With the  Make America Healthy Again  (MAHA) Commission Report, pesticide use that may harm children while helping farmers is quickly emerging as one of the battle lines.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. led the May 22 report, which aims to provide a unifying theory for troubling health conditions being experienced by Americans, including children

Two organizations, the American Soybean Association and the Center for Food Safety, are on opposite sides of the pesticide issue. In its statement, the Soybean Association said it “strongly rebukes” the commission report for being brazenly unscientific and damaging to consumer confidence in America’s safe, reliable food system.”

The San Francisco-based Center for Food Safety (CFS) “ applauds the commission’s report for naming the overuse of pesticides and acknowledging their harms to children and public health as major contributors to America’s ‘chronic disease epidemic.” 

The CFS wants to see more policy and legal reforms necessary to stop epidemic rates of chronic illness in from continuing.

The American Soybean Association (ASA) finds the MAHA report “misleading” because it suggests glyphosate, atrazine, and other pesticides “essential to farmers” are potential contributors to health ailments.

The ASA points to “repeated safety findings” from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the recent European unio re-approval of glyphosate as safe.  Regulators in Canada, Japan, the UK, Australia, South Korea, and elsewher have issued similar findings.

CFS Legal Director George Kimbrell provides the counterpoint:  “The need to reform our broken industrial agriculture system to build a better future for our food is paramount. The MAHA commission recognizes that the overuse of pesticides in America’s industrial food system is a critical piece of the nation’s health crisis and acknowledges the now well-established scientific evidence of the dire harm these toxins are causing children, public health, and the environment. 

“However, the report falls woefully short of providing any next steps for how the government will stop this health epidemic from continuing. Much more is required—and urgently — to meaningfully address the twin public health and environmental crises we face.”

The 25-year-old CFS works on a variety of food safety issues, including the limitation of the impact of toxic pesticides on America’s food system and links pesticides to their health and environmental damage.  Kimbrell calls for “concrete actions that truly advance a healthier, more sustainable food system for America’s farmers and consumers.”

According to the ASA, national security might be undermined by the MAHA report. 

“Suppose domestic manufacturers exit the market due to increased and unfounded liability created by the report. In that case, the U.S. will be almost entirely reliant on China, which currently produces more than 80 percent of the world’s glyphosate, for continued supplies of this essential agricultural tool,” it says.

Kimbrell has another view.

“Protecting children’s health and building a healthy food system must trump pesticide corporations’ profits. Policy and governance must be based on sound science and reject fear mongering and lobbying influence alleging that these toxins are needed for a healthy food system or agricultural economy,” he said. “Our organization will continue to watchdog federal agencies to protect the public interest and ensure regulators comply with their duties to protect public health and the environment from these dangerous toxins.”

Alan Meadows is the ASA’s Regulatory Committee Chairman. He said: “Both farmers and members of Congress tried to warn the administration that activist groups were trying to hijack the MAHA Commission to advance their longstanding goal of harming U.S. farmers. Reading this report, it appears that is exactly what has happened.” 

“Activist organizations and trial lawyers are already engaged in baseless lawfare on pesticides. By bizarrely, without reason, singling out two specific pesticides, the administration has offered activists a gift on a silver platter. Those groups will be poised to use the report to advance litigation aimed at taking away these tools American farmers use safely and effectively to produce our food,” Meadows said. “It is sad — and downright unjust — that, because of this unfounded report, a judge will make those decisions likely and the court of public opinion instead of the regulatory system created for these decisions and based on years and reams of credible science and research.”