newsarticles.media: Food Corruption News

Campbell's Soup executive called its products food for â€poor people', lawsuit alleges

A Campbell's Soup Company executive has been put on temporary leave after he allegedly referred to the firm's offerings as "shit for fucking poor people" – a remark purportedly caught on an audio recording and attributed to him in a former employee's wrongful termination lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed last Thursday in Wayne county circuit court in Michigan by Robert Garza, who had joined Campbell's New Jersey headquarters remotely in September 2024 as a security analyst. Garza alleges he was fired in January after he raised concerns about comments made by Martin Bally, Campbell's vice-president of information technology – including referring to one of the company's ingredients as "bioengineered meat" while going off on a racist tirade. In audio recordings captured by Garza after sensing that "something wasn't right," which were later reviewed by the Michigan news outlet WDIV, a voice can be heard saying: "We have shit for fucking poor people." The voice adds: "Who buys our shit? I don't buy Campbell's products barely any more. It's not healthy now that I know what the fuck's in it ... bioengineered meat. "I don't wanna eat a piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer." Garza says he felt "pure disgust" after the meeting but kept the recording private until January, when he reported Bally's behaviour to supervisor JP Aupperle, according to WDIV. Garza said he was dismissed from Campbell's 20 days later and without any prior disciplinary action.

Note: Read our Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling the chronic health crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption.

Investigation Shows How Decades of Corporate Consolidation Have Devastated US Cattle Ranchers

Even as US beef prices have continued to surge, American cattle ranchers have come under increased financial pressure–and a new report from More Perfect Union claims that this is due in part to industry consolidation in the meat-packing industry. Bill Bullard, the CEO of the trade association R-CALF USA, explained to More Perfect Union that cattle ranchers are essentially at the bottom of the pyramid in the beef-producing process, while the top is occupied by "four meat packers controlling 80% of the market." "It's there that the meat packers are able to exert their market power in order to leverage down the price that the cattle feeder receives for the animals," Bullard said. To illustrate the impact this has had on farmers, Bullard pointed out that cattle producers in 1980 received 63 cents for every dollar paid by consumers for beef, whereas four decades later they were receiving just 37 cents for every dollar. "That allocation has flipped on its head because the marketplace is fundamentally broken," Bullard [said]. Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, recently highlighted the role played by the four big meatpacking companies–Tyson, Cargill, National Beef, and JBS–in hurting US ranchers. Dan Osborn, an independent US Senate candidate running in Nebraska, has made the dangers of corporate consolidation a central theme of his campaign. "If you're a farmer, your inputs, your seed, your chemicals, you have to buy from monopolies," he said.

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â€I was contaminated': study reveals how hard it is to avoid pesticide exposure

For decades, Khoji Wesselius has noticed the oily scent of pesticides during spraying periods when the wind has blown through his tiny farming village in a rural corner of the Netherlands. Now, after volunteering in an experiment to count how many such substances people are subjected to, Wesselius and his wife are one step closer to understanding the consequences of living among chemical-sprayed fields of seed potato, sugar beet, wheat, rye and onion. "We were shocked," said Wesselius ... who had exposure to eight different pesticides through his skin, with even more chemicals found through tests of his blood, urine and stool. "I was contaminated by 11 sorts of pesticides. My wife, who is more strict in her organic nourishment, had seven sorts of pesticides." Regulators closely monitor dietary intake of pesticides when deciding whether they are safe enough for the market, but little attention has been paid to the effects of breathing them in or absorbing them through the skin. According to a new study, even people who live far from farms are exposed to several different types of pesticides from non-dietary sources. The researchers got 641 participants in 10 European countries to wear silicone wristbands continuously for one week to capture external exposure to 193 pesticides. In laboratory tests, they detected 173 of the substances they tested for, with pesticides found in every wristband and an average of 20 substances for every person who took part.

Note: Our latest Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of Monsanto's media propaganda machine and the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and along with the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption and toxic chemicals.

This Is Why Our Rivers Are Turning Into Sewers

America's factory farms generate nearly a trillion pounds of manure every year, and way too much of it ends up in rivers, lakes and estuaries. Unlike factories, most factory farms aren't legally responsible for their pollution. Unlike human poop, animal poop isn't legally required to be treated before it is released into the environment. America's concentrated animal feeding operations, the industrial livestock farms known as C.A.F.O.s, produce twice as much waste as America's toilets, but nobody is tracking where or how it gets flushed. C.A.F.O.s keep getting bigger, even though they are wildly unpopular. Polls from the A.S.P.C.A. suggest that 89 percent of Americans are concerned about factory farms and 74 percent want to ban new ones. The critics now include right-wing natural-food advocates as well as left-wing environmentalists and animal rights activists. Like it or not, 99 percent of U.S. meat now comes from factory farms. The solution to pollution from big C.A.F.O.s is not to ban them or even to restrict their size. It's to regulate them like any other industrial polluter. States enforce the Clean Water Act, and some are more vigilant than others about preventing farmers from applying their manure in ways that tend to wash it into waterways. But a lot still ends up there. A feedlot cow can unload 100 pounds of manure a day, and unlike fracking water, nuclear waste and municipal sewage, nobody's really responsible for making sure it doesn't contaminate nature.

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What a Spring Chicken Knows That the New 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines Don't

Popular dietary narratives that romanticize meat heavy or so-called ancestral diets collapse when confronted with the realities of modern food production. What may have made sense in ecological contexts defined by pasture, seasonality, and low chemical inputs no longer maps onto an industrial system dependent on genetically engineered feed, pervasive herbicide use, and routine pharmaceutical intervention. The newly released Dietary Guidelines for Americans double down on that disconnect. Rather than grappling with how food is actually produced in the United States today, they reinforce dietary advice that assumes a food system that no longer exists. The guidelines promote increased consumption of meat and dairy while remaining almost entirely silent on how those foods are produced, what they contain, and whether our land, water, animals, and bodies can bear the cost. In the United States today, the overwhelming majority of meat, eggs, and dairy come from highly intensive industrial systems. These systems rely on confinement, routine drug use, chemically saturated feed, and enormous waste burdens. Animals are routinely administered antibiotics, hormones, beta agonists, coccidiostats, and other pharmaceutical agents, many of which accumulate in animal tissues and enter the human food supply. Health policy that ignores these realities is not reform. It is avoidance.

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Partnership With Farms Reinvents Kentucky School Lunches, Ending Days of Pan Pizza and Fruit Cups

At Boyle County High School, locally-raised beef marinated in cumin is heaped onto corn tortillas with queso, guacamole, sharp red tomatoes, and vibrant lettuce. It's just one of many meals the teens at Boyle get to enjoy, and a far cry from the days of fruit cups, pan pizza, and skim milk, days which everyone involved are happy to see gone. According to Lex 18 News, some 150 Kentucky farms sell their produce to around 90 state school districts thanks to a pandemic-era grant that supplied the state with $3.2 million for the purpose. It's clear from the attitude of Boyle County School District Food Service Director Cheyenne Barsotti that the move-to-local has affected far more than just the hungry teens' excitement for lunch hour: it's changed the whole way the school approaches food. Barsotti's cafeteria staff may just cook from scratch at times depending on what produce is available. The cooks feel safe trying out new recipes. Several students told the NBC-affiliate that the fajitas were a 9.5 out of 10. Under the new direction of American health policy, the USDA Dietary Guidelines have featured, for the first time in their history, a focus on protein over carbs–and real food, that is to say, food which spoils and doesn't come out of a box, over all others. Even though [the initial] grant money has been halted, the program has enlivened so many that school districts are trying to maintain the new direction, the new attitudes, and the new menus.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies and reimagining education.

Mystery meat and maggot-infested produce: the disturbing reality of US prison food

In prisons and jails across the US, people are routinely fed unhealthy, tasteless or inedible meals. Many are left hungry and malnourished, with devastating long-term health consequences. The hidden crisis affecting millions of incarcerated people is the subject of Eating Behind Bars, a new book offering a disturbing account of how correctional institutions punish their residents through the food they provide and withhold. The book by Leslie Soble ... describes roaches and rats in prison kitchens, rotten meat and guard dogs who are fed better meals than incarcerated people. It is a compelling, and at times nauseating, indictment of the criminal justice system. Soble manages the Food in Prison Project at Impact Justice, a national non-profit that advocates for reforms and supports incarcerated people. The prison food crisis [is] a public health crisis, with estimates suggesting each year behind bars reduces life expectancy by two years. It's a labor rights issue, as incarcerated people earn pennies per hour running the kitchens, barely enough to buy canteen snacks to supplement their meager diets. And there are environmental ramifications: US correctional facilities create an estimated 300,000 tons of food waste annually as residents reject unpalatable offerings. A typical prison diet is very high in ultra-processed foods, highly refined carbohydrates, sugar and salt, and very low in fresh fruits and vegetables, quality protein, whole grains.

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Landmark glyphosate safety study retracted for Monsanto ghostwriting, other ethics problems

A scientific study that regulators around the world relied on for decades to justify continued approval of glyphosate was quietly retracted last Friday over serious ethical issues including secret authorship by Monsanto employees – raising questions about the pesticide-approval process in the U.S. and globally. The April 2000 study by Gary Williams, Robert Kroes and Ian Munro – which concluded glyphosate does not pose a health risk to humans at typical exposure levels – was ghostwritten by Monsanto employees, and was "based solely on unpublished studies from Monsanto," wrote Martin van den Berg, co-editor-in-chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. It also ignored "multiple other long-term chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity studies" that were available at the time. Some of the study authors may also have received undisclosed financial compensation from Monsanto, he noted. The retraction came years after internal corporate documents first revealed in 2017 that Monsanto employees were heavily involved in drafting the paper. "What took them so long to retract it?" asked Michael Hansen, senior scientist of advocacy at Consumer Reports. The ghostwritten paper is in the top 0.1% of citations among academic papers discussing glyphosate. The retraction exposes the flaws of a regulatory system that relies heavily on corporate research, and an academic publishing system that is often used as a tool for corporate product defense.

San Francisco announces lawsuit against food makers claiming â€ultra-processed foods' cause health problems

The city of San Francisco filed the nation's first government lawsuit against some of the largest manufacturers of ultra-processed foods on Tuesday, asserting that the 10 corporations knew the products were harming Americans' health but continued to market them anyway. The corporations include cereal giants Kellogg, Post Holdings and General Mills, candy makers NestlĂ© USA and Mars Incorporated, the soda companies behind Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, as well as Kraft Heinz Company, ConAgra Brands and Mondelz International. The suit argues that the health care costs of treating related health conditions tied to consuming ultra-processed foods – upwards of $100 billion a year – have fallen on Americans, cities and states. "These companies created a public health crisis with the engineering and marketing of ultra-processed foods," San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said. "They took food and made it unrecognizable and harmful to the human body." "We must be clear that this is not about consumers making better choices. Recent surveys show Americans want to avoid ultra-processed foods, but we are inundated by them. These companies engineered a public health crisis, they profited handsomely, and now they need to take responsibility for the harm they have caused," he added. Some 70 percent of the U.S. food supply is ultra-processed, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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Why we can't stop eating ultra-processed foods

Around the world, the risks of developing diet-related health issues such as Type 2 diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease are rapidly rising. "We're in the middle of a food crisis, but we can't stop eating," says British-Canadian medical doctor Chris van Tulleken in the documentary Foodspiracy. "The evidence is increasingly clear that pre-prepared, packaged, highly processed food is linked to weight gain and obesity, some cancers, dementia, Type 2 diabetes and early death from all causes," van Tulleken says. UPFs are usually cheap and convenient. They've also been engineered to be, quite literally, irresistible by corporations with access to teams of scientists and cutting-edge technology. "The theory is because you're expecting protein that never arrives, you kind of reach for the next chip or the next forkful of noodles because you're going, 'Well, where? Why? Why didn't I get the nutrients?'" says van Tulleken. As a result, we eat – and buy – way more than we should, simply because our bodies don't understand how much we've actually eaten. This is called "vanishing caloric density." It's not just the taste and texture of ultra-processed foods that leave you wanting more: it's everything. "It has all been engineered to get you to eat more," says van Tulleken. "From the pictures on the boxes, all the way through to the mouthfeel, the way it cuts ... the viscosity. There's the ad, the jingle, the cartoon characters. All of it is ultra-processing."

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Ultra-processed food linked to harm in every major human organ, study finds

Ultra-processed food (UPF) is linked to harm in every major organ system of the human body and poses a seismic threat to global health. UPF is also rapidly displacing fresh food in the diets of children and adults on every continent, and is associated with an increased risk of a dozen health conditions, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and depression. The findings, from a series of three papers published in the Lancet, come as millions of people increasingly consume UPF such as ready meals, cereals, protein bars, fizzy drinks and fast food. In the UK and US, more than half the average diet now consists of UPF. For some, especially people who are younger, poorer or from disadvantaged areas, a diet comprising as much as 80% UPF is typical. Evidence reviewed by 43 of the world's leading experts suggests that diets high in UPF are linked to overeating, poor nutritional quality and higher exposure to harmful chemicals and additives. A systematic review of 104 long-term studies conducted for the series found 92 reported greater associated risks of one or more chronic diseases, and early death from all causes. One of the Lancet series authors, Prof Carlos Monteiro ... said the findings underlined why urgent action is needed to tackle UPF. "The first paper in this Lancet series indicates that ultra-processed foods harm every major organ system in the human body. The evidence strongly suggests that humans are not biologically adapted to consume them."

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Are Companies Using Carbon Markets to Sell More Pesticides?

Carbon markets were first created decades ago as a means for companies to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by paying to reduce emissions somewhere else. Think: planting trees that hold carbon in South America to balance emissions from a factory in South Carolina. And over the last several years, policymakers, environmental and farm groups, and private companies began hyping the idea that specific markets could be created to pay farmers for adopting practices that could reduce emissions and hold carbon in soil. Congress passed the Growing Climate Solutions Act on a bipartisan basis in an effort to jump-start the markets. The two practices that dominate current markets–no-till and cover crops–require herbicides to succeed in the way they're practiced. Farmers use herbicides to kill weeds that they could otherwise till under and to kill cover crops before planting a cash crop. [Hamilton College researchers raised concerns] that markets would incentivize activities that required heavy chemical inputs, which a farmer would have to purchase from a chemical company. Currently, Bayer, Corteva, and Truterra's markets all pay farmers primarily to adopt no-till systems and to plant cover crops. And there is a long history of companies using those specific practices to market pesticides linked to serious health risks. As far back as the 1970s, Chevron Chemical promoted paraquat ... as a tool to convert to no-till farming.

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Denver's Food Forests Provide Free Fruit While Greening the Environment

The urban tree canopy in Denver is one of the sparsest in the country. In 2020, when Linda Appel Lipsius became executive director of the decades-old Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) network, which oversees more than 200 community vegetable gardens throughout six metro Denver counties, she wanted to continue increasing community access to fresh food–a longtime goal of the garden program. But she had another aim, too: increasing the city's tree coverage. Appel Lipsius decided to build a system of food forests throughout the Denver area. These dense, layered plantings incorporate fruit-bearing trees with other perennials to mimic natural forests. Now, DUG oversees 26 food forests, with 600 or so fruit and nut trees and 600 berry bushes. While urban trees are recognized for their multiple benefits, including cooling and carbon drawdown, "there are not a lot of players in Denver, or even in most cities around the country, who are focused on food trees," Appel Lipsius said. "We were able to step into this space to help build and bolster the canopy while adding food-producing perennials." Neighbors are welcome to enter and harvest a wide assortment of fruits, nuts, and berries. Beyond providing fresh food in neighborhoods that need it most, these agroforests reduce the urban heat island effect, create pollinator habitat, and combat pollution and climate change by absorbing and filtering harmful gases.

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The hidden cost of ultra-processed foods on the environment: â€The whole industry should pay'

There are 34 ingredients in M&Ms, and, according to Mars, the company that produces the candy, at least 30 countries – from Ivory Coast to New Zealand – are involved in supplying them. Each has its own supply chain that transforms the raw materials into ingredients – cocoa into cocoa liquor, cane into sugar, petroleum into blue food dye. The environmental impact of ultra-processed foods – like M&Ms – is less clear and is only now starting to come into focus. One reason they have been so difficult to assess is the very nature of UPFs: these industrially made foods include a huge number of ingredients and processes to put them together, making it nearly impossible to track. Since 1850, agricultural expansion has driven almost 90% of global deforestation, which has been responsible for 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Getting an exact measure of the environmental toll of UPFs is nearly impossible, given that, definitionally, UPFs consist of many ingredients and a high volume of opaque processes. Ingredients aren't just mixed together like one would do to make a stew at home. Instead, these ingredients are chemically modified, some parts stripped away, and flavors, dyes or textures added in – and it's unclear what the cost of these processes are because so many suppliers and components are involved. Another reason is that all UPFs (again, definitionally) are the creations of food companies that have little incentive to disclose their environmental footprint.

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Prenatal exposure to common insecticide linked to brain structure abnormalities in youth

The insecticide chlorpyrifos is a powerful tool for controlling various pests, making it one of the most widely used pesticides during the latter half of the 20th century. Like many pesticides, however, chlorpyrifos lacks precision. In addition to harming non-target insects like bees, it has also been linked to health risks for much larger animals – including us. Now, a new US study suggests those risks may begin before birth. Humans exposed to chlorpyrifos prenatally are more likely to exhibit structural brain abnormalities and reduced motor functions in childhood and adolescence. Progressively higher prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos was associated with incrementally greater deviations in brain structure, function, and metabolism in children and teens, the researchers found, along with poorer measures of motor speed and motor programming. This supports previous research linking chlorpyrifos with impaired cognitive function and brain development, but these findings are the first evidence of widespread and long-lasting molecular, cellular, and metabolic effects in the brain. Subjects in this urban cohort were likely exposed to chlorpyrifos at home, since many were born before or shortly after the US Environmental Protection Agency banned residential use of chlorpyrifos in 2001. The pesticide is still used in agriculture around the world. "Widespread exposures ... continue to place farm workers, pregnant women, and unborn children in harm's way," says senior author Virginia Rauh.

Note: Did you know that chlorpyrifos was originally developed by Nazis during World War II for use as a nerve gas? Read more about the history and politics of chlorpyrifos, and how U.S. regulators relied on falsified data to allow its use for years.

Junk food leads to more children being obese than underweight for first time

More children around the world are obese than underweight for the first time, according to a UN report that warns ultra-processed junk food is overwhelming childhood diets. There are 188 million teenagers and school-age children with obesity – one in 10 – Unicef said, affecting health and development and bringing a risk of life-threatening diseases. Catherine Russell, executive director of the UN agency for children, said: "When we talk about malnutrition, we are no longer just talking about underweight children. "Obesity is a growing concern. Ultra-processed food [UPF] is increasingly replacing fruits, vegetables and protein at a time when nutrition plays a critical role in children's growth, cognitive development and mental health." While 9.2% of five to 19-year-olds worldwide are underweight, 9.4% are considered obese, the report found. In 2000, nearly 13% were underweight and just 3% were obese. Obesity has overtaken being underweight as the more prevalent form of malnutrition in all regions of the world except sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and is a problem even in countries with high numbers of children suffering from wasting or stunting due to a lack of food. One in five of those aged between five and 19 are overweight, with a growing proportion of those 291 million individuals falling into the obese category: 42% in 2022, up from 30% in 2000. Childhood obesity has been linked to higher risks of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers in later life.

Note: Read our latest Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling the chronic health crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption.

Banned pesticides found in clouds, sparking new health concerns

Pesticides banned years ago in the European Union are drifting through the skies and turning up in clouds above France, raising concerns about how long these toxins persist and how far they can travel, with potentially harmful global health impacts, according to a pathbreaking new study. The research ... is the first to detect dozens of agricultural chemicals–including insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other substances–suspended in cloud water droplets. That means pesticides not only linger in the environment but also move through the atmosphere and fall back to Earth in rain or snow, sometimes at levels exceeding European safe drinking water limits. The study found that clouds can carry current-use pesticides, long-banned compounds, and "emerging contaminants"–industrial chemicals that either build up in the environment or form when older pesticides break down. Some even transform into new compounds in the atmosphere itself, beyond what regulators have known to consider. Researchers estimate that French skies alone may contain anywhere from a few tons to more than 100 tons of pesticides at any given time–most carried in from distant sources. Out of 446 possible chemicals screened–including pesticides, biocides (compounds that kill harmful organisms), additives, and transformation products (breakdown products of pesticides)–researchers found 32 different compounds in cloud water.

Note: Across the US, a powerful legislative push is underway to protect pesticide manufacturers from being held accountable for the harms caused by their products. Check out our latest Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate."

Allergies seem nearly impossible to avoid – unless you're Amish

Despite the increasing rate of allergic diseases, both in industrialized and in developing countries, the Amish remain exceptionally – and bafflingly – resistant. Only 7 percent of Amish children had a positive response to one or more common allergens in a skin prick test, compared with more than half of the general U.S. population. Even children from other traditional farming families, who still have lower rates of allergic disease than nonfarm children, are more allergic than the Amish. "Certain kinds of farming practices, particularly the very traditional ones, have this extraordinary protective effect in the sense that, in these communities, asthma and allergies are virtually unknown," said Donata Vercelli, a professor of cellular and molecular medicine. "The studies that have been done in these farming populations are critical because they tell us that protection is an attainable goal." During the first year or two of life, a baby's immune system is rapidly developing and highly malleable by environmental stimuli, such as bacteria. Some experts believe that exposing young children to certain types of beneficial bacteria can engage and shape the growing immune system in a way that reduces the risk of allergic diseases later in life. Farm dust contains a hodgepodge of bacteria shed from livestock and animal feed that isn't harmful enough to cause illness, but does effectively train the immune system to become less responsive to allergens later in life.

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Are GMOs safe? A molecular geneticist speaks out

Professor Michael Antoniou, head of the Gene Expression and Therapy Group at King's College London, has studied for more than 35 years how genes function and how they are disrupted. His decades of rigorous independent research into the risks of GM foods and glyphosate-based herbicides have raised serious concerns about the safety of these technologies. In a report he prepared for the Mexican government, as the country attempted to restrict GMO corn imports for health reasons, Professor Antoniou cited "a large body of evidence from well-controlled laboratory animal toxicity studies that show evidence of harm to multiple physiological systems" from toxic agents found in GM corn. The health risks of GM corn and its associated pesticides arise from three main sources: Bt insecticidal proteins engineered into the plants, DNA damage caused by the genetic modification process itself, and pesticides used on the crops. The GM transformation process – the process by which a GMO is generated in the laboratory – is highly mutagenic. You create unintended damage to the DNA of the crop. And by changing the pattern of gene function in the organism, you will change its biochemistry and its composition, including the unexpected production of new toxins and allergens. Regardless of the GMO crop we're talking about, they're all grown with one or more different kinds of pesticides ... such as glyphosate. They invariably come with pesticide residues

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The Pesticide Industry's Fingerprints Are All Over the MAHA Commission's Strategy Report

When it comes to pesticides, the Trump administration's Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, Commission has a serious problem: The Commission's newly released strategy for addressing childhood chronic disease is better for the pesticide industry than for people. The US currently uses over a billion pounds of pesticides annually on our crops, about one-third of which is chemicals that have been banned in other countries. Many have been linked to serious health problems from cancer to infertility to birth defects. Those pesticides contaminate our air, our water, and our bodies. One cancer-linked pesticide, glyphosate, is now found in 80% of adults and 87% of children. [The Commission] barely mentions organic farming, despite the fact that organic is the clearest pathway to transforming our food system into one that is healthy and nontoxic. The US Department of Agriculture organic seal prohibits more than 900 synthetic pesticides allowed in conventional agriculture. Just one week on an organic diet can reduce pesticide levels in our bodies up to 95%. Synthetic food dyes–a key issue for the MAHA movement–are all prohibited by the organic seal, along with hundreds of other food additives and drugs. The Commission's strategy ignores organic. Instead, it leans into promoting industry-friendly "precision agriculture"–the use of AI, machine learning, and digital tools on farms to optimize inputs–which primarily benefits corporate giants like Bayer.

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Autism Research Is a Chance for RFK Jr. to Take Pesticides Seriously

Pesticides once appeared to be a clear target for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s desire to "make America healthy again." Before becoming the health secretary, he described Monsanto, the maker of the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, as "enemy of every admirable American value," and vowed to "ban the worst agricultural chemicals already banned in other countries." Since he came to power, many of Kennedy's fans have waited eagerly for him to do just that. Kennedy has yet to satisfy them: In the latest MAHA action plan on children's health, released last week, pesticides appear only briefly on a laundry list of vague ideas. The plan says that the government should fund research on how farmers could use less of them, and that the government "will work to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence" in the EPA's existing pesticide-review process, which it called "robust." Several studies have found neurological impacts associated with pesticides. UC Davis's MIND Institute put out a study in 2014 that found autism risk was much higher among children whose mothers had lived near agricultural-pesticide areas while pregnant. A 2017 paper found that zip codes that conducted aerial spraying for mosquitoes–a pesticide–had comparatively higher rates of autism than zip codes that didn't. Others have linked pesticides to a range of behavioral and cognitive impairment in children.

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New evidence of chlorpyrifos harm to kids' brains amid regulatory retreat

Children highly exposed to an insecticide prior to birth showed signs of impaired brain development and motor function, according to a new study of chlorpyrifos – a pesticide still used on US crops despite decades of warnings about its impact on children's health. The study ... is the first to tie prenatal exposure to the pesticide to "enduring and widespread molecular, cellular, and metabolic effects in the brain," the authors wrote. The study ... comes months after the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its plans to partially ban chlorpyrifos but allow continued use on 11 crops. The EPA ... banned chlorpyrifos in 2021 after a federal court ordered the agency to take action amid litigation and a wealth of evidence of the risks it poses to children. But the agency reversed course again after a different federal court sided with farm groups in opposition. MRI scans showed that kids with the highest levels of exposure were more likely to have reduced blood flow to the brain, thickening of the brain cortex, abnormal brain pathways, impaired nerve insulation and other problems. Chlorpyrifos was the 11th most frequently found pesticide in food samples in the most recent Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pesticide residue monitoring report, and a 2023 US Department of Agriculture pesticide residue report found traces of the chemical in baby food made with pears, as well as in samples of blackberries, celery and tomatoes.

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The False Promise of Keto and Ancestral Eating in the Age of Chemical Intensive Industrial Agriculture

As the 2025 USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans take shape, a serious disconnect threatens public health. Some advocates are calling for higher intake of animal fats and promoting so called ancestral or animal based keto diets, citing traditional wisdom and nutrient density. Diets like Keto often rely on meat and dairy from industrial production systems, where contamination with drugs and chemicals is routine. The promise of healing through meat and fat collapses when those foods carry residues of antibiotics, steroid hormones, synthetic preservatives, arsenicals, cocciodiostats, and pesticides. Many of these toxins accumulate precisely in the fats and organs being celebrated as nutrient rich. A decade ago, as policy director at the Center for Food Safety, I helped publish a report entitled "America's Secret Animal Drug Problem," identifying over 450 animal drugs and feed additives used in U.S. meat production. That number alarmed me then. Today, the Food and Drug Administration has approved nearly 700 veterinary drugs for use in food-producing animals. This figure includes not only growth promoters and antibiotics but also synthetic hormones, beta agonists, coccidiostats, and antiparasitics. Less than 1% of meat and dairy in the United States is produced in regenerative organic systems on pasture. The remaining 99% comes from animals housed in industrial facilities, fed chemically saturated GMO grains.

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Spies for hire used â€Big Brother' tactics on salmon farm activists

Wildlife activists who exposed horrific conditions at Scottish salmon farms were subjected to "Big Brother" surveillance by spies for hire working for an elite British army veteran. One of the activists believes he was with his young daughter ... when he was followed and photographed by the former paratrooper Damian Ozenbrook's operatives. The surveillance of [Corin] Smith and another wildlife activist, Don Staniford, began after they paddled out to some of the floating cages where millions of salmon are farmed every year ... and filmed what was happening inside. The footage, posted online and broadcast by the BBC in 2018, showed fish crawling with sea lice. Covert surveillance by state agencies is subject to legislation that includes independent oversight. But once highly trained operatives leave the police, military or intelligence services, the private firms that deploy them are barely regulated. Guy Vassall-Adams KC, a barrister who has worked for the targets of surveillance, including anti-asbestos activists infiltrated by private spies, believes these private firms "engage in highly intrusive investigations which often involve serious infringements of privacy." He added. "It's a wild west." One firm, run by a former special forces pilot, was found to have infiltrated Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups for corporate clients in the 2000s. Another, reportedly founded by an ex-MI6 officer, was hired in 2019 by BP to spy on climate campaigners.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on factory farming and the disappearance of privacy.

Chemical liability shields hurt our ability to make agriculture healthy again

Across the country, state legislatures and Congress are considering laws that would give chemical manufacturers ... liability shields that protect them from lawsuits, even when their products are linked to cancer, infertility or birth defects. Georgia's Legislature recently enacted House Bill 211, limiting liability for PFAS contamination – "forever chemicals" known to damage human health. Several other states are following suit. In Washington, D.C., the 2024 House Republican farm bill draft included language that would preempt local pesticide protections and deny legal recourse to those harmed by agrichemicals. Seventy-nine members of Congress recently wrote to the administration defending the agrochemical lobby, calling pesticides "essential tools" and warning against "politically motivated attacks on sound science." But science is not on their side. When Congress created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986, it removed civil liability from pharmaceutical companies. Today, we are watching the same shield being extended to the agrochemical industry except this time it affects every American who eats food, drinks water or breathes air. This is not a question of agricultural efficiency or feeding America. This is a political maneuver to protect profit, not people. And it comes just as science is revealing new links between chemical exposure and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, endocrine disruption, chronic illness and birth defects.

Note: Our latest Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and water–and the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.

Courts banned this herbicide twice. The EPA wants to bring it back.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday its proposed decision to reregister dicamba, a herbicide widely used on soybean and cotton farms that has been banned twice by federal courts. The EPA originally approved dicamba's use on genetically engineered soybeans and cotton in 2016. Environmental groups sued the EPA over dicamba in 2020 because of its potential drift away from the intended target, especially during warmer temperatures, and harm neighboring crops, nearby ecosystems and rural communities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled against the EPA and said the agency "understated the amount of dicamba damage." The court determined that dicamba "caused substantial and undisputed damage" that tore the "social fabric of the farming communities." After the court vacated the herbicide's registration, the EPA re-registered it months later, and was again challenged by environmental groups. A second federal court vacated that registration in 2024 and prohibited the sale of the herbicide. The popularity of dicamba, which was first introduced in 1967, arose from a need to find solutions to Roundup-resistant weeds, also known as "superweeds." Monsanto ... began selling genetically engineered seeds that could survive being doused by dicamba and Roundup in 2016. Between 2016 and 2019, dicamba use across the country nearly quadrupled to an estimated 31 million pounds a year.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.

Almost all new food chemicals greenlighted by industry, not the FDA

Since 2000, the food and chemical industry has greenlighted nearly 99% of food chemicals introduced onto the market without federal safety review. This problematic situation happened through companies exploiting a loophole in food chemicals laws allowing them to decide which chemicals are safe to consume. Since 2000, food and chemical companies have petitioned the FDA only 10 times to approve a new substance. By contrast, they have added 863 chemicals, through the "generally recognized as safe," or GRAS, loophole. That's 98.8% of new food chemicals. The loophole lets those companies – not the FDA – decide when a substance is safe. The GRAS loophole was intended to apply narrowly to common ingredients like sugar, vinegar and baking soda. But as EWG's analysis shows, the loophole – not FDA safety review – has become the main way new chemicals are allowed into food. A GRAS determination shows a company believes "the substance is generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use." The company can submit a notice to the FDA about its conclusion, through a process that is entirely voluntary. Even Michael Taylor, a former FDA deputy commissioner for food, admitted in 2014 that the FDA "simply do[es] not have the information to vouch for the safety of many of these chemicals."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption and toxic chemicals.

Unhealthy food makers target youth with pervasive ads that fuel long-term health risks, decades of research shows

Unhealthy food and beverage companies powerfully undermine the eating habits of young people by deploying ubiquitous ads that encourage poor dietary choices and increase the risk of serious disease and premature death, according to a sweeping new study published in Obesity Reviews. The first-of-its-kind summary highlights a clear cumulative pattern: The more high-fat, high-sugar, and salty food ads young people see, the more of those products they consume–and the higher the risk that they may develop obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other diet-related diseases. Companies also disproportionately target adolescents, lower-income communities, and Black and Latino youth with the marketing of health-harming food and beverages. The review summarizes 25 years of scientific evidence and findings from 108 empirical studies and 19 systematic reviews of unhealthy food marketing to adolescents (13-17) and young adults (18-25). One study showed that children who watched just five minutes of food ads ate about 130 more calories that day. Only 19% of studies examined health impacts, but most of those found links between unhealthy food marketing and higher BMI, weight gain, or increased obesity risk–especially from ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks. One U.S. study ... found that children who could recall more food ads chose more food items and consumed more calories after exposure.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption.

4 things are making us sick, new MAHA documentary says. What the research says

Ultraprocessed foods, seed oils, herbicides and pesticides, and fluoride: They're all targets of the "Make America Healthy Again" movement, whose chief proponent is US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Now, MAHA Films, a production company dedicated to promoting the movement's values, has released its first documentary. "Toxic Nation: From Fluoride to Seed Oils – How We Got Here, Who Profits, and What You Can Do." [The film] highlights those four food- and environmental-related issues that Kennedy's nonprofit MAHA Action ... says "silently endanger millions of Americans every day." The documentary's release follows the May 22 publication of the first MAHA Commission report, which lays the groundwork for an overhaul of federal policy to reduce the burden of chronic disease on American children. Composing up to 70% of the US food supply, ultraprocessed foods are made with industrial techniques and ingredients never or rarely used in kitchens, or classes of additives whose function is to make the final product palatable or more appealing. Ultraprocessed foods are typically low in fiber; are high in calories, added sugar, refined grains and fats, and sodium; and include additives. The [also] film raises concerns about the herbicide glyphosate, citing previously documented links to cancer. Sources also said glyphosate may cause endocrine disruption and damaged gut microbiomes, with the latter potentially increasing risk for irritable bowel diseases and celiac disease.

Note: Read our latest Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling America's health crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption and toxic chemicals.

Inside RFK Jr's conflicted attempt to rid America of junk food

The first report of the Maha Commission made headlines in May when it raised concerns about a "chronic disease crisis" in children. Echoing language that [Robert F.] Kennedy campaigned on, the report argued that "the American diet has shifted dramatically toward ultra-processed foods" and that "nearly 70% of children's calories now come from UPFs, contributing to obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions". "The greatest step the United States can take to reverse childhood chronic disease is to put whole foods produced by American farmers and ranchers at the center of healthcare," the report found. It went on to describe the dismal state of nutrition research in the United States: "Government funding for nutrition research through the NIH is only 4-5% of its total budget and in some cases is subject to influence by food industry-aligned researchers." Kennedy has ordered the FDA to explore how to eliminate a policy that allows food companies to decide themselves whether food additives are safe, called the Generally Recognized as Safe (Gras) loophole. "That's a really, really big deal," says Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. "Ninety-nine per cent of compounds in food were added through this loophole." Several states are also pursuing policies that would limit spending from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) on "junk food".

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption.

newsarticles.media: Food Corruption News

Campbell's Soup executive called its products food for â€poor people', lawsuit alleges

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Landmark glyphosate safety study retracted for Monsanto ghostwriting, other ethics problems

San Francisco announces lawsuit against food makers claiming â€ultra-processed foods' cause health problems

Why we can't stop eating ultra-processed foods

Ultra-processed food linked to harm in every major human organ, study finds

Are Companies Using Carbon Markets to Sell More Pesticides?

Denver's Food Forests Provide Free Fruit While Greening the Environment

The hidden cost of ultra-processed foods on the environment: â€The whole industry should pay'

Prenatal exposure to common insecticide linked to brain structure abnormalities in youth

Junk food leads to more children being obese than underweight for first time

Banned pesticides found in clouds, sparking new health concerns

Allergies seem nearly impossible to avoid – unless you're Amish

Are GMOs safe? A molecular geneticist speaks out

The Pesticide Industry's Fingerprints Are All Over the MAHA Commission's Strategy Report

Autism Research Is a Chance for RFK Jr. to Take Pesticides Seriously

New evidence of chlorpyrifos harm to kids' brains amid regulatory retreat

The False Promise of Keto and Ancestral Eating in the Age of Chemical Intensive Industrial Agriculture

Spies for hire used â€Big Brother' tactics on salmon farm activists

Chemical liability shields hurt our ability to make agriculture healthy again

Courts banned this herbicide twice. The EPA wants to bring it back.

Almost all new food chemicals greenlighted by industry, not the FDA

Unhealthy food makers target youth with pervasive ads that fuel long-term health risks, decades of research shows

4 things are making us sick, new MAHA documentary says. What the research says

Inside RFK Jr's conflicted attempt to rid America of junk food

Campbell's Soup executive called its products food for â€poor people', lawsuit alleges

â€I was contaminated': study reveals how hard it is to avoid pesticide exposure

San Francisco announces lawsuit against food makers claiming â€ultra-processed foods' cause health problems

The hidden cost of ultra-processed foods on the environment: â€The whole industry should pay'

Spies for hire used â€Big Brother' tactics on salmon farm activists