Read the articles I linked too, we're killing off all our pollinators, there most definitely is a mass extinction.
We are screwing ourselves AND all other species.
https://usrtk.org/pesticides/chlorpyrifos/
Scientific research shows that chlorpyrifos, a widely used insecticide, is strongly linked to brain damage in children. These and other health concerns led several countries and some U.S. states to ban chlorpyrifos years ago, but the chemical has still been allowed for use by farmers in the U.S. after successful lobbying by its manufacturer.
In August 2021, the Biden Administration announced that it would acknowledge the danger to children and would ban the pesticide from agricultural use. Chlorpyrifos was banned from household use more than 20 years ago.
The new rule is slated to take effect in early 2022.
The decision comes after an order issued in April by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, directing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban farm use unless safety of the chemical could be proven.
https://usrtk.org/pesticides/maryland-pollinator-protection-act-pesticide-industry-opposition-playbook/
Days after Maryland state legislators introduced a bill aimed at protecting pollinators by restricting the use of neonicotinoid insecticides in residential areas, a group of representatives of Bayer, Syngenta, CropLife America, Maryland Farm Bureau, and the Maryland Department of Agriculture planned and executed a counter-offensive. Emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know show the strategies they used over the next two and a half years.
The emails are a rare window into the pesticide industry’s playbook for trying to keep a group of controversial pesticides on the American market. The industry group touted pesticide industry efforts to protect pollinators, collaborated closely with the Maryland Department of Agriculture, and tried to recruit a bee expert to testify on their behalf, among other efforts to defeat the bills.
Neonicotinoids, or neonics, are the most widely used insecticides in the world. They are toxic to bees and other pollinators. The European Union has banned several neonics for outdoor use out of concern for pollinators. Over the winter of 2014 to 2015 when Maryland delegates drafted the first bill banning neonics, the state’s beekeepers lost 45 percent of their honey bee colonies. Globally, wild and domestic pollinator species are in decline. There is a growing body of evidence linking neonics to pollinator declines.
Although the Maryland Department of Agriculture has never attributed a bee kill to neonics, neonics have caused mass bee deaths in other places. Studies have demonstrated that neonics at levels found in the environment can impair bee brain cells, which makes them worse at navigating, foraging, and flying.
The Maryland Pollinator Protection Act was signed into law in May 2016, after a stronger bill died in committee in 2015. A 2014 version limited neonic purchases to certified pesticide applicators, but was withdrawn by its sponsor.
https://usrtk.org/pesticides/glyphosate-health-concerns/
Glyphosate, a synthetic herbicide patented in 1974 by the Monsanto Company and now manufactured and sold by many companies in hundreds of products, has been associated with cancer and other health concerns. Glyphosate is best known as the active ingredient in Roundup-branded herbicides, and the herbicide used with “Roundup Ready” genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Herbicide tolerance is the most prevalent GMO trait engineered into food crops, with some 90% of corn and 94% of soybeans in the U.S. engineered to tolerate herbicides, according to USDA data. A 2017 study found that Americans’ exposure to glyphosate increased approximately 500 percent since Roundup Ready GMO crops were introduced in the U.S in 1996.
Why is Bayer taking glyphosate off the U.S. consumer market?
In July 2021, Monsanto owner Bayer AG said it would remove glyphosate-based herbicides from the U.S. consumer market by 2023 due to litigation. More than 100,000 people are suing Bayer alleging they developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma from exposure to the company’s glyphosate herbicides, such as Roundup. For more information about the lawsuits and documents released via discovery, see our Monsanto Papers page.
https://usrtk.org/food-related-diseases/junk-food-target-communities-of-color-increasing-risks-covid-19/
In the United States, health disparities in nutrition and obesity, often deriving from structural racism, correlated closely with the alarming racial and ethnic disparities related to Covid-19. Structural inequalities across U.S. society contribute to this problem, including unequal access to fresh healthy foods, unequal access to health care, socioeconomic factors and excess exposure to toxic chemicals and unhealthy air.
For more information about structural inequities in our food system, see resources from Duke University’s World Food Policy Center and the Food First Institute for Development and Food Policy.
Another problem is that food companies specifically and disproportionately target communities of color with their marketing for junk food products. In this post we are tracking news coverage and studies about racial disparities in junk food advertising.
Data on the disproportionate targeting of junk food advertising and marketing to communities of color
TV Advertising, Corporate Power, and Latino Health Disparities, American Journal of Preventative Medicine (June 2022)
“Overall greater health-adverse and fewer health-beneficial advertisements are broadcasted on Spanish-language than on English-language TV. Unchecked corporate marketing strategies may serve as a commercial determinant of health disparities for Latino populations by Spanish-language TV.”
https://usrtk.org/pesticides/bayer-osu-neonic/
Agrichemical giant Bayer helped fund a study by university academics, then pressured them to omit photos that implicated a defective insecticide-treated seed product as a threat to bees, according to communications obtained by U.S. Right to Know.
Several seed and insecticide companies, including Bayer, paid Ohio State University researchers to determine how much their insecticide-coated seed products affected bees during corn planting season in 2014 and 2015. After the researchers presented their preliminary results to “stakeholders,” which included funders, a Bayer official asked that their final report exclude photos of insecticide-coated corn seeds in which the product appeared defective. He also urged the researchers to qualify statements in the final report that discussed threats to bee health in ways that benefited Bayer’s corporate interests.
One of the seeds Johnson and Watters photographed after they observed insecticidal coatings flaking off in the field in 2015.
Although the photos and all the researchers’ conclusions ultimately made it to the final publication, internal emails show the seed and chemical industry funders intensely scrutinizing the researchers’ findings during pre-publication presentations. The study’s funding contract allowed funders to review and comment on findings prior to publication, and required pre-approval for any press releases or sharing of results.
This situation serves as an example of how agrichemical companies attempted to influence scientific research at a public university. Emails show how an industry funder tried to control and spin researchers’ results. Internal communications and research contracts are elements of sponsored research that are typically hidden from the public, but in this case, they provide insight into corporate sponsors’ involvement in the research process.
https://usrtk.org/food-related-diseases/ilsi-rebrands-again/
One of the world’s most powerful food industry lobby groups is rebranding itself to better serve its food industry funders. This comes after years of academic articles – some of them based on documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know – and adverse coverage in major news outlets made it harder for the group to do stealth lobbying and public relations work for food companies.
The International Life Sciences Institute, founded in 1978 by a Coca-Cola executive, is changing its name. It will now call itself just by its acronym, ILSI. The global federation of groups also unveiled a new logo and updated website on May 23, and announced a renewed focus on “scientific integrity.”
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “ILSI has always claimed to be independently science-based, but if there were ever any doubts, we now know beyond question that ILSI is a classic food industry front-group.”
“Many investigators have exposed ILSI’s behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts against public health measures that might reduce food product sales,” she said.
https://usrtk.org/monsanto-papers/
Discovery documents
Read internal Monsanto documents As part of the discovery process during the litigation that preceded the settlement, Monsanto had to turn over millions of pages of its internal records. The Monsanto Papers and other court records are shared below, including documents regarding the company’s ghostwriting of an important paper published in the year 2000, and how the company used that “independent” scientific literature to promote and defend its herbicides.
Background
Three years after Germany’s Bayer AG bought Monsanto in 2018, Bayer set aside more than $16 billion to cover litigation liability associated with thousands of U.S. lawsuits alleging Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup, cause a type of cancer called non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).
After losing three out of three trials in cases brought against Monsanto by cancer victims, Bayer said in June 2020 that it would pay more than $10 billion to settle roughly 100,000 of the claims. The proposed resolution came two years after Bayer bought Monsanto for $63 billion and one year after U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ordered Bayer/Monsanto to enter into mediation with plaintiffs’ attorneys. The settlement became mired in difficulties, and drew complaints from plaintiffs who said the individual amounts they’ve been offered are too little to constitute fair compensation. While many law firms have reached settlement agreements with Bayer, many others have not as of August 2021.
In late July 2021, Bayer said it would set aside another $4.5 billion to cover Roundup cancer claims. The company also said it would stop selling Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides to U.S. consumers by 2023, but would keep selling the products to commercial applicators and farmer
https://usrtk.org/our-investigations/jon-entine-genetic-literacy-project/
Genetic Literacy Project is an influential front group that partners with Bayer and other chemical companies to promote GMO foods and pesticides and argue for deregulation. Bayer paid the Genetic Literacy Project $100,000 from July 2020 to June 2021 for its work “to prevent legislative overreach in genetic engineering,” according to the group’s IRS form 990. Donor’s Trust, the secretive funding vehicle that funds attacks on climate science, is also a donor.
Prior to 2020, the Genetic Literacy Project claimed not to accept corporate funding, despite emails and internal corporate documents showing how the group assisted pesticide companies with their product defense efforts. We discuss the evidence here, and describe how GLP plays a leading role in efforts to attack and discredit scientists and journalists who raise concerns about chemical industry products.
Origins as Monsanto’s PR firm
Jon Entine, founder and director of Genetic Literacy Project, is also the founder and principal of ESG MediaMetrics, a public relations firm that had Monsanto as a client in 2011 when the firm registered the GeneticLiteracyProject.org domain.
Entine was also employed at that time by Statistical Assessment Services (STATS), a nonprofit group that journalists have described as a “disinformation campaign” that downplays health harms of toxic products. GLP was developed as a “cross disciplinary program with STATS,” according to web archives. In 2015, GLP moved under the umbrella of a new group, the Science Literacy Project, which inherited STATS tax ID.
STATS was a “major player in the public relations campaign to discredit concerns about bisphenol A,” according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Its parent organization, the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), was paid by tobacco giant Phillip Morris in the 1990s “to pick apart stories critical of smoking.” Entine was a director of the CMPA in 2014/2015, according to tax forms.
https://usrtk.org/gmo/center-for-food-integrity-partners-with-monsanto/
The Center for Food Integrity (CFI), formerly the Grow America Project, is an industry-funded 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization that conducts research, lobbying and public relations campaigns to “earn consumer trust” for processed food and agrichemical companies, including DowDuPont, Monsanto, Cargill, Costco, Grocery Manufacturers Association, Hershey, Kroger and trade associations for meat, dairy and soybeans.
In the five-year period from 2012-2016, CFI spent over $23 million on various marketing and messaging programs to promote industry messaging to build trust in GMO foods, pesticides, food additives and antibiotics in meat. CFI’s 501(c)(3) arm, the Foundation for Food Integrity, funds research to inform messaging attempts to build consumer trust, with a spending budget of $823,167 from 2012-2016. Sponsors in 2012 included Monsanto, CropLife America and the US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance.
PR for the industrial food chain
Board members for the Center for Food Integrity hail from the largest chemical, processed food and drug companies; the board includes executives from Cargill, Corteva Agrisciences (formerly DowDuPont), Chik-fil-A, Merck, McDonald’s, and trade associations for the soy, dairy and sugar industries. The president and founder of CFI, Charlie Arnot, also runs Look East (formerly CMA), a PR company for the food and agrichemical industries that offers services in branding and reputation management.
Terry Fleck, the executive director of CFI for 16 years since its inception, was also executive vice president at Look East. He retired in 2022. In April 2022, CFI appointed a new executive director, Mickie French, a former PR consultant for Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Mars, Nestle, and former executive at Tate & Lyle and FleishmanHillard PR firm.
“Industry partner” in Monsanto’s attack on IARC cancer panel
An internal Monsanto document identifies the Center for Food Integrity as an “industry partner” in Monsanto’s public relations plan to discredit the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), to protect the reputation of Roundup weedkiller. In March 2015, IARC judged glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, to be probably carcinogenic to humans.
The Monsanto plan lists four tiers of industry partners to engage in its public relations efforts. CFI is listed as a Tier 3 “industry partner” along with two other food-industry funded groups, the International Food Information Council and the Grocery Manufacturers Association.
According to the document, these groups were part of a “Stakeholder Engagement team” that could alert food companies to Monsanto’s “inoculation strategy” to provide education about glyphosate levels and to describe Monsanto’s preferred studies as “science-based studies versus [the] agenda-driven hypothesis” of the independent cancer research panel.
https://usrtk.org/our-investigations/monsanto-relied-on-these-partners-to-attack-top-cancer-scientists/
elated: Secret Documents Expose Monsanto’s War on Cancer Scientists, by Stacy Malkan
This fact sheet describes the contents of Monsanto’s confidential public relations plan to discredit the World Health Organization’s cancer research unit, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), in order to protect the reputation of Roundup weedkiller. In March 2015, the international group of experts on the IARC panel judged glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, to be probably carcinogenic to humans.
The Monsanto plan names more than a dozen “industry partner” groups that company executives planned to “inform / inoculate / engage” in their efforts to protect the reputation of Roundup, prevent the “unfounded” cancer claims from becoming popular opinion, and “provide cover for regulatory agencies.” Partners included academics as well as chemical and food industry front groups, trade groups and lobby groups — follow the links below to fact sheets that provide more information about the partner groups.
Together these fact sheets provide a sense of the depth and breadth of the corporate attack on the IARC cancer experts in defense of Monsanto’s top-selling herbicide.
https://usrtk.org/pesticides/secret-documents-expose-monsantos-war-on-cancer-scientists/
DeWayne Johnson, a 46-year-old father dying of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, was the first person to face Monsanto in trial last June over allegations the company hid evidence about the cancer-causing dangers of its Roundup weedkiller. Juries have since returned with three unanimous verdicts finding that glyphosate-based Roundup herbicides were a substantial cause of cancer, and leveling massive punitive damages against Bayer (which now owns Monsanto). Thousands more people are suing in state and federal courts, and corporate documents coming out of the trials are shining light on the heavy-handed tactics Monsanto used to deny cancer risk and protect the chemical that was the lynchpin of its profits.
