10
Sep
MAHA Strategy Report Backs Off Pesticides After Defining Serious Threat in Earlier Assessment
(Beyond Pesticides, September 10, 2025)Â After being criticized by the chemical industry and allied agribusiness and service industry groups on the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) report in May, the strategy document, released yesterday, has tamped down efforts to reform government programs that regulate pesticides. There are no specific recommendations on improving the regulation of pesticides. Rather, the strategy appears to embrace business-as-usual and could even ramp up government efforts to tout the need for pesticides and claims that current regulatory reviews are effective and comprehensive.
In a section of the strategy entitled “Increasing Public Awareness and Knowledge,†the document says: “EPA, partnering with food and agricultural stakeholders, will work to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence in EPA’s pesticide robust review procedures and how that relates to the limiting of risk for users and the general public and informs continual improvement.†This is at odds with the earlier MAHA assessment report which identified pesticides as substances of concern that, citing deficiencies in chemical reviews, “may be neglecting potential synergistic effects and cumulative burdens, thereby missing opportunities to translate cumulative risk assessment into the clinical environment in meaningful ways.â€
While the earlier report, Make Our Children Healthy Again: Assessment, cited glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, and atrazine as examples of chemicals of concern, the strategy drops a clear effort to address the systemic regulatory problems pointed out in many parts of the report, given the toxic soup of chemicals permitted for use or regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).Â
A section in the strategy, entitled “Cumulative Exposure,†basically identifies a current statutory mandate for EPA under the Food Quality Protection Act (amending the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act) to “focus on pesticides acting through a common mode of action.†It remains to be seen what will happen and how long it will take to implement the recommendation in this section: “The EPA, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and NIH will develop a research and evaluation framework for cumulative exposure across chemical classes.“ However, there is nothing new here unless this strategy addresses chemical mixtures and potential synergistic effects, in addition to additive or cumulative effects.
The strategy embraces chemical dependency in agriculture in a section entitled “Precision Agriculture,†which states, “USDA and EPA will launch a partnership with private-sector innovators to ensure continued investment in new approaches and technologies to allow even more targeted and precise pesticide applications.†The section implicitly extols the productivity benefits of the toxic pesticides identified as problematic in the first MAHA report, pointing to technology as a potential tool to “reduce the total amount of pesticides needed.†The strategy, which suggests government funding through the proposed public-private partnership, “should focus on precision application methods, including targeted drone applications, computer-assisted targeted spray technology, robotic monitoring, and related innovations.â€
With the embrace of pesticide dependency as stated in the “Precision Agriculture†section, it remains to be seen whether the section on “Water Quality†could provide an opportunity to assess the hazards of pesticides in the nation’s waterways and drinking water. This section states, “The EPA and USDA, along with other relevant Federal partners and in collaboration with NIH, will assess ongoing evaluations of water contaminants and update guidance and prioritizations of certain contaminants appropriately.†The only example given in this context is “fluoride in drinking water to inform Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations.†While the strategy notes that CDC will “update recommendations†on PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in water, no mention is made of a specific assessment of fluorinated pesticides that invade waterways.
In context of the overall strategy, the one mention of organic raises organic integrity concerns that are troubling to organic advocates. In a section entitled “Process Efficiencies and Deregulation†and a subsection “Agriculture Deregulation,†the strategy notes that USDA will, “Streamline organic certification processes and reduce costs for small farms transitioning to organic practices.†One of the key elements that sets organic apart from chemical-intensive agriculture is the inspection and certification requirement that ensures organic consumers that the USDA organic seal is based on a rigorous organic systems plan and compliance with the strict standards that give farmers a price premium. Organic advocates are against deregulation, which is often code for a weakening of standards that would undermine consumer trust in the organic label. The deregulation fever that has taken hold in the current Congress and administration was recently seen with the passage of the Promoting Efficient Review for Modern Infrastructure Today (PERMIT) Act, H.R. 3898, sponsored by Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) and supported by Republicans only, in the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in the U.S. House of Representatives. The committee says in its press release on the legislation that it will “Cut Red Tape and Increase Clean Water Act Permitting Efficiency,†but environmental groups explain that it is an attack on the safety of the nation’s waterways, undermining water quality, pesticide oversight, and community right-to-know. A part of this legislation is attached to the House Interior-EPA Appropriations Bill (SEC. 460), passed out of the full Appropriations Committee, and is moving to a floor vote.Â
The President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission Executive Order 14212, issued on February 13, 2025, and the follow-up assessment report in May, included language that promised a broad strategy to protect the health of children with recommendations that addressed “the scope of the childhood chronic disease crisis and any potential contributing causes, including the American diet, absorption of toxic material, medical treatments, lifestyle, environmental factors, Government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism.†The first line of the report in May characterized it as “a call to action†on a broad range of issues, including toxic chemical and pesticide exposure. A reading of the strategy suggests that pesticides are no longer a concern for children’s health or the current administration. The science would suggest otherwise.
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
