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Interference in the Science of Atrazine (Again): Syngenta Tears a Page from...
In last year’s report Heads They Win, Tails We Lose, we laid out the strategies used by corporations to interfere in the development of science-based policy. We pulled from diverse examples—from ozone...
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Important Reports on GE Crops Missed by the Boston Review Magazine Forum
I was recently a participant in a virtual forum sponsored by the Boston Review magazine called, rather grandly, “The Truth About GMOs.” I was one of eight respondents asked to provide short comments on...
View ArticleA Food Day Wish List: More Veggies, Less Corn
Okay, yes, sometimes corn is a vegetable. But most of the time, it’s something else entirely—highly processed corn syrup in a can of soda, for example, or a fast food burger made from a corn-fed cow....
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More Herbicide, or More Innovative, Sustainable Farming?
As another growing season begins, production agriculture is confronted with important choices. Among them is whether the farming community and policy makers will heed the clear warnings from...
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Blind Faith vs. Insight: Employing Media Literacy to Reject Policies that...
As a dietitian who attempts to connect the dots between food, health and agriculture, my first job is to help my audiences think ecologically—to understand ripple effects—or how one influences others....
View ArticleEPA Chief Scott Pruitt Ignores the Science on Pesticides, Puts Children at Risk
The appointment of Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator in the Trump administration worried a lot of people like me because of his long history of attacking the work of the very agency he is now leading....
View ArticleDisregarding Science, Trump Administration Trades Kids’ Brains for Dow Profit
UPDATE (April 20, 2017): Apparently the Dow Chemical Company is not content with a win. As I wrote below last month, the EPA under Scott Pruitt made an about-face, opting to override his own agency’s...
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At the Trump USDA, the “D” Stands for “Dow”
USDA/FlickrEverywhere you look in the Trump administration, there’s the Dow Chemical Company. Or rather, DowDuPont, as the company has been known since a 2017 corporate merger. The influence of this...
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Reasons to Be Thankful—8 Food and Farm “Good News” Stories
Photo courtesy Jenn Vargas/FlickrSometimes gratitude feels like a stretch, and this fall has been one of those times. We’re in the home stretch of a difficult year. Bad news abounds, and even the...
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Pesticides, Heat, and the People Who Feed Us: Climate Change Is Making...
Bob Nichols/USDAIn a new report released this week, we show that climate change poses dire threats to farmworkers. While conversations around agriculture and climate change have increasingly focused...
View ArticleGenetically Engineered Crops in the Real World – Bt Corn, Insecticide Use,...
One of the most frequently mentioned benefits of genetically engineered crops is a reduction in chemical pesticide use on corn and cotton. These chemicals typically kill not only pest insects but also...
View ArticleOn Toxic Dioxin, Will the EPA Fold or Stand Tall?
In August 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency committed to releasing a scientific assessment of the health hazards of chemical dioxins by the end of January 2012. The assessment process has...
View ArticleThe Trojan Horse of Biotechnology
I am sitting at my desk looking at a slim report published in March 1990 at the dawn of the crop biotechnology era. On the matte blue cover are pictures of a then-new commercial equation: a small corn...
View ArticleMidwest Farms: Too Big to Be Sustainable?
On May 10 the National Academy of Sciences sponsored a “weed summit,” to address the threat from weeds resistant to the herbicides used to control them. The immediate motivation for this meeting was...
View ArticleReasons to Buy Organic: Let Us Count the Ways
No more peaches, no more blackberries! As my colleague, Jeff O’Hara, and I pore over the list of fruits and vegetables coming in our shared community supported agriculture (CSA) delivery, we are facing...
View ArticleRachel Carson's Nightmare: Herbicide-Tolerant Weeds
It is ironic that a new scientific paper documenting U.S.agriculture’s mounting dependence on chemical pesticides should appear only weeks after the 50th anniversary of the publication of Rachel...
View ArticleThis Happy Hour, How About Pesticide Cocktails?
A recent blog post by Tom Philpott pointed to growing evidence that neonicotinoid insecticide seed treatments of corn are harming bees. There is new evidence that combining several common insecticides,...
View ArticleThe Misguided Attack on Organically-Grown Foods – Beyond Oz and EPA
There has been a running, and often misguided, debate about the value of organic farming over the past few months. It was initiated by a research paper that purported to show that organic foods were...
View ArticleThe Birds and the Bees…and the Neonicotinoids
Spring has arrived. You can feel it in the air, the brighter sunlight slanting at a steeper angle, and the song of birds that have arrived from exotic winter homes. If you are not a night owl, you...
View ArticlePesticide Use is Actually Much Greater Than Reported
In a revealing article in the Wall Street Journal, Ian Berry explains how resistance to an engineered Bt gene by corn rootworms is leading to reversals in the trend toward declining insecticide use on...
View ArticleRisk Assessments Are Missing Harmful Effects of Neonics on Honey Bees
As Rachel Carson noted in her seminal book Silent Spring, a quiet landscape can speak volumes. Lately the buzz of bees going about their invaluable work is getting softer and softer…and in some places,...
View ArticleViolations of Scientific Integrity Are Killing Dogs (and Cats)!
The Union of Concerned Scientists has fought for scientific integrity for nearly twenty years – that is the ability of federal scientists to speak about their scientific work free from interference...
View ArticleThis Year’s Danger Season Is Over, but Risks to Farmworkers Remain
Climate scientists at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) have dubbed the six-month stretch from May through October “Danger Season” because of the confluence of extreme weather—record heat,...
View ArticleThe United States Needs to Protect Its Farmworkers from “Danger Season”
Farmworkers face many hazards while performing the labor that props up the $1.264 trillion US food and farm economy, yet a new analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) found that federal...
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