelsdorp, Washington State University entomologist Walter “Steve” Sheppard, and other prominent scientists worked to investigate the crisis. “This is like C.S.I. for agriculture,” said one of the academics on the project, Columbia University’s W. Ian Lipkin, in an interview with the New York Times.

VanEngelsdorp, alongside Jerry Hayes, then-Florida chief apiary inspector and president of the Apiary Inspectors of America, pioneered an effort to survey beekeepers throughout the country to track colony collapse disorder. Bees were sent to his lab and examined for cause of death. VanEngelsdorp started a foundation, the Bee Informed Partnership, to formalize the survey and continue research into possible factors for the disorder.

In interviews with national news outlets, local media, and television stations across the country, vanEngelsdorp became an overnight celebrity. In 2008, he appeared prominently in the award-winning documentary “Silence of the Bees,” depicted as leading the research effort around collapsing bee colonies, and also recorded a well-received TED Talk, “A Plea for Bees.”

In his TED Talk, vanEngelsdorp stressed that honeybee colonies could be rebuilt, given that commercial bee farmers can split a hive into two or buy queens through the mail. But the danger of collapsing bee colonies went beyond the European honeybee, which is used widely for pollinating American agriculture. Native bees were also disappearing at an alarming rate, with no commercial effort to revive them. Bats were disappearing too, he lamented, “and there’s no money to study that.”

“Imagine if every one of three cows died. The National Guard would be out,” vanEngelsdorp said in 2013.

The following year, in September 2009, vanEngelsdorp appeared alongside Pettis at Apimondia. During this period in his career, vanEngelsdorp generally suggested in media interviews that several factors were likely to blame for bee loss. The decline, he told a local paper in Missouri in 2007, could be attributed to “mites and associated diseases, some unknown pathogenic disease and pesticide contamination or poisoning.” The research he presented at Apimondia concluded that “interactions between pesticides and pathogens could be a major contributor to increased mortality of honey bee colonies.”

In the following years, vanEngelsdorp used his voice to dismiss concerns with neonics in the media. His shift in rhetoric coincided with a push by the pesticide industry, in response to rising calls for pesticide restrictions to stem bee losses, began a push to rebrand itself as bee-friendly.

In 2013, he told one reporter, “Imagine if every one of three cows died. The National Guard would be out.” He continued: “Sure, neonics may be a problem some of the time. But not all, or in my humble opinion, most of the time.”

“The jury’s still out,” he told the Raleigh News & Observer, when asked about role of the pesticide in bee decline in 2014. The Associated Press quoted vanEngelsdorp declaring, “I am not convinced that neonics are a major driver of colony loss” in 2016. “In many cases, [neonicotinoids] are actually the safest alternative,” he was quoted as saying in another article, expressing skepticism over the push to ban the compound.

When asked about his seeming shift, vanEngelsdorp said in an email that his work focused on honeybees, but he is concerned with the threat posed to other pollinators and insect life. In Maryland, he wrote, high levels of mite infestations “would explain lots of [honey bee] mortality.”

“I should stress that I am speaking about honey bees, not native bees, and the effects of neonics on non-target non-honey bees (Honey bees have a reserve work force that can be lost without consequence as they are social organisms and other non-honey bee bees don’t) is much more pronounced and concerning,” vanEngelsdorp wrote.

Around that time, vanEngelsdorp joined Monsanto’s Honey Bee Advisory Council, a company-backed effort, and appeared at the company’s Honey Bee Health Summit in 2013 as a spokesperson. That same year, Project Apis m., a foundation heavily funded by Bayer, donated to vanEngelsdorp’s nonprofit, the Bee Informed Project, and has since provided at least $700,000 to the lab, according to public tax filings.

In an email, vanEngelsdorp said that although that he has received one grant funding stream from Bayer, that award came in last year and “it would be hard to argue it influenced past work.” The funding from Project Apis m. to vanEngelsdorp’s Bee Informed Project, he added, came from Costco, not the agricultural industry. Other corporate interests, including the Almond Board of California and the General Mills Foundation, have also directly funded the Bee Informed Project.

VanEngelsdorp said that his lab has never received direct funding from pesticide companies.

Bayer, as part of its Healthy Hives 2020 initiative, has dedicated at least $1.3 million to the project in collaboration with Project Apis m., which counts Bayer as one of its largest donors, though the company does not break down individual donor amounts.

The University of Maryland professor also explained that he felt conflicted about joining Monsanto’s advisory board, a position that ended in 2019.

“The purpose of this board is to help guide the development of new tools to help control Varroa, which I think, and the data suggest – are the biggest drivers of loss,” wrote vanEngelsdorp. “So it was a big struggle when I was asked to join the advisory board (which included several beekeepers), because – who wants to have an association with Big Ag?”

“Do I feel conflicted? – all the time,” vanEngelsdorp told The Intercept. ”But do I think my involvement with encouraging the development of a desperately needed new mite control skews my view of drivers of honey [bee] health. No. I think the data is clear.”

He added, “The world is a complicated place. Full of gray. I just have to believe the science will show truth, and hope we can get there by keeping things cordial, and respectful of the idea that people taking different paths towards the same end (save the bees) is not bad.”

“I’m an environmentalist – so have been and continue to be very concerned and vocal about protecting the earth and its biome,” he wrote. “I am certain that in all interviews on this topic I clearly say – the widespread use of neonic coated seeds is a short sighted, wasteful and environmentally unsustainable way of using this product. I strongly advocate for wise use. Use it when you know you need it and not unless you know you do.’ But that quote never gets picked up. But it’s what I think and have thought for a long time.”

Danielle Downey, the executive of Project Apis m., said the group is “transparent about where donated funds come from and what we use them for, keeping in mind donor privacy,” in a statement to The Intercept. “Project Apis m. does keep abreast of the science regarding bee health, which allows us to support industry-relevant projects.”

Downey did not take a position on regulating neonics, and noted that “regarding bans and regulations of pesticides, countries which apply different precautionary and risk assessment paradigms, may reach different outcomes.”

In 2013, vanEngelsdorp also edited a controversial paper authored by a group of consultants that claimed that thiamethoxam, a neonic produced by Syngenta, posed “a low risk to honey bees” when applied to oilseed rape and maize. In a section of its website titled “Bee Decline,” Syngenta cites the study to claim that “there is no direct correlation between neonicotinoid use and poor bee health.”

The paper, which was cited by Syngenta to apply for an exemption in the United Kingdom to the EU’s newly imposed moratorium on neonic products, was later widely panned. In a scathing article for Environmental Sciences Europe, a group of entomologists claimed that the vanEngelsdorp-edited study was not based on “truthful data and methodologies,” arguing that it used seed treatment at lower-than-recommended rates and that the experiment was poorly designed.

“Do I feel conflicted? – all the time,” vanEngelsdorp said. “The world is a complicated place. Full of gray. I just have to believe the science will show truth.]

Another group of scientists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland also eviscerated the vanEngelsdorp-edited paper, noting that it used no formal statistical analysis and came to its conclusion by vaguely inspecting the data. They mocked the method as simply reflecting “the prior beliefs of those involved.” The House of Commons Library, in a briefing paper on neonics, noted that the thiamethoxam study faced criticism for lacking rigor, and that all five of authors of the study “were current or former employees of Syngenta or had been paid by Syngenta for their work.”

VanEngelsdorp also lent his name to a splashy advocacy effort on behalf of the pesticide industry. CropLife America, Bayer, and Syngenta launched the Honey Bee Health Coalition, a new group focused on research into the Varroa mite and other nonpesticide-related causes of bee decline. The group was officially coordinated by the Keystone Policy Center, a supposedly independent third party, in conjunction with beekeeper associations and environmentalists. Records show, however, that the Keystone Policy Center is largely funded by major corporations, including Bayer and Syngenta. And internal documents from the Honey Bee Health Coalition show that its communications to beekeepers were reviewed by its bloc of growers and pesticide company members, including DuPont, CropLife America, Syngenta, and the Agricultural Retailers Association. Farmers and beekeepers paid as little as $500 to join the organization while corporate members paid as high as $100,000 in dues.

Marques Chavez, a spokesperson for the Keystone Policy Center, which organizes the Honey Bee Health Coalition, noted in a statement to The Intercept that the group “supports honey bee health and tackles complex problems in agriculture and beyond by bringing diverse perspectives together.” The statement did not address the proportion of pesticide industry influence, but said that the group maintains a public charter that “outlines the structure and decision-making process utilized by the coalition to identify, refine, and finalize the idea and deliverables that reflect the diverse input and collaborative effort of our members.”

Jerry Hayes, the former Florida apiary inspector, joined Monsanto and became the company’s representative at beekeeper conferences around the country and helped pitch Monsanto’s research into genetic solutions for bees to skeptical beekeepers. Hayes also helped with the launch of the Honey Bee Health Coalition. He recruited vanEngelsdorp to serve as one of the first scientists on the coalition’s steering committee.

They weren’t only ones. The industry also recruited bee industry voices to be the face of the new rebranding. Richard Rogers, an academic consultant and former adjunct professor at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, produced Bayer-backed research in Canada in the early 2000s discounting the dangers posed to bees by neonics applied to potato plants on Prince Edward Island. Rogers was brought on to help lead the Bayer Bee Care initiative when the center was opened in 2012. Dr. Helen Thompson, a leading official environmental official in the United Kingdom who had opposed the E.U.’s directive to suspend the use of neonics, joined Syngenta.

Washington State University entomologist Sheppard was also among the other prominent bee scientists to accept the pesticide industry’s outreach. The same year of the launch of the Honey Bee Health Coalition, Sheppard joined Bayer for a roadshow the company sponsored called the Bee Care Tour. He later joined the company steering committee for its “Healthy Hives 2020” initiative.

Emails obtained by The Intercept show a friendly relationship between the pesticide firms and the recruited academics.

In one exchange, with David Fischer, the manager of Bayer’s Bee Care Center, vanEngelsdorp was asked how to respond to reporters on how to calculate annual hive loss. The Maryland academic suggested a method that diminishes any winter losses of hives by factoring in new hives that have been split off from strong hives, though he noted that such a method “‘lowers’ the loss rate” and has been rejected by European beekeepers.

[WSU-emailDaniel Schmehl, an official with Bayer, asked bee scientist Walter “Steve” Sheppard to provide quotes explaining why “the partnership with Bayer Bee Care Center is important for your bee research.” Screenshot: The Intercept]

Daniel Schmehl, an official with Bayer, asked Sheppard to provide quotes explaining why “the partnership with Bayer Bee Care Center is important for your bee research,” as well as other blurbs the company could use. Sheppard appears regularly on Bayer press releases and publications as part of the company’s commitment to bee health.

In another exchange, Rogers, the former adjunct Acadia University professor and now official with Bayer’s Bee Care Center, wrote in 2015 to Sheppard and Jamie Ellis, an associate professor at the University of Florida, to publish a “paper on the definition of a healthy honey bee colony.” Rogers noted that he had worked on a draft but suggested that, “for the best optics, maybe you or Steve, or someone other than a Bayer staff member should be the lead author.” Ellis agreed and wrote back that he “understood your concern about Bayer staff taking the lead.”

VanEngelsdorp’s shift away from concern about the role of neonics is captured in another documentary about the plight of the bees.

In 2015, the website FiveThirtyEight produced a mini-documentary series, including a feature on the “Fight to Save the Mighty Honeybee.” The film, which was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival, traces vanEngelsdorp in his lab and in the field, exclusively discussing the Varroa mite. Unlike his previous appearance in documentaries about bee decline, the video made no mention of neonics or any other pesticide stress to bee health.

Bayer was thrilled with the documentary. Sarah Myers, an event manager with the chemical company, asked vanEngelsdorp for permission to feature the video on the company’s website. VanEngelsdorp politely let the company know that he did not own the copyright and referred Myers to the producers at FiveThirtyEight’s parent company. Bayer’s Bee Care Center showcased the film.

In an exchange with Paul Hoekstra, a regulatory official with Syngenta, vanEngelsdorp was thanked for agreeing to speak to John Brown, a Canadian attorney helping fight a contentious lawsuit over the registration of neonics.

“I think they were using this group as a PR advantage, but by the same token we have no money in the beekeeping industry,” Hayes said.

The relationship has continued. Earlier this month, the American Beekeeping Federation hosted its 2020 convention. The largest sponsor of the event was Bayer, which showcased a series of talks at the conference to tout the company’s commitment to bee health. Sheppard was featured in a Bayer promotional video screened at the event. Among the presentations was an address by vanEngelsdorp about mites.

“My association with Bayer has had no influence on my research focus nor my research,” said Sheppard, in a statement to The Intercept that detailed his work helping Project Apis m. identify research proposals for honeybee health using over $1 million in funding from Bayer.

“I cannot speak for Bayer – but the projects funded with their money and administered through Project Apis m. appear to be completely unrelated to any effort to ‘prevent the restriction’ of the use of neonicotinoids,” wrote Sheppard. “I am not naïve enough to think such a major company does not have their own agenda for the promotion or support of their insect control products. However, and emphatically, in the case of the funds distributed by Project Apis m., no such connection was apparent to either Project Apis m. or myself.”

Jerry Hayes retired two years ago from Monsanto after the project he was hired to promote “just didn’t work out.” He now works as an editor at Bee Culture magazine.

In an interview, Hayes said that he was proud of the work the Honey Bee Health Coalition achieved, including the development of guides for beekeepers to manage Varroa infestations. And he views the effort to bring various stakeholders together in one coalition as a unique accomplishment. But he said that pesticide corporations were largely in the drivers’ seat.

“I think they were using this group as a PR advantage, but by the same token we have no money in the beekeeping industry,” said Hayes.

“These guys were funding the organization, they were funding meetings, all of us knew there were perhaps ulterior motives,” he noted. “Without those resources, we wouldn’t be down the road a little bit to making honeybees a little less endangered.”

Hayes said he had followed the controversies around neonics and was concerned about the growing number of studies showing the threat to nontarget insects. Though he’s concerned that restricting the chemical could reintroduce older pesticides with a greater risk to mammals, he added that the drive for profits have fueled the overuse of neonics.

“It all comes down to money. Bayer is taking care of stockholders,” said Hayes.

Hayes said he doesn’t believe vanEngelsdorp’s views on pesticides have been shaped by his ties to industry.

“He’s a good scientist,” said Hayes. “Science changes over time. I think that science progresses and data shows different things at times, but I don’t think Dennis is influenced by money from these other people.”

“But,” Hayes added, when “chemical companies want to support Dennis because if he can come up with solutions to honey bee health, it takes pressure off of them, doesn’t it?”

[HOMESTEAD, FL - MAY 19: John Gentzel, the owner of J & P Apiary and Gentzel's Bees, Honey and Pollination Company, works with his honeybees on May 19, 2015 in Homestead, Florida. U.S. President Barack Obama's administration announced May 19, that the government would provide money for more bee habitat as well as research into ways to protect bees from disease and pesticides to reduce the honeybee colony losses that have reached alarming rates. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)The owner of J&P Apiary and Gentzel’s Bees, Honey and Pollination Company, works with his honeybees on May 19, 2015, in Homestead, Florida. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images]

DESPITE A SOPHISTICATED lobbying campaign to defeat neonic restrictions, Maryland was one of the few states to pass a law banning neonic-based products in consumer products. Industry threw its weight against even this minor bill, which exempts neonics in landscaping and agriculture.

And vanEngelsdorp played a prominent role in nearly defeating the legislation.

In January 2016, the University of Maryland, College Park campus held a summit bringing corporate representatives and researchers together to talk about solutions to the bee crisis. Maryland, California, Massachusetts, and other states were considering restrictions on neonic products. The Obama administration had encouraged an approach that brought together a wide array of stakeholders, known as the Managed Pollinator Protection Plan, or MP3, method of resolving the issue.

State officials tapped the Keystone Policy Center — the same chemical industry-funded nonprofit in charge of CropLife America’s Honey Bee Health Coalition — to manage the process.

VanEngelsdorp, addressing the summit, presided over a PowerPoint that listed a Monsanto affiliation in small type at the bottom, according to Luke Goembel, an official with the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association.

The presentation, said Goembel, made the case that “Varroa mites, not pesticides, were the primary cause of hive losses” and included “an image of a vampire baby to represent a Varroa mite.” VanEngelsdorp, he said, made a mocking comparison, showing a graph with a chart showing the rise of pirate next to a chart showing the increasing loss of hives over time, an “attempt to present the concept ‘correlation does not prove causation,’” and to “ridicule the concern over increasing pesticide use.”

“I was shocked,” Goembel said, “because the journals are full of research that describes many avenues by which pesticides, especially neonicotinoids, almost certainly lead to hive losses.”

The summit included a broad range of speakers, but beekeeper activists complained the discussion was dominated by pesticide makers.

Speaker after speaker claimed that hive loss was only “due to Varroa mites, not pesticides,” according to Bonnie Raindrop, another official with the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association, who attended the event. Only a small percentage of the attendees, Raindrop said, were beekeepers, and those who did make it were separated from one another. The rest, she said, “were people who knew nothing about bees,” including lobbyists, lawn care professionals, and representatives of agribusiness.

“They had a very controlled format,” said Raindrop, “with one beekeeper at each table, the rest industry people, and we were asked to make recommendations for what the MP3 policy should look like.”

Both Raindrop and Goembel brought up the role of neonicotinoids and other systemic pesticides killing bees, but said other participants at the summit shot them down.

The Keystone Policy Center moderators kept the conversation focused largely on mites, “and said beekeepers weren’t doing their due diligence to control mites using chemicals,” she added.

Asked about the beekeeper’s criticism of the Maryland summit, the Keystone Policy Center’s spokesperson, Chavez, said in a statement that the event “involved outreach to a wide variety of stakeholders” and encouraged the public to view the final report produced from the event.

One month after the summit, legislators in Annapolis, Maryland, took up a bill to ban consumer neonics. During the House of Delegates debate over the legislation, a panel of opponents — including representatives from Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration, pesticide industry representatives, and the owner of commercial nursery — repeatedly cited the survey taken by the Keystone Policy Center at the summit as evidence that researchers did not think pesticides were a problem.

Several cited vanEngelsdorp by name, claiming the University of Maryland professor had provided research showing that neonicotinoids did not pose a threat to Maryland hives.

At the hearing, state delegate Clarence Lam, a Democrat, noted that hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles identified neonicotinoids as a prime driver of bee decline and scoffed at the industry attempt to use the MP3 summit as a counterexample.

“Presenting data like this is pretty specious,” Lam said. “It’s marginally better than presenting data from a Facebook poll and saying this is what the data shows and this is what the science shows.”

In the end, the industry blitz failed, and, later in 2016, Maryland passed the Pollinator Protection Act. A similar measure passed that year in Connecticut to limit the use of neonics on flowering plants, and last year, Vermont enacted restrictions on consumer use of neonics.

Regulators in Oregon, after outcry following an incident in which 50,000 bees suddenly died in a Target parking lot as the result of the spraying of a neonic-based pesticide, have moved to prevent the use of neonics on linden trees. But in most of the country, there are largely no limitations on the chemical. California regulators also announced an effort to freeze new applications by pesticide companies that would expand the use of neonics.

Gary Ruskin, the co-director of U.S. Right to Know, a watchdog group following pesticide industry influence, which shared some of the emails obtained via records requests between industry and academics with The Intercept, said, “vanEnglesdorp’s close ties to the pesticide industry raise serious questions about the worth and reliability of his research.”

“As companies are increasingly threatened by scientific findings, they search for ways to blunt any independent science that may detract from profits,” Ruskin said. “One great way to do this is to co-opt scientists from public universities, who typically enjoy the public’s trust.”

In one of the emails revealed by Ruskin’s group, vanEngelsdorp wrote to Fischer, the manager of Bayer’s Bee Care Center, apparently irritated that Bayer had published confidential research from his lab, and claiming the data had been misused and posted without his permission.

“Tech team data is confidential so it should not be published — especially by a chemical company!” vanEngelsdorp wrote.

In a response, Fischer removed the line from Bayer’s blog. He also reminded the University of Maryland academic that Bayer had invested significant financial resources into the relationship and made it a priority for the company.

“We value our work with you and other researchers and stakeholders who have committed themselves to addressing this significant problem,” Fischer wrote.

“As you are aware, perception is everything,” vanEngelsdorp responded.

Nick Surgey contributed research.

Angela Ramirez looks out the window of her home in Waukegan, Ill. on Jan. 2, 2020. Ramirez, who was diagnosed with breast cancer, lives less than six miles away from two factories that emit ethylene oxide, a gas known to cause cancer. Pat Nabong for The Intercept.Trump’s Gutting of Toxics Regulations Will Mean Higher Profits for Polluters and Higher Cancer Rates for the American PeopleEmails Show Monsanto Orchestrated GOP Effort to Intimidate Cancer ResearchersU.S. Lobbyists Prepare to Seize “Historic Opportunity” in Tory-Led Brexit to Shred Consumer Safeguards, Raise Drug PricesToxic PFAS Chemicals Found in Artificial Turf

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:

Lee Fang

lee.fang@?theintercept.com

@lhfang

https://theintercept.com/2020/01/18/bees-insecticides-pesticides-neonicotinoids-bayer-monsanto-syngenta/

this refers to all agricultural chemicals, including herbicides and fertililizers

see also Monsanto, agribiz, atrazine, syngenta, GMOnsanto, neo-nics

promoted to primary b/c toxin emblematic of damage, Carson godmother, syngenta evil, 6/15 could be bought my monsanto

https://www.ecowatch.com/monsanto-dicamba-2468298141.html

17 States Investigate Dicamba Damage Complaints Spanning 2.5 Million Acres

Complaints of crop damage from the powerful and volatile weedkiller dicamba have increased rapidly around the country.

According to weed scientist and University of Missouri associate professor Kevin Bradley, 17 state governments are investigating more than 1,400 official complaints of dicamba-related injuries this year covering 2.5 million acres.

"This is a substantial problem that needs to be addressed," Bradley wrote.

Reports suggest that farmers applied the herbicide to Monsanto Co.'s new dicamba-tolerant soybean and cotton crops to beat back ever-resistant weeds, but the drift-prone chemical can be picked up by the wind and land on neighboring non-target fields, crops and native plants. Fruits and vegetables, as well as other crops that are not genetically engineered to withstand dicamba, are often left cupped and distorted when exposed to the chemical.

The current rash of complaints echoes the similar devastation last summer, when 10 states reported hundreds of thousands of crop acres adversely impacted by the apparent misuse of the herbicide.

Although dicamba has been around for decades, Monsanto, DuPont Co. and BASF SE sells new formulations of the herbicide that's said to be less drift-prone and volatile than older versions when used correctly.

Monsanto execs defended its product, blaming growers for using older versions of dicamba or not following directions on the new product label. As reported by Bloomberg:

The company attributes the drifting problem to farmers using illegal, off-label products that are more volatile—and thus more prone to drift—than the latest versions of dicamba. They may also be cleaning or using their spraying equipment incorrectly, or applying dicamba when it's windy, said Robb Fraley, executive vice president and chief technology officer.

But Bradley, University of Missouri's weed scientist, casted off what he considers as industry excuses:

First, does 1,411 official dicamba-related injury investigations and/or approximately 2.5 million acres of dicamba-injured soybean constitute a problem for U.S. agriculture? I guess it depends on your perspective but my answer is an emphatic yes. If you think so as well, let others know how you feel and let's stop the standard denial routine that I have heard so often this season. Instead, lets put our time and effort into figuring out where we go from here as an industry and what's going to be different about next season.

Second, I said previously that the purpose of this article is NOT to debate about the reasons for off target movement. And it isn't. And I'm not. But the reasons for off-target movement of dicamba are the number one thing we are going to have to discuss if you agree that there is a problem. So my last question is this; can you look at the scale and the magnitude of the problem on these maps and really believe that all of this can collectively be explained by some combination of physical drift, sprayer error, failure to follow guidelines, temperature inversions, generic dicamba usage, contaminated glufosinate products, and improper sprayer clean out, but that volatility is not also a factor?

...

In his inaugural address, Donald Trump declared that, effective immediately, he was transferring power to "you, the people." The new president added, "For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.... That all changes starting right here and right now because this moment is your moment, it belongs to you."

Trump didn't go into any detail about whom he was referring to, but there's ample evidence to suggest "the people" who were acquiring power were powerful corporate interests. Consider this Associated Press report, for example.

The Trump administration's top environmental official met privately with the chief executive of Dow Chemical shortly before reversing his agency's push to ban a widely used pesticide after health studies showed it can harm children's brains, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt's schedule shows he met with Dow CEO Andrew Liveris on March 9 for about a half hour at a Houston hotel.

About three weeks later, Pruitt ignored the findings of his own agency's chemical safety experts to allow the use of Dow's chlorpyrifos pesticide on food. The AP's report added that EPA scientists concluded "ingesting even minuscule amounts of the chemical can interfere with the brain development of fetuses and infants."

A spokesperson for Pruitt's agency said that when he spoke to Dow Chemical's CEO, the two did not discuss the pending decision on the pesticide. The timing, apparently, is supposed to be seen as a coincidence.

A separate AP report noted in April, "Dow Chemical chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris is a close adviser to President Donald Trump. The company wrote a $1 million check to help underwrite Trump's inaugural festivities.... When Trump signed an executive order in February mandating the creation of task forces at federal agencies to roll back government regulations, Dow's chief executive was at Trump's side."

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/how-the-debate-over-pesticides-unfolds-donald-trumps-swamp#break

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/business/fact-check-paraquat-weed-killer-parkinsons.html

no link

LONDON — Syngenta, the Swiss pesticide giant, claims on its website that data from an influential 2011 study shows that farmers who use the weed killer paraquat are less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than the general population.

However, Syngenta’s claim is at odds with the actual findings of the study, according to two of its authors.

The 2011 study, carried out by the National Institutes of Health and researchers from other institutions around the world, found that people who used paraquat or another pesticide, called rotenone, were roughly two and a half times more likely to develop Parkinson’s.

The work is known as the Farming and Movement Evaluation, or FAME, study. It drew on a sweeping United States government project called the Agricultural Heath Study, which tracked more than 80,000 farmers and their spouses, as well as other people who applied pesticides, in Iowa and North Carolina.

UNCERTAIN HARVEST

This Pesticide Is Prohibited in Britain. Why Is It Still Being Exported? DEC. 20, 2016

U.S. Regulator Signs Off on ChemChina-Syngenta Deal AUG. 22, 2016

Monsanto, in Bid for Syngenta, Reaches for a Business It Left Behind MAY 8, 2015

The FAME researchers identified 115 people from the Agricultural Health Study who developed Parkinson’s, and studied 110 of them who provided information on the pesticides they used.

The study was influential even among some people who had been skeptics of a connection between the chemicals and the disease. Gary W. Miller, a professor of environmental health at Emory University, referred to a link between Parkinson’s and paraquat as a “red herring” in a 2007 publication. But while Dr. Miller said in a recent email exchange that he had concerns about some previous research making the connection, “the FAME data are strong and should be considered.” He said the study “appears to show a connection between paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s disease.”

Because of the prominence of the FAME study, Syngenta addresses it on one of its websites, paraquat.com. Syngenta claims that the study shows that only 115 people had Parkinson’s out of the more than 80,000 people in the broader Agricultural Health Study. Therefore, “the incidence of Parkinson’s disease” in the study “appears to be lower than in the general U.S. population,” Syngenta says.

...

http://www.alternet.org/environment/after-giving-1-million-trump-inauguration-dow-chemical-urges-administration-ignore

After contributing $1 million to Donald Trump’s presidential festivities, pesticide makerDow Chemical Co. is asking the Administration to set aside previous findings of federal scientists across multiple agencies that confirm the risks that organophosphate pesticides pose to about 1,800 critically threatened or endangered species. This comes after the Administration abandoned plans to restrict the brain-damaging pesticide chlorpyrifos, also an organophosphate pesticide created by Dow, despite mountains of evidence that show the chemical’s neurotoxic impacts on children’s brains.

In letters sent to government officials, lawyers for Dow urge Administration officials and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set aside “biological evaluations” that detail how three highly toxic organophosphate insecticides –chlorpyrifos, malathion and diazinon– harm nearly all 1,800 threatened and endangered animals and plants, claiming the process to be “fundamentally flawed.”

http://www.alternet.org/food/farms-could-slash-pesticide-use-without-losses-research-reveals

http://www.ecowatch.com/epa-pruitt-chlorpyrifos-2352337722.html

A Pen Isn't the Only Gift Trump Gave Dow Chemical

Perhaps the Senate, in its hearing on Scott Pruitt's nomination to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), should have questioned Pruitt as the chief pediatrician for America's children. As head of the EPA Pruitt gets to decide what is safe for our kids—in the air they breathe, the water they drink, the food they eat and the communities they play. Senators didn't ask—but they are finding out.

In his first big test of what kind of pediatrician he will be, Pruitt decided to reverse an earlier EPA decision to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, a potent nerve gas banned from household use years ago, but still used in farms, orchards, pastures and golf courses.

Chlorpyrifos belongs to the same family as the nerve gas sarin—suspected of being behind the appalling chemical weapon attack which occurred this week in Syria, provoking appropriate outrage from the administration. But EPA has just decided to allow the continued dousing of America's rural landscapes with a close cousin—a different chemical weapon.Ch...causes of farm-worker pesticide poisoning—but is particularly toxic to young children and the fetus. The pesticide has come across my email screens periodically for over a decade, as organizations like the Nature Resources Defense Council slogged forward, petitioning the EPA to implement a simple requirement of federal pesticide law: that any pesticide must be shown to be safe before use. In 2015 the agency said is intended to ban it—but didn't finalize the decision. Eventually, courts ordered EPA to make a final decision on the ban—and Pruitt decided to ignore the science.

He did not do so because he asserted that chlorpyrifos was safe; he simply said that there were uncertainties, and that in that situation farmers were entitled to continue to use the chemical, exposing farm workers, their children, surrounding communities and consumers of food sprayed with the chemical, to a pesticide whose safety is at best highly dubious—in quantities up to 14,000 times the safe level.

"We need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on chlorpyrifos, while still protecting human health and the environment," Pruitt said—not the message you would expect to hear from a pediatrician if you asked him if you should give your kids foods laced with a potent neurotoxin that has been shown to damage their mental development.

This reversal of the clear requirement of federal pesticide law—that safety come first—along with Pruitt's revealing ordering of his priorities—regulatory certainty to pesticide users first, with human health qualified by "still"—reinforces something we are learning about the Trump administration.

Candidate Trump made a wide array of promises, many of them expressed within the 140 characters of a tweet. Huge numbers contradicted each other. How the administration would resolve those conflicts was one of the great unknowns. Trump, for example, proclaimed that "I want clean air and clean water" during his campaign. But he also pledged to dismantle the EPA.

It has been a fairly consistent pattern in the first 10 weeks of the administration that a campaign promise to help the powerful was likely to be honored, while one to help the vulnerable would be an earlier casualty of priority setting. Children of farm workers don't rank as high as Dow Chemical, the main manufacturer and defender of chlorpyrifos. QED—we know how this administration will come down....carper ~ pruitt sue?

enlist duo pruitt sued

http://www.ecowatch.com/epa-lawsuit-dow-enlist-duo-2323372668.html

http://www.ecowatch.com/pesticides-un-report-2307662827.html

The chronic overuse of pesticides across the world has caused "catastrophic" harms to human health, human rights and global biodiversity, according to a report presented to the United Nations human rights council Wednesday.

The UN-solicited study on toxic chemical impacts to global food sources criticizes pesticide manufacturers' "systematic denial" of the broad harms caused by their products and calls for a transition to healthier farming methods that move away from the current dependence on pesticides.

"This report vividly reveals the harms pesticide manufacturers have caused by promoting the myth that their toxic chemicals are necessary to feed the world," said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. "As this report recommends, we must move away from the industry-driven addiction to pesticides that is poisoning farmworkers, contaminating our water and wildlife and causing long-term human health problems."

The report is part of a growing body of evidence detailing the harms caused by the overuse and under-regulation of pesticides. For example, a study published last week in the journal *Nature Plants* found pesticide use could be heavily reduced in most situations without an impact to crop yield.

The UN report finds that poverty, coupled with inequitable production and distribution systems, are two of the major barriers to feeding the hungry.

http://www.ecowatch.com/pesticides-organic-farming-2292594453.html

http://www.ecowatch.com/monsanto-cancer-lawsuits-epa-2290270946.html

...ormer U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official Jess Rowland may have to testify over claims that he covered up evidence that glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto's top-selling herbicide Roundup, could cause cancer.

A federal judge said at a hearing in San Francisco on Monday that he is likely to grant the deposition of Rowland, a key figure named in multi-district cancer lawsuits alleging that Monsanto failed to warn about the cancer risks associated with exposure to glyphosate.

"My reaction is when you consider the relevance of the EPA's reports, and you consider their relevance to this litigation, it seems appropriate to take Jess Rowland's deposition," U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said at the hearing.

The plaintiffs' lawyers argue that Rowland had a "highly suspicious" relationship with Monsanto, Bloomberg reported.

Rowland, a former deputy division director at the EPA, chaired the agency's Cancer Assessment Review Committee (CARC). The CARC determined that glyphosate was "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans," which differs from the International Agency for Research on Cancer conclusion that glyphosate was a probable human carcinogen. Rowland left the agency just days after a copy of the CARC report was leaked to the press in May 2016.

This new development in the case—Roundup Products Liability Litigation, MDL 2741, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco)—is yet another litigious nightmare for the St. Louis-based agrochemical giant, which is pending acquisition from Bayer AG. Incidentally, the German pharmaceutical company recently signaled that its $66 billion mega-merger with Monsanto may face delays amid regulatory concerns.

...

http://www.alternet.org/documentaries/noam-chomsky-stars-new-documentary-about-major-risks-humanity-faces-pesticides

American companies are legally permitted to manufacture dangerous pesticides for export—even after the chemicals have been banned in the U.S.? There are policies that create a "circle of poison"; toxic chemicals traveling around the world, ironically imported back to the U.S. through foodstuffs we eat.

Circle of Poison, a groundbreaking documentary by Nick Capezzera, Evan Mascagni and Shannon Post, unveils the unrelenting corruption of this cycle. The film features interviews with Jimmy Carter, Vandana Shiva, Noam Chomsky, Patrick Leahy, and the Dalai Lama, as well as footage from India, Mexico, Argentina, Bhutan, and the United States, in order to illustrate the global impact of the pesticide trade and how communities are fighting back.

http://www.alternet.org/food/prenatal-pesticide-exposure-linked-lower-iqs-study

http://www.ecowatch.com/monsanto-dupont-weed-killer-gmo-crops-1910876805.html

8/17

One of the biggest concerns about the cultivation of genetically modified crops is the rise ofsuperweeds caused by the overuse of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto's best-selling Roundup and other pesticides.

So, in an effort to beat back these herbicide-defying weeds, Monsanto and DuPont have agreed to sell an even stronger weed killer to go with their genetically modified seeds.

Glyphosate is the world's most widely applied herbicide and has faced major controversy ever since the World Health Organization's International Agency cancer research arm linked the compound to cancer.

The rival seed and agrichemical companies have signed a multi-year supply agreement for the weed killer dicamba in the U.S. and Canada, Reuters reported. The new product, DuPont FeXapan herbicide plus VaporGrip Technology, will go with Monsanto's new Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans which are genetically altered to resist dicamba and glyphosate.

It's clear that Monsanto has high hopes for its latest project. According to Reuters, the company invested more than $1 billion in a dicamba production facility in Luling, Louisiana, to meet the demand it predicts. Xtend soybeans were planted on 1 million acres in the U.S. this year, but the company expects 15 million acres to be planted with the GMO soybeans next season and 55 million acres by 2019.

Monsanto's bet on dicamba represents a step away from the company's reliance on its "bread-and-butter glyphosate herbicide business," Reuters noted last year. Glyphosate, the world's most widely applied herbicide, has faced major controversy ever since the World Health Organization's International Agency cancer research arm linked the compound to cancer last year. Glyphosate's future in the Europe Union is also uncertain, as a number of countries have expressed fears over the safety of the product....

BASF fungi bees

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/this-is-your-brain-on-fungicides/

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released its first-ever analysis on the effects of three common pesticides—chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion—on endangered and threatened species and designated critical habitat nationwide. The resounding conclusion? Pesticides are terrible for them.

According to the report, malathion and chlorpyrifos harms an astounding 97 percent of the 1,782 animals and plants protected under the Endangered Species Act. Diazinon harms 79 percent.

Malathion is often used on fruit, vegetables and plants for pests, as well tick removal on pets. Chlorpyrifos is used to exterminate termites, mosquitoes and roundworms. Diazinon is used against cockroaches and ants.

The three chemicals species are “likely to adversely affect” these species, the EPA found.

“For the first time in history, we finally have data showing just how catastrophically bad these pesticides are for endangered species—from birds and frogs to fish and plants,” Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “These dangerous pesticides have been used without proper analysis for decades, and now’s the time to take this new information and create common-sense measures to protect plants, animals and people from these chemicals.”

“The EPA has allowed chemical companies to register more than 16,000 pesticides without properly considering their impacts. That has to stop,” Burd said. “These evaluations are a huge step forward for the EPA. Now that we know the magnitude of danger these pesticides pose, it’s clear we need to take action. The EPA must move forward with analyses for other dangerous pesticides and also quickly implement on-the-ground efforts to prevent the extinction of rare and unique wildlife from these pesticides.”

Organophosphates aren’t just bad for wildlife, a number of studies have linked them to human health risks. According to the Center for Biological Diversity:

Organophosphates are widely used in agriculture on crops such as corn, cotton, watermelon and wheat. A recent study at the University of California at Berkeley found that an astonishing 87 percent of umbilical-cord blood samples tested had detectable levels of an organophosphate. Early childhood exposure to organophosphates has been linked to cognitive delay and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Organophosphates were also used as nerve agents in chemical warfare and have been linked to Gulf War syndrome, which causes fatigue, headaches, skin problems and breathing disorders.

Additionally, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer also said last March that malathion and diazinon are classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, as well as a number of farmworker, child-safety and environmental advocacy groups, sent a letter to the EPA last month urging it to ban several organophosphate pesticides that are currently under review.

“These pesticides pose unacceptably high risks to children, workers and wildlife, and really can’t be used safely,” Nathan Donley, a scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “In this letter farmworkers, child-safety and consumer advocates have spoken with one voice, asking the EPA to ban these relics of our toxic past.”

The EPA has released the analysis for public comment. Following the comment period, the EPA will finalize the assessment. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service will use the analyses and data from the biological evaluations in their final “Biological Opinions” for each of the three chemicals, the EPA said.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/04/09/endangered-species-threatened-pesticides/

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/some-california-residents-exposed-multiple-airborne-pesticides-says-new-study

http://www.alternet.org/environment/exposing-epas-dark-side

enlist duo, slow

In response to a lawsuit filed by environmental groups, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday revoked the registration of the toxic herbicide “Enlist Duo,” which contains the cancer causing 2,4-D and is central to future uses of genetically engineered (GE) crops in chemical-intensive agriculture.

The marketing of this chemical in genetically engineered agriculture has become integral to the chemical industry’s response to weed resistance to the widely used herbicide glyphosate (Roundup), also identified as cancer causing this year by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)

...

http://www.alternet.org/environment/activists-score-huge-victory-epa-revokes-registration-toxic-pesticide-central-ge-crops

http://www.alternet.org/environment/endosulfan-has-killed-many-epa-slow-ban-its-use

DDT’s cousin: Endosulfan, like DDT, belongs to the organochlorine family, an early generation of farm chemicals that are notably persistent in the environment and animal tissue. It has been used in the United States since 1954 to kill mites and insects. "If humans are exposed to it,” he said, “it can cause serious health impacts.” 11/15.

hawaii

http://www.alternet.org/environment/more-100-monsanto-employees-crashed-my-presentation-ge-crops-and-pesticides

On October 14, I presented the findings of the Center for Food Safety's *Pes**ticides in Paradise* [3] report on the island of Moloka‘i in Hawai'i. At around 5:45 PM, about 15 minutes before the presentation was going to start, more than 100 Monsanto employees, all dressed in neon yellow shirts, arrived.

As I stared at the long line of workers, men and women of all colors and ages and sizes, entering the building, there was a moment when I wanted to walk away. I walked to the bathroom and sat with my face in my hands. I am not brave enough for this confrontation. I am not the right person to deliver this message. I am not strong enough for the yelling and fighting that will likely ensue. Deep breaths. Air punches.

I re-entered the main hall, now crowded with community members, workers. The island is so small that I already recognized faces from the four days I had spent here. My team gave me half horrified, half encouraging looks as I paced the front of the hall. With a few deep breaths and a nod from the few friends we had in the audience, I began. [4].

The presentation walks the audience through data on pesticides and genetically engineered crops in Hawai‘i and the medical literature that examines the human health and environmental impacts of pesticide exposure[5], on pregnant women, children, and farm workers, who are particularly vulnerable to adverse health effects.

And herein lies the greatest challenge of that night and the greatest opportunity. Although seemingly there to intimidate me and oppose our message, these 100+ people are the most at risk from the growing GE seed industry in our state.

Workers exposed to restricted use pesticides have higher rates of chronic diseases such as bladder and colon cancer[[i]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn1) [6], Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma[[ii]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn2) [7],[[iii]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn3) [8],[[iv]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn4) [9],[[v]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn5) [10], Parkinson’s disease[[vi]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn6) [11],[[vii]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn7) [12],[[viii]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn8) [13] ,[[ix]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn9)[14], and depression[[x]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn10) [15] ,[[xi]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn11) [16],[[xii]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn12) [17]. Children who live in and around agricultural operations like those owned by Monsanto and Dow are vulnerable to chronic, low-level exposure to restricted used pesticides that drift from GE test fields on a weekly basis. In utero and early life, children are at a risk of neurodevelopmental disabilities like autism and ADHD[[xiii]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn13) [18],[[xiv]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn14) [19],[[xv]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn15) [20],[[xvi]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn16) [21], leukemia[[xvii]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn17) [22],[[xviii]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn18) [23],[[xix]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn19) [24], and asthma[[xx]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn20)[25],[[xxi]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn21) [26],[[xxii]](http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/blog/4098/last-week-on-molokai#_edn22) [27].

http://ecowatch.com/2015/09/14/epa-pesticide-overturned

A federal court has overturned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) approval of sulfoxaflor, a pesticide linked to the mass die-off of honeybees that pollinate a third of the world’s food supply.

The three-judge panel said the EPA green-lit sulfoxaflor even though initial studies showed the product was highly toxic to pollinators such as bees. The chemical compound belongs to a class of insecticides, known as neonicotinoids, that scientific studies have implicated in bee deaths.

“Because the EPA’s decision to unconditionally register sulfoxaflor was based on flawed and limited data, we conclude that the unconditional approval was not supported by substantial evidence,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit panel wrote in its opinion.

In her opinion, Judge Mary M. Schroeder wrote that the EPA had initially decided to conditionally approve the chemical but ordered more studies done to better understand the effects the systemic insecticide would have on bees.

“A few months later, however, the EPA unconditionally registered the insecticides with certain mitigation measures and a lowering of the maximum application rate,” Schroeder wrote. “It did so without obtaining any further studies.”

The product, sold in the U.S. as Transform or Closer, must be pulled from store shelves by Oct. 18.

Gregory Loarie, lead counsel for environmental group Earthjustice, which represented beekeepers and beekeeping groups in the case, said the ruling could lead to reviews of other EPA-approved pesticides.

“The EPA rarely, if ever, has reliable information regarding the impact that insecticides have onhoneybee colonies writ large, as opposed to individual, adult worker bees,” Loarie said in an email. “With the findings in this case, EPA should move quickly to re-examine other registrations for possible flawed and limited data.”

Sulfoxaflor, created by Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences, is a systemic insecticide. When it’s sprayed on soybean, cotton, citrus, fruit and vegetable crops, it kills bugs on contact and is also absorbed into the plant’s flowers, stems and roots. When insects ingest any part of the plant, they die too.

Paul Towers, spokesperson for advocacy group Pesticide Action Network, said that because sulfoxaflor was only approved in 2013, it hasn’t been widely used. “The prospect of greater use loomed, especially as other neonicotinoids are under increased scrutiny and pressure for phase-out,” Towers said.

That phase-out already has started in Europe; EU member nations banned three neonicotinoids in 2013 for two years after the chemicals were linked to the dramatic decline in bee populations there.

“This is the classic pesticide industry shell game,” Towers said. “As more science underscores the harms of a pesticide, they shift to newer, less studied products. And it takes regulators years to catch up.”

815

http://www.alternet.org/food/pesticides-paradise-hawaiis-spike-birth-defects-puts-focus-gm-crops

http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/16/france-bans-monsantos-roundup-as-environmental-groups-push-who-for-stronger-safety-standards/

Chalk up another win for the little guy. A handful of residents of Kauai’s Waimea community prevailed in court over biotech giant DuPont-Pioneer earlier this month. Citing extensive, harmful dust generated by DuPont’s seed operations, a jury awarded 15 residents $500,000 in damages.

http://ecowatch.com/2015/04/10/lowes-neonicotinoid-pesticides

4/15

Subject: I just signed this petition to ban toxic pesticides -- will you? I just signed a petition calling on the EPA to ban a toxic, brain-harming pesticide called chlorpyrifos from agricultural use. It's one of the most widely used pesticides in America, but has proven to be neurotoxic to humans. Join me and sign this petition: http://act.credoaction.com/sign/EPA_Chlorpyrifos?sp_ref=116257964.4.12655.e.51308.2&referring_akid=.6643550.uY9okC&source=mailto_sp

NEW YORK (March 25, 2015) — The World Health Organization, the U.N.'s public health agency, said on Friday that glyphosate, an herbicide widely used on genetically modified crops such as corn and soybeans, likely causes cancer.

Released by the WHO's cancer arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the report [3] presents the findings of 17 biochemists, toxicologists, epidemiologists, molecular biologists and environmental scientists from 11 countries, who evaluated the carcinogenicity of glyphosate as well as the insecticides tetrachlorvinphos, parathion, malathion and diazinon. A summary of the evaluation [4] has been published online by theLancet Oncology.

Glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Monsanto's popular home and garden weed killer Roundup, was classified by IARC as "probably carcinogenic to humans." The scientists found that the chemical "induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal cells in vitro." They concluded that there was "sufficient evidence" that the herbicide causes cancer in non-human animals and "limited evidence" that it also causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in humans.

The agency, headquartered in Lyon, France, said glyphosate "has been detected in the air during spraying, in water and in food," noting that primary exposure to the chemical is through diet, home use and living near sprayed areas.

The researchers reviewed studies on the effect of the herbicide on healthy male workers in the agricultural and forestry sectors since 2001. They also highlighted a study of community residents that reported "increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage after glyphosate formulations were sprayed nearby."

Glyphosate is part of a group of biochemicals called organophosphates, which includes insecticides and nerve agents like sarin that irreversibly inactivate acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme essential for nervous system functionality in insects, humans and many other animals.

Monsanto released a statement Friday [5] disagreeing with IARC's findings.

"There is no new research or data that was used; the most relevant, scientific data was excluded from review; the conclusion is not supported by scientific data; and there is no link between glyphosate and an increase in cancer when the full data set is included in a rigorous review," said Philip Miller, Monsanto’s vice president of global regulatory affairs. "We don’t know how IARC could reach a conclusion that is such a dramatic departure from the conclusion reached by all regulatory agencies around the globe."

On Monday, Monsanto’s chief technology officer Robert Fraley followed up with an encapsulation of the biotech giant's feelings on the matter: "We are outraged with this assessment [6]."

Evidence of health risks mounting; so is revenue

While glyphosate may be most known among consumers for being the key ingredient in Roundup, the IARC report noted that it is also used in more than 750 [7] different agricultural, industrial and residential products.

Its wide range of applications includes weed control in forests, rivers, lakes, parks, grass pastures, lawns, turf, gardens, greenhouses, fruit orchards, vineyards and olive groves. In the U.S., its largest agricultural use is on hay/pasture, soybeans and field corn. According to IARC, glyphosate "currently has the highest global production volume of all herbicides."

The herbicidal properties of glyphosate were first discovered and marketed by Monsanto in 1974. In 2001, it became the most used pesticide [8] in the U.S. agricultural market and the second most used [8] pesticide in the home and garden market.

While the debate surrounding its effect on health continues, sales of glyphosate are chugging right along, no doubt aided by Monsanto's release of Roundup Ready genetically modified crops that are resistant to the herbicide. In 2012, the global glyphosate market was valued at $5.46 billion. By 2019, it is expected to swell to $8.79 billion.

While glyphosate-driven revenues continue to grow, so does evidence of the chemical's health risks. The IARC assessment builds on existing studies indicating the potential health hazards of glyphosate, including cancer and renal disease.

A 2013 paper published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology found that glyphosate induces the growth of human breast cancer cells. The environmental toxicologists at Bangkok's Chulabhorn Graduate Institute who conducted the study concluded "low and environmentally [9] relevant concentrations of glyphosate possessed estrogenic activity."

In February 2014, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published a paper by researchers from Rajarata University in Sri Lanka and California State University in Long Beach that investigated the potential role of glyphosate in Sri Lanka's chronic kidney disease (CKD) epidemic. Though glyphosate was ruled out as the lone causative factor, the authors said that when mixed with hard water or metals like arsenic and cadmium, the chemical "seems to have [10] acquired the ability to destroy the renal tissues of thousands of farmers."

One thing is certain: It will be decades before scientists fully comprehend all the things that can go wrong when humans and wildlife are exposed to glyphosate. A 2014 study published in theJournal of Organic Systems found a stunning correlation [11] between the rise of glyphosate-sprayed GMO crops and 22 diseases.

No agreement

IARC's conclusions contradict the official stance of the EPA, which maintains that glyphosate is safe. The agency originally classified it as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" in 1985, based on a study in which mice developed tumors after exposure. Then in 1991, the EPA changed its classification [3] to "evidence of non-carcinogenicity" after a re-evaluation of that study.

"EPA's worst case risk assessment of glyphosate's many registered food uses concludes that human dietary exposure and risk are minimal," the agency said in a 1993 glyphosate fact sheet [12]. "Existing and proposed tolerances have been reassessed, and no significant changes are needed to protect the public."

Some governments aren't waiting for another study. In September 2013, the legislature of El Salvador [13] approved a glyphosate ban, following the deaths of thousands of agricultural workers along Central America's Pacific Coast.

It only took a few weeks after the 2014 glyphosate paper on Sri Lanka's CKD epidemic was published for Sri Lanka [14] to ban glyphosate.

Also last year, the Dutch parliament [15] announced a federal ban on non-commercial sales of glyphosate that went into effect in 2015.

"In garden centers Roundup is promoted as harmless, but unsuspecting customers have no idea what the risks of this product are," said Dutch MP Esther Ouwehand, who brought the motion to Holland's legislative body. "Especially children are sensitive to toxic substances and should therefore not be exposed to it."

Monsanto and EPA: Perfect together, not for kids

So Dutch kids gained some protection from glyphosate. What about in the United States?

In February 2012, the EPA said [16] in its Budget in Brief that it would "continue to emphasize the protection of potentially sensitive groups, such as children," asserting that the federal pesticide program would "minimize exposure to pesticides [and] maintain a safe and affordable food supply."

Just three months later, on May 2, 2012, Monsanto challenged [17] this mandate and filed a petition with the EPA to increase the allowable amount of glyphosate on oilseed, sunflowers and a number of fruits and vegetables, including grapes, cranberries, strawberries, carrots, sweet potatoes and citrus fruits.

Environmental and public health activists rallied against the request. The nonprofit Food & Water Watch [18] responded with its own petition with more than 33,000 signatures, saying: "The EPA is failing to protect human health and the environment by neglecting to regulate the excessive use of herbicides; instead, it is just changing its own rules to allow the irresponsible and potentially dangerous applications to continue. Tolerance levels are put in place to protect human health—not the biotech industry."

One might think that, given the research pointing to health problems tied to glyphosate exposure, the EPA would take the time necessary to perform an extensive and thorough evaluation before amending the law. But that didn’t happen.

Instead of increasing protections against glyphosate's potential negative health effects, the EPA went in the opposite direction. On May 1, 2013, itapproved [19] Monsanto's request to increase glyphosate tolerance levels, in effect letting more of the chemical enter the American food supply.

The coziness between the EPA and Monsanto is concerning. Just six weeks after the EPA's pro-Monsanto ruling, the Gulf of Mexico Program awardedMonsanto [20] with the First Place 2013 Gulf Guardian Award. This program—a non-regulatory consortium of state and federal government agencies and corporate representatives from the agricultural and fishing industries—is underwritten by, you guessed it—the EPA.

It is difficult to understand how Monsanto can be considered a "Gulf Guardian" considering the company's central role in the acidification of the Gulf: Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, the major cause of the more than 400 oceanic dead zones around the world, including the Gulf of Mexico, is used on Monsanto's [21] GMO corn more than any other crop.

Timing is everything

What is more puzzling is the fact that the agency awarded the glyphosate tolerance victory to Monsanto after only conducting preliminary reviews of the studies it was provided, blaming "the timing of the submission." In its ruling [19], the EPA said it "does not believe that further review will result in different conclusions concerning the neurotoxic or immunotoxic potential of glyphosate."

The EPA is hoping the American public will believe that an agency which earmarked $129 million [16] of its 2013 fiscal year budget specifically to "support the EPA pesticide review processes" received a request from Monsanto to raise glyphosate tolerance levels and one year later, it was only able to conduct a preliminary review.

EPA also said it didn't believe that a further review would turn up different results. Isn't that another way of saying it's not absolutely sure?

The EPA also seems to have forgotten that a "different conclusion" is exactly what it came to back in 1991 when it changed its original 1985 glyphosate classification as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" to "evidence of non-carcinogenicity"—precisely because it made a re-evaluation of a single mouse study.

Clearly one year isn't enough time for EPA to conduct more than a preliminary review. Give it seven years and it can conduct a re-evaluation that brings it to a different conclusion. Seven years is also a long time to make sales of—and be exposed to—glyphosate.

The EPA has a fresh opportunity to reach yet another different conclusion, as the agency is currently conducting [6] a scheduled glyphosate review with its Canadian counterpart.

"We will give full consideration to the IARC study and all the other information we have before we reach a final decision," an EPA spokeswoman said.

Side of glyphosate to go with that GMO corn?

With Vermont and Maine passing America’s first mandatory [22] GMO labeling laws in 2014 (and 22 other states considering it), consumers are increasingly concerned about how food is affected by herbicides like glyphosate. This concern may grow along with the increased use of glyphosate-resistant GMO crops.

But it's not just the potential negative health effects of glyphosate that are worrisome. Its massive use on U.S. crops has given rise to glyphosate-resistant "superweeds.

"More than half [23] of all U.S. farms have some Roundup resistant 'superweeds'...that now infest 70 million acres of U.S farmland, an area the size of Wyoming," said Andrew Kimball, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Center for Food Safety.

"It's long past due that our government required real and rigorous science when regulating GE crops," he said. "It's time for them to say 'no' to these herbicide-promoting crops, and prevent the looming agronomic disaster they will inevitably bring with them."

With GMOs present [24] in 80% of processed foods in the U.S., Monsanto, as a primary producer of both GMO crop seeds and pesticides, has become a main target for environmental and public health activists. The average consumer also plays a central role in this rapidly evolving drama, not only by purchasing Roundup and foods sprayed with glyphosate, but also by ingesting the chemical.

In addition to glyphosate's links to cancer and other deadly diseases, it may also play a role in not-so-often-deadly ailment that has nevertheless become a major health concern in recent years: gluten sensitivity. Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at MIT, has co-authored two papers proposing aconnection [25] between glyphosate and gluten sensitivity. She and her colleagues found that glyphosate binds to gluten, "causing the gluten to stay in the form that is known to be more allergenic."

Cancer, chronic kidney disease, gluten sensitivity and agronomic disaster. The complex glyphosate-fueled web Monsanto has spun over the world's food system for the past four decades may take another four decades for scientists to untangle. But while the debate on glyphosate's numerous potential health effects rages on, one thing is fairly certain: It is a part of most Americans' diets.

Ronnie Cummins, the national director of the nonprofit Organic Consumers Association, put it bluntly: "If you eat [24] foods that contain genetically modified organisms, you are consuming glyphosate."