It’s disappointing and discouraging.
The Trump administration’s final “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, report is abandoning MAHA leaders’ promises to ban toxic agricultural chemicals, the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, said Tuesday.
Instead, the MAHA plan echoes the pesticide industry’s talking points. It recommends “precision” agriculture and calls the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s pesticide review process “robust,” with no mention of banning the use of harmful pesticides.
A MAHA report released in May included the health risks of pesticides, and that they’re found at “alarming” levels in some children and pregnant women. That’s what Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s has been warning about for years.
The final plan released by the MAHA Commission drops those references and instead mirrors the pesticide industry’s talking points, Ken Cook, EWG president, said in a statement. Large parts of the report are similar to CropLife America’s MAHA wish list, showing the deep influence of industry lobbyists over the commission’s final recommendations. CropLife represents the manufacturers and distributors of pesticides.
“It looks like pesticide industry lobbyists steamrolled the MAHA Commission’s agenda,” said Cook. “Secretary Kennedy and President Trump cynically convinced millions they’d protect children from harmful farm chemicals – promises now exposed as hollow.”
A side-by-side comparison of the MAHA report’s recommendations and an earlier pesticide industry letter to the White House shows the similarities.
From the Trump administration’s MAHA report:
- Precision Agricultural Technology: USDA and EPA will prioritize research and programs to help growers adopt precision agricultural techniques, including remote sensing and precision application technologies that will further optimize crop applications. These research and programs should emphasize ways in which precision technology can help to decrease pesticide volumes, improve the soil microbiome, and have a significant financial benefit for growers
- Pesticides: EPA, partnering with food and agricultural stakeholders, will work to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence in EPA’s robust review procedures and how that relates to the limiting of risk for users and the general public and informs continual improvement
From CropLife America’s MAHA wish list:
- Discuss how private-sector innovation can focus and help to ensure the meticulous application of pesticides through precision agriculture.
- Reiterate the robust, respected process used by EPA to review pesticides before and after regulation.
“While MAHA architects tell their followers to attack the ‘deep state’– now oddly redefined to include pesticide lobbyists – the truth is clear: It was the agrochemical lobby, not career public servants, that pushed President Trump and RFK Jr. to abandon their promises to the millions who helped propel them to power,” Cook said.
“EWG and countless public health advocates warned from the start that MAHA’s leaders were grifters exploiting the hopes and fears of health-conscious Americans in their quest for power jobs in Washington,” he added. “Sadly, we were right.”
Unfortunately, I predicted this possible turnaround in an article I wrote. I didn’t think Kennedy, and his boss Trump, would stand up to the pesticide industry. It’s such a big disappointing, but it was expected by myself and others.
