At Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network (PAN), our mission for over forty years has been to reduce reliance on pesticides to build a healthier food system—a food and farming system founded on the idea that we can feed the world without compromising our health or quality of life along the way.
The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission’s strategy addressing children’s health was billed as a way to address declining public health, with a particular focus on curtailing recent increases in chronic illness in children. The intent, as outlined in the Executive Order mandating the report, was to “fully address the growing health crisis in America” and “ensure our healthcare system promotes health rather than just managing disease.”
However, under pressure from industry-friendly politicians, Secretary Kennedy made it clear that nothing would actually be done to reduce exposures to pesticides when he said: “There’s a million farmers who rely on glyphosate. We are not going to do anything to jeopardize that business model,” at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee. And sure enough, the finalized strategy published Tuesday after long delays confirms that the administration has no real plans to reduce exposures to pesticides, and further, it broadly reaffirms the administration’s continued reliance on voluntary industry compliance rather than enforceable federal regulation.
This reversal is unsurprising, given the fact that transnational agriculture corporations have long influenced food system reform from the state all the way to the international level. Now, instead of prioritizing health and wellbeing, EPA is streamlining approvals for new pesticides and removing pesticide use reporting requirements for the most toxic pesticides. Further, the administration has defunded urgently needed public health research including research on cancer prevention and treatments and eliminated protections for communities who have been exposed to the dumping and release of toxic chemicals. Elected officials and appointed policymakers should serve the interests and safeguard the health of the people—not the bottom lines of billion-dollar corporations.
From soil to spoon, we must take a systemic look at our nation’s public health priorities. Secretary Kennedy claims to want revolutionary change; yet by side-stepping around pesticide impacts in this strategy, he bows to the same industry billionaires who have been pulling the strings in Washington for decades—the same ones who are currently lobbying legislation that would shield them from accountability to people harmed by pesticides.
This systemic deregulation coupled with defunding health research means that families pay the price—and our health is sacrificed in service of corporate greed. We call on the federal government to commit to funding and using the best science available to safeguard the health of people from pesticides and other environmental toxicants.
