Latest / U.S. Right to Know articles / Pesticide lobby touts MAHA report rollback as its biggest win of 2025

Transcript

Pesticide lobby touts MAHA report rollback as its biggest win of 2025 · U.S. Right to Know articles

• 0:03
  Pesticide lobby touts Matt Report rollback as its biggest win of 2025.
• 0:12
  Crop Life America's most significant accomplishment in 2025 was its campaign to
• 0:17
  influence the Make America Healthy again. Commission's findings, according to Paul Ria,
• 0:23
  former board chairman of the Pesticide Industry Trade Group. RIA, a 25-year
• 0:28
  veteran of BACSF, The world's largest chemical company, made the comments in
• 0:33
  CropLife America's 2025 Impact Report. The report celebrates the removal of proposed
• 0:39
  pesticide restrictions from the MAHA Commission's final strategy as a win for
• 0:43
  farmers and the crop protection industry. Crop Life America is the leading
• 0:48
  pesticide industry trade
• 0:49
  group’s in the US, funded primarily by the world's largest pesticide companies,
• 0:53
  including Bayer BASF, Corteva, FMC, and Singenta. When asked about the trade
• 0:59
  group's most significant accomplishment of twenty twenty five, Rhea said There is
• 1:05
  no better example than how Crop Life America, with the support of
• 1:08
  its members and partners, raised its voice to highlight the potential impacts
• 1:12
  of the MAHA Commission findings. Mobilizing to Shape may report.
• 1:18
  President-elect Donald Trump promised in 2024 to end the chronic disease epidemic
• 1:23
  and protect Americans from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, and other health threats.
• 1:29
  His administration's MAHA agenda pledged to end the corporate capture of public
• 1:34
  health and put gold standard science, not special interests, at the center
• 1:39
  of every decision. In February 2025, Trump established the MAHA Commission,
• 1:45
  chaired by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, to investigate rising chronic
• 1:50
  diseases, particularly among children, and to develop a policy roadmap to address
• 1:55
  root causes of disease. The Commission's initial report, released in May, warned
• 2:00
  about corporate influence over science and policy and raised concerns about health
• 2:05
  risks associated with glyphosate and atrazine. The two most widely used herbicides
• 2:10
  in the U.S. Both are classified as probable human carcinogens by the
• 2:15
  World Health Organization's Cancer Research Agency. CropLife member Bayer considered the Mayche
• 2:21
  Report an unprecedented threat to its business model, Politico reported. Industry groups,
• 2:27
  including CropLife America, mobilized an intense lobbying effort to shape the next
• 2:32
  installment of the MAHA report, as The Washington Post reported. By summer,
• 2:37
  dozens of food and pesticide industry groups were meeting with Trump administration
• 2:41
  officials about the report. Crop Life Gins Up Farmer Voices campaign. The
• 2:47
  MAHA report was troubling. Crop Life President Alexandra Dunn told Brownfield News
• 2:52
  in late 2025 it put the industry a bit on our heels,
• 2:56
  that’s perhaps some better information needed to be shared. And so that's
• 3:00
  what we spent our time doing. They White House was very responsive.
• 3:04
  They opened their doors. Alexandra Dunn. CropLife's Impact Report details the scope
• 3:09
  of that effort: 5,200 farmer letters, meetings with administration officials, congressional
• 3:16
  coordination, paid advertising, and a messaging toolkit distributed to agricultural organizations.
• 3:23
  The White House was very responsive. They opened their doors, Dunn said.
• 3:28
  A former EPA official, Dunn led the agency's Office of Chemical Safety
• 3:32
  and Pollution Prevention, overseeing federal pesticide and chemical regulation during the first
• 3:38
  Trump administration from 2019 to 2021. She joined Crop Life in 2024
• 3:45
  and received more than 790,000 in salary and other compensation that year.
• 3:51
  As part
• 3:51
  of its effort to push back on the MAHA report, CropLife launched
• 3:55
  a Farmers Voices Matter campaign to combat misinformation and push back on
• 3:59
  pesticide health concerns raised in the MAHA report, Dunn explained to Brownfield
• 4:04
  News. The campaign amplified messages
• 4:10
  tool for farmers and Americans enjoy one of the safest and most
• 4:14
  abundant food supplies in the world.”
• 4:16
  Peer-reviewed research disputes that claim. A 2019 study
• 4:22
  Lags behind other agricultural nations in banning harmful pesticides. At that time,
• 4:27
  the European Union banned or was phasing out 72 pesticides still used
• 4:31
  in the U.S, including cancer-linked atrazine, certain neonicotinoid insecticides
• 4:37
  deaths
• 4:43
  has also documented rising cancer rates among young people in major corn
• 4:46
  growing states, where pesticide use is widespread. Against this backdrop of rising
• 4:52
  concerns about inadequate pesticide protections, the industry lobby prevailed. The MHA Commission's
• 4:58
  final strategy, released in September, dropped the initial report's warnings about specific
• 5:04
  pesticides and proposed no new restrictions on their use. Instead, it adopted
• 5:08
  language promoted by Crop Life, calling for greater public confidence in EPA's
• 5:13
  existing pesticide review process. Crop Life praised the final report, reiterating its
• 5:19
  claim that the US regulatory system for pesticides is recognized as the
• 5:23
  gold standard around the world. Why are Iowans so sick? Well, that
• 5:29
  is disgusting, said Kelly Ryerson, a Mamott advocate, when told about Crop
• 5:33
  Life touting the Mott report as their biggest win of 2025. The
• 5:37
  MHA report was about healing Emofyrka's sick kids, and Crope Life's proudest
• 5:42
  moment was getting glyphosate and atrazine restrictions out of it? I would
• 5:46
  like to see them present this win at the hospital bedsides of
• 5:49
  pediatric cancer victims throughout farm country, and see how that resonates, Ryerson
• 5:55
  said. Shame on Crope Life and the administration for prioritizing chemical company
• 6:00
  profits over American children. Protecting pesticide sales is not the same as
• 6:05
  protecting farmers. Angela Huffman, Farm Action. They pesticide industry won, said Vanihari,
• 6:12
  Mahe advocate and founder of the Food Babe Army. The removed everything
• 6:16
  they found threatening from the report. Hari said she felt beaten down
• 6:20
  by the experience. Obviously, I knew this stuff happens, but to see
• 6:24
  it up close from inside the White House, that was really hard
• 6:28
  to watch, she said. I went in not understanding exactly how corrupt
• 6:32
  and sophisticated it is behind the scenes in terms of preventing any
• 6:36
  kind of progress. Angela Huffman, president of the farmer-led advocacy and watchdog
• 6:41
  group Farm Action, took issue with CropLife's Farmers Voices effort. Protecting pesticide
• 6:47
  sales is not the same as protecting farmers, she said. Callie Means,
• 6:52
  a prominent May HA advocate and senior advisor to Kennedy, who resigned
• 6:56
  from the Trump administration on October 22nd, expressed frustration about corruption in
• 7:02
  a recent speech and Instagram post, lamenting that corporate profits are taking
• 7:07
  precedence over the needs of farmers and the health of Americans. Why
• 7:11
  do family farms have a boot on their neck with incentives that
• 7:14
  only help the big guys? Why is China and hedge funds buying
• 7:18
  up so much land in Iowa? And why are Iowans so sick?
• 7:22
  The answer to these questions is actually very simple. It's because very
• 7:25
  powerful interests profit from these dynamics, Means said. When reached for comment
• 7:31
  about the frustration of Mayche advocates, Crop Life spokesperson Anna-Marie Pender told
• 7:36
  U.S. Right to Know. CropLife America shares the Mayche Commission's goal of
• 7:41
  expanding access to affordable nutritious foods for America's children. And will continue
• 7:46
  to advocate collaboratively for government implementation of May AHA recommendations that are
• 7:52
  grounded in sound science and a weight of the evidence approach. Former
• 7:56
  lobbyists at EPA work with pesticide lobbyists tied to Trump? CropLife is
• 8:01
  a formidable force in Washington, D.C. Since 2020, the trade group has
• 8:06
  spent more than 84 million advancing pesticide industry interests, according to tax
• 8:11
  records. But CropLife was just one part of a much larger lobbying
• 8:15
  effort to counter the MAHA report, backed by powerful industry groups and
• 8:20
  allies inside the White House. At least 29 high-level officials in the
• 8:25
  Trump Administration worked for Bayer’s lobbying or legal network, as U.S. Right
• 8:30
  to Know reported
• 8:35
  released here
• 8:39
  up a meeting to discuss the MAHA strategy was then senior EPA
• 8:43
  advisor Turner Bridgeforth, a former lobbyist for pesticide manufacturer Cortiva Agrescians. The
• 8:49
  documents show that Bayer also contacted senior EPA officials about its Supreme
• 8:54
  Court case, which sought to shield Monsanto from lawsuits alleging it failed
• 8:59
  to warn consumers about Roundup’s cancer risks, and about an influential glyphosate
• 9:04
  study retracted because Monsanto ghostwrote it. Bayer's lobbying force in D.C. At
• 9:10
  the time included 45 registered lobbyists, many of whom previously worked for
• 9:14
  Trump’s
• 9:20
  lobbying firms that previously employed White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles,
• 9:25
  were both retained by Bayer after Trump's election. Brian Ballard, the former
• 9:30
  employer of both Wiles and former Attorney General Pam Bondi and the
• 9:34
  top fundraising bundler for Trump’s 24 campaign personally lobbied for both Bayer
• 9:40
  and the American Chemistry Council in 2025. Read more from U.S. Right
• 9:45
  to Know.