Tag: pesticides

Biotech and Pesticide Corporations Are “Winning” Under Trump’s Second Administration

 On February 18, 2026, President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) titled “Promoting the National Defense by Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Elemental Phosphorus and Glyphosate-Based Herbicides.” The order invokes the Defense Production Act (DPA) and states that the production of glyphosate-based herbicides is essential to US national security.

The EO is the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration that benefit the pesticide industry and the biotech companies producing genetically engineered (GE) food products.

The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement—launched in part by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential campaign—has shown divided reactions to Trump’s EO. Some view it as a betrayal of the movement’s goals, while others remain optimistic that the administration may still accomplish health-focused reforms.

The Executive Order notes that phosphorus is an important component for “defense supply chains” and is “crucial to military readiness and national defense.” It states:

“It is a key input in smoke, illumination, and incendiary devices and is a critical component for manufacturing the semiconductors that are central to numerous defense technologies, such as radar, solar cells, sensors, and optoelectronics.”

Beyond military applications, the EO also outlines the current need for phosphorus as a precursor to the production of glyphosate-based herbicides, which “play a critical role in maintaining America’s agricultural advantage” by allegedly allowing farmers to “efficiently and cost-effectively produce food and livestock feed.”

The order describes glyphosate-based herbicides as “the most widely used crop protection tools in United States agriculture” and “a cornerstone of this Nation’s agricultural productivity and rural economy.” It claims they allow farmers and ranchers to maintain high yields and low costs while keeping “healthy, affordable food options” accessible to American families.

The order claims that without access to glyphosate-based herbicides the agricultural productivity of the US would be jeopardized, leading to increased pressure on the domestic food system. “Ensuring an adequate supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides is thus crucial to the national security and defense, including food-supply security, which is essential to protecting the health and safety of Americans,” the order says.

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Surgeon General Nominee Aligns With Secretary Kennedy on Vaccines and Pesticides

Casey Means, President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, faced intense questioning before the Senate Health Committee over her views on vaccines, pesticides, business ties, and her alignment with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.

She is largely against pesticides and chemicals in food, so I imagine the left will suddenly be all in on both. They will claim it is Republican misinformation to suggest that chemicals in food can be harmful.

Means, a Stanford-trained physician and health entrepreneur, found bipartisan support for her focus on chronic disease and reducing Americans’ reliance on ultra-processed foods.

Mainstream media claimed that she sidestepped vaccine questions because she said, “vaccines save lives” and are an “important part of the public health strategy,” but stopped short of encouraging mothers to have their children vaccinated against measles and flu. It is dishonest to say she sidestepped the question. She answered that vaccines save lives while arguing for informed consent and questioning whether every vaccine in the current schedule is necessary.

She did not explicitly state that vaccines do not cause autism and questioned whether certain vaccines, such as the hepatitis B shot, should be universally administered at birth. She has been particularly critical of giving the hepatitis B vaccine to all newborns on their first day of life, questioning its necessity in every case.

She advocates “shared clinical decision-making” between families and their doctors rather than automatic adherence to a blanket schedule. While acknowledging the “overwhelming body of evidence” refuting a link between vaccines and autism, she also told senators that “science is never settled” and supported further investigation into environmental factors. Several senators pressed her on whether flu and hepatitis B vaccines reduce hospitalizations and deaths, and she acknowledged population-level benefits.

Refusing to encourage mothers to give their children a flu shot, saying more research is needed to determine whether vaccines are linked to autism, supporting informed consent, and suggesting that certain vaccines should possibly be removed from the standard childhood schedule is not sidestepping. It expresses a different viewpoint, which the left hates.

Dr. Means is a vocal critic of the prevalence of chemicals in the environment, which she links to rising rates of chronic disease. Her primary focus is on what she calls a broken food system and the dangers of ultra-processed foods and chemical additives.

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Pesticide Industry Infiltrates MAHA to Derail Reforms

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House as the best chance to deliver his long-promised health revolution.

In the final weeks of the race, the former environmental attorney urged voters to back Trump in order to advance a reform agenda aimed at eliminating harmful substances from America’s agriculture and food supply, particularly the herbicides and insecticides sprayed on most fruits and vegetables.

“Don’t you want healthy children, and don’t you want the chemicals out of our food, and don’t you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption?” Kennedy thundered at an October 2024 rally in Glendale, Arizona. Moments later, Trump promised to empower his ally to investigate the “toxins in our environment and pesticides in our food.”

“We’re going to ban the worst agricultural chemicals” and “remove conflicts of interest” from top farm and food safety agencies, Kennedy pledged days later.

Those promises have since fallen by the wayside.

The administration has reapproved the cancer-causing weedkiller dicamba, deleted references to pesticides from its “Make America Healthy Again” action plan, and delayed enforcement of limits on so-called “forever chemicals” in drinking water. There has been no meaningful action on controversial pesticides Kennedy previously warned about, including neonicotinoid insecticides and glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup—which he once called “one of the likely culprits in America’s chronic disease epidemic.”

Meanwhile, representatives of pesticide and chemical companies have flooded into key regulatory roles. Former lobbyists Douglas Troutman, Nancy Beck, Lynn Ann Dekleva, Scott Hutchins, Kelsey Barnes and Kyle Kunkler now occupy senior positions overseeing agriculture and environmental policy.

What happened?

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Pesticides Derived From World War II Nerve Agents — Still Sprayed on Fruits and Vegetables — Found in Pregnant Women

A study in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health finds peak concentrations of organophosphate pesticide (OP) metabolites in the urine of pregnant mothers 6-12 hours after consuming contaminated fruits and vegetables.

“High detection rates were observed for dimethylthiophosphate (DMTP, 96%), dimethylphosphate (DMP, 94%), diethylphosphate (DEP, 89%), and diethylthiophosphate (DETP, 77%) among 431 urine samples taken from 25 pregnant women, over two 24-hr periods, early in pregnancy,” the researchers reported.

The levels of metabolites within the urine correlate to the consumption of foods treated with organophosphate pesticides, highlighting the importance of adopting an organic diet — particularly for pregnant individuals and their children.

“In 2009-2010, 80 pregnant women were recruited from Ottawa, Canada for the Plastics and Personal-care Product use in Pregnancy (P4) Study,” the authors said.

“A subset (n = 25) collected multiple spot urines (up to 10 each; total n = 431) over two 24-h periods in early pregnancy — one weekday and weekend day — while logging their food consumption beginning 24 h prior to the first urine void and continuing through the following 24-h urine collection period.”

This is the first study looking at the variability of organophosphate metabolites within 24 hours in maternal urine, giving insight into “the primary sources of exposure and the temporal variability in a population of Canadian pregnant participants.”

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EXPOSED: House Republicans Quietly Slipped Pesticide “Immunity” Into Spending Bill — Now FORCED to Yank Section 453 After Massive Backlash

House Republicans quietly inserted, and then just as quietly removed, a highly controversial provision from the 2026 Interior and Environment spending bill after a firestorm of public outrage exposed what critics called a blatant attempt to shield powerful chemical corporations from accountability.

Section 453 of H.R. 4754 would have blocked federal funding for the EPA to update pesticide labels, guidance, or policy if those updates differed in any way from prior health assessments, even when new science emerged showing increased risks.

After intense pressure from watchdog groups and conservative commentators, House leadership yanked the provision before the bill heads to the floor this week.

The now-removed language stated:

“SEC. 453. None of the funds made available by this or any other Act may be used to issue or adopt any guidance or any policy, take any regulatory action, or approve any labeling or change to such labeling that is inconsistent with or in any respect different from the conclusion of
(a) a human health assessment performed pursuant to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act; or
(b) a carcinogenicity classification for a pesticide.”

In plain English: freeze pesticide labels in place, regardless of emerging science.

Critics warned this would allow manufacturers to argue in court that it was “impossible” to update warnings — effectively gutting failure-to-warn lawsuits and stripping families of legal recourse when harm occurs.

Children’s Health Defense led the charge, issuing an urgent warning that Section 453 would “wipe out your right to sue pesticide companies.”

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MAHA Advocates Urge Trump To Block Immunity For Pesticide And Chemical Manufacturers

As anticipation builds about the upcoming Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission Report’s release, 241 MAHA advocates sent a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to prevent the House of Representatives from limiting regulation for pesticides and “forever chemicals” in its environmental appropriations bill.

“We ask you to take action to make sure any protections for pesticides are stricken from this Appropriations bill,” the letter says, or risk losing Republican backing.

The letter also expressed opposition to liability shields for pesticide companies.

Every year, more than 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides are used on U.S. farmland, including dozens of chemicals banned in other developed nations, the letter states.

“These toxic substances are present in our food, air, soil, and water, and are increasingly in our children’s bodies, negatively impacting normal brain development and hormonal function,” the letter explains.

“Extensive peer-reviewed research has linked glyphosate to infertility, increased reproductive risks, and 6 of the top 10 most common cancers in the [United States]. At the same time, atrazine is a known endocrine disruptor affecting sexual development, and paraquat has been linked to Parkinson’s and neurological and respiratory diseases.”

Signers of the letter highlighted provisions in the Fiscal Year 2026 House Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill—Sections 453 and 507 —which they claim create broad product-liability protections for domestic and foreign pesticide and chemical manufacturers “by refusing to fund the critical, legally required scientific safety assessments needed to update labels across more than 57,000 synthetic chemicals.”

“Numerous pesticides that fall under Section 453 are chemicals that are already banned in multiple other developed nations. Despite a massive outcry from citizens, the House Appropriations committee passed the spending bill last month with Section 453 and Section 507 intact,” the letter states.

MAHA advocates also expressed concern about Section 507 because “it prohibits the EPA from finalizing risk assessments for PFOA and PFOS forever chemicals found in biosolids spread on farmer’s fields and eliminates funding for community health monitoring, new research, and the cleanup of more than 70 million acres of U.S. 2 farmland contaminated with PFAS from the application of biosolids.”

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Why the Pesticide Liability Protection Act Threatens Our Food Supply and the Health of a Nation

As stewards of the land and providers of our nation’s food supply, farmers and ranchers carry a profound moral obligation—to produce the safest, healthiest, and most nutritious food on the planet. It is not just our livelihood; it is our responsibility to future generations.

That is why I am writing today with deep concern regarding the Pesticide Liability Protection Act currently under consideration in Congress. If enacted, this legislation could cause irreparable harm—not just to the health of farmers and ranchers who work directly with these chemicals, but to the broader public who unknowingly consume their residues.

The Dangerous Path of Corporate Immunity

This bill threatens to open the floodgates for a new wave of pesticides and herbicides engineered by agrochemical giants—products that may be even more toxic than those currently on the market. By shielding these corporations from legal accountability, it removes their last remaining incentive to ensure their chemicals are safe.

We have seen this story before. In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, granting pharmaceutical companies immunity from liability for vaccine-related injuries. The consequences were swift and staggering: a surge in new products, rushed to market without proper safeguards, and a dramatic rise in chronic health conditions in children and adults alike. It was a public health turning point, and not for the better.

The parallels to our current situation are striking. Consider the case of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. Bayer (which acquired Monsanto in 2018) has faced more than 177,000 lawsuits involving the weedkiller and set aside $16 billion to settle cases. Over $11 billion has been paid out in Roundup lawsuit settlements, with individual jury awards reaching as high as $2.1 billion in recent cases.

These staggering financial settlements reflect the real human cost of inadequate chemical safety oversight. Even more alarming is the widespread exposure we’re seeing in our most vulnerable population: children. About 87 percent of 650 children tested had detectable levels of glyphosate in their urine, according to CDC analysis. Research shows that children exhibit higher levels of glyphosate in biofluids than adults, and recent studies indicate that higher levels of glyphosate residue in urine in childhood and adolescence were associated with higher risk of liver inflammation and metabolic disorders in young adulthood.

To repeat that same mistake with our nation’s food supply would be unconscionable.

Why the Pesticide Liability Protection Act Is Unconstitutional

The Pesticide Liability Protection Act fundamentally violates several core Constitutional principles that form the bedrock of American jurisprudence:

Due Process Violations (5th and 14th Amendments): The Act deprives citizens of their fundamental right to seek redress in courts for injuries caused by defective or dangerous products. This violates substantive due process by eliminating a basic property right—the right to compensation for harm—without adequate justification or alternative remedies.

Equal Protection Concerns: The legislation creates an arbitrary distinction between victims of chemical company negligence and all other tort victims. There is no rational basis for why those harmed by pesticides should have fewer legal rights than those harmed by other dangerous products.

Separation of Powers: By preemptively shielding an entire industry from judicial review, Congress unconstitutionally interferes with the judiciary’s role in adjudicating disputes and determining liability. This represents legislative overreach into the judicial branch’s constitutional domain.

Takings Clause Violations: The Act effectively takes private property—the right to legal recourse—without just compensation, violating the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause.

The Supreme Court has consistently held that access to courts is a fundamental right, and any legislation that bars entire categories of claims must meet strict constitutional scrutiny. The Pesticide Liability Protection Act fails this test.

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Research Increasingly Links Pesticides To Neurological Disorders

Are neurological diseases increasing around the world? Yes and no, according to a report published by The Lancet in 2024 on the global burden of nervous system diseases between 1990 and 2021.

About 3 billion — a third of the world’s people — suffer from some nervous system condition. These diseases cause 11 million deaths and 443 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), which are a measure of the years lost to illness, disability or early death. Neurological disorders are now the world’s largest source of disability.

The Lancet report does not include an analysis of the role of pesticides in the burden of neurological disease worldwide, although environmental health research continues to expand the evidence that pesticide exposure is a major contributor to that burden.

The Lancet report indicates that DALYs from Parkinson’s disease have increased by 10%, and autism spectrum disorder and dementia by 2% each.

Multiple sclerosis has declined by 1%, according to the report. Importantly, most of the improvement has come from medical interventions, not prevention — in other words, people are living longer with the diseases rather than avoiding them altogether.

But this is not true globally: The burden of disease, and particularly premature death, rests most heavily on the developing world, where medical interventions are much more scarce.

A focus on prevention would be a more equitable approach to the problem. See Beyond Pesticides’ deep archive of the evidence on pesticides and neurological diseases in “Pesticide-Induced Diseases: Brain and Nervous System Disorders” section. Our Gateway on Pesticide Hazards is also invaluable for information about specific pesticides and their adverse health effects.

The Lancet’s big picture does not demonstrate that the burden of pesticide-induced neurological disease is declining.

Such a decline seems a logical impossibility, given that more and more people are chronically exposed to more and more pesticides, and more and more research is establishing both population-level and mechanistic evidence of pesticides’ influence on disease induction and outcome, including neurological disorders.

A recent review by Chinese researchers demonstrates that there is no category of pesticide — not herbicides, not fungicides and not insecticides — that does not contribute to neurological dysfunction. The authors recite numerous examples: the herbicide glyphosate affects both cognitive and motor functions.

The fungicides tebuconazole and azoxystrobin are associated with neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. Organophosphate insecticides lead to sensory disruption, emotional disturbances and neurodevelopmental problems.

Several “natural” chemicals, including rotenone and the plant growth regulators gibberellic acid and indole-3-butyric acid, affect the expression of some neurologically relevant enzymes. One research group found that the insect repellent DEET applied to rats’ skin killed their neurons.

The review examines studies showing pesticides’ neurological damage relevant to long-term exposures, rather than the usual acute exposures that form the outdated regulatory toxicological approach to pesticide hazards and risks.

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EPA Defends Plan to Gut Key Office Studying Health Risks of Pesticides and Other Toxins

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will move forward with plans to gut the agency’s office that studies how air pollution, drinking water contamination and toxic chemicals, including glyphosate, affect human health, the agency announced Friday.

As part of its “reduction in force,” which reportedly will cut $748.8 million from the agency’s budget, the EPA is eliminating the Office of Research and Development (ORD).

ORD is strictly a scientific research organization. It has no regulatory responsibilities, which means it isn’t subject to industry influence in the same way as other sectors of the EPA.

As a result, ORD often reaches different conclusions than other EPA research groups, according to Bill Freese, science director at the Center for Food Safety.

The office’s findings underlie many of the policies and regulations issued by the agency. Its research is often used to justify stricter rules, prompting opposition from pesticide and chemical manufacturers and other industries — and even from other sections within the agency that are allegedly captured by the chemical industry.

For example, ORD identified glyphosate as a carcinogen when the EPA’s pesticide wing argued it was safe.

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PESTICIDES, like antibiotics, are fueling the rise of untreatable SUPERBUGS – study

In a remote Himalayan village, a polluted river reflects a grim reality: the water, once sacred, now teems with antibiotic-resistant bacteria thriving in a chemical soup of pesticides and hospital waste. This is Ground Zero for a public health crisis that scientists now trace back to industrial agriculture’s unchecked reliance on pesticides. For decades, these toxins have been hailed as saviors against crop-destroying pests, but recent studies reveal they are unwitting partners in an even deadlier crescendo—antibiotic resistance.

Key points:

  • Pesticides and antibiotics work synergistically to breed antibiotic-resistant superbugs in waterways, accelerating a global health crisis.
  • India’s contaminated water ecosystems—harboring deadly cholera pathogens and drug-resistant E. coli—exemplify a ticking time bomb of antibiotic resistance.
  • Bacteria evolve defenses like biofilms and gene-sharing plasmids to survive pesticide bombardment, creating drug-resistant strains that even modern medicine can’t combat.
  • Farmers, governments, and corporations face pressure to abandon chemical dependency in favor of organic farming or risk triggering a healthcare collapse.

Confronting a new Silent Spring

Modern medicine’s holy grail, antibiotics, are failing spectacularly, and pesticides are making it worse. Over 5 million people died from drug-resistant infections in 2019, a toll projected to surge to 10 million annually by 2050. India’s waterways, choked with runoff from agrochemical plants and sewage, have become nurseries of superbugs, warns a harrowing study. This is no accident—it’s a consequence of agriculture’s chemical war against nature, a conflict humanity is losing.

The post-World War II Green Revolution brought pesticides like DDT and BHC to India in the 1950s, promising food security through chemical might. By 1971, when regulations finally arrived, India had already built the template for 21st-century disaster: pesticides rampaging through ecosystems, duplicating insects’ resistance in microbes.

“The Green Revolution was never just about food—it was an ideological battle to conquer nature with chemicals,” says Dr. Rajeshwari Rajammal of India’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture. “But organisms adapt, and pathogens are playing catch-up faster than we can innovate.”

Today, India is the world’s fourth-largest pesticide producer, yet its farms use just 0.4 kg per hectare compared to China’s 1.83 kg—proof that scale isn’t the only problem. The chemicals India creates but doesn’t consume flow into global supply chains, spreading resistance worldwide. “You can’t binge on toxins and call it ‘growth’ forever,” Dr. Rajammal adds. “Nature always settles the bill.”

The antibiotics dumped into rivers through pharmaceutical waste (India is a top drug producer) only amplify resistance. In the Ganges River, antibiotic-resistant Vibrio pathogens cause untreatable cholera. Groundwater in Assam and Uttar Pradesh carries E. coli strains that laugh off ampicillin. Meanwhile, aquaculture in Bangladesh combines pesticides and antibiotics into a microbial arm’s race, creating monsters that even fortified drugs can’t kill.

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