The House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy just released an investigation into seresto that found the flea collar should be taken off the market

A lot of new info in the report that had not been reported on previously

I'll sum it up 🧵

investigatemidwest.org/2022/06/15/con… Here’s the report. It takes you through the approval of the collar in 2012 to the present. It provides examples of EPA failing to stand up to an industry that feels so entitled, that even the mention of commonsense restrictions was met with derision

oversight.house.gov/sites/democrat…

As someone who is not opposed to genetic engineering but often at odds with how it is currently used in agriculture, I think we need more nuanced looks at GMOs in the media.

Instead we get this

nytimes.com/2021/07/20/mag… In academia I genetically engineered non-pathogenic bacterial cells and human cells to better understand the genetic basis of chronic diseases like cancer. I understand how genetic engineering works and the promises it can hold, particularly in the biomedical field

We’re in the middle of a public health crisis and the pesticide industry and USDA are working to weaken international guidance aimed at making sure lifesaving medicines still work in the future

How and why is the pesticide industry doing this? 👇

nytimes.com/2020/09/24/hea… For starters, medically important antibiotics are used as pesticides to kill bacteria on crops. Fungicides, similar to antifungals used in humans, are also widely used as pesticides

The more you use them, the more likely it is that fungi or bacteria will become resistant

There's a small bright spot in EPA’s atrazine re-approval

Thanks to a legal settlement by conservation groups, atrazine will be prohibited in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the North Mariana Islands

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r… This is an incredible conservation win as these places are biodiversity hotspots. Use of atrazine will also be prohibited along roadsides, in forests and on X-mas trees in the continental U.S.

The harm from atrazine’s re-approval is immeasurable, but these areas will be spared

The ecological risk assessment for #chlorpyrifos was released today. The career scientists at EPA found that invertebrates could be exposed to more than 8,600-fold more than the level known to harm them

content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USAEP… For mammals it's 1,900-fold more than the level known to cause harm. For birds it's 380-fold. For fish it's 160-fold.

I need to do something to stop stewing over the supreme court, so I'm just going to tell the story of how the endocrine disrupting pesticide #atrazine went from being on its last leg in the U.S. to being rubberstamped for the foreseeable future

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r… No one is going to tell this story because there are a thousand other scandals happening right now and because it's super wonky.

Unlike a lot of the big environmental rollbacks that will hopefully be reversed after the election, this will likely fall under the radar

So the US gov’t is now the muscle the bad guys tap when they want to intimidate someone

This just reeks of Imperialism – a wealthy country telling a smaller one to fall in line. Resorting to scare tactics and denigration

Details in thread⬇️

in.reuters.com/article/uk-tha… In October 2019 Thailand’s National Hazardous Substances Committee voted to ban glyphosate and two other pesticides: chlorpyrifos and paraquat

But one month later — five days before the ban was to go into effect — Thailand suddenly reversed its decision on glyphosate

Why?

Did you know that the U.S. allows pesticides to be in foods that haven’t even been treated with those pesticides?

I have to bring up the issue of "inadvertent residues" of pesticides, because I’m seeing it so often now and it is absolutely nuts! Here is just one example in today’s federal register

federalregister.gov/documents/2020…

Aaaaand the floodgates have opened...

Pronounced EYE-sox-Ah-FLUTE-ole, isoxaflutole is that pesticide you never heard of that is following in the footsteps of glyphosate, 2,4-D and dicamba

ehn.org/epa-new-pestic… Earlier this year, the EPA approved it on GE soybeans without notifying the public that a comment period had opened.

But they told industry, so all they got were glowing reviews without any input from those who care about public health or the environment

A company that buys and sells 1-2% of the worlds almonds, @KINDSnacks, has committed to only sourcing from farms that do not use neonics or chlorpyrifos by 2025

What does this mean exactly?......probably not that much

thehill.com/changing-ameri… California produces like 80% of the world's almonds

Chlorpyrifos is pretty much banned in CA at the end of the year (well done CA!)

Imidacloprid and thiamethoxam haven't been allowed to use on CA almonds since 2010 and 2012

NEW updated analysis from @CenterForBioDiv

Pesticide spraying increased 34% on National Wildlife Refuges from 2016 to 2018

That's 350,000 pounds of pesticides sprayed on more than 363,000 acres of land set aside for wildlife

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r… Refuges exist in every state and are home to:
700 species of birds
220 species of mammals
250 reptile and amphibian species
Over 1,000 species of fish
At least 280 plants and animals protected by the Endangered Species Act

This is being framed as an environmentalists vs. bee-keepers issue, but that couldn't be farther from the truth

Dig a little deeper and you'll find the real reason this problem has boiled up to the surface

sltrib.com/news/environme… Ask any beekeeper why they want to put their hives in national forests and they'll tell you that those forests are the last havens of (relatively) pesticide-free land left

It's the only place to put their bees where they won't get poisoned to death

Today the first meaningful pesticide reform legislation in a quarter century was introduced in the House and Senate #PACTPA

What exactly would this bill do? Section-by-section Rundown below

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r… First, the obvious. This bill faces an enormous uphill battle in this congress.

But whether it’s next congress or 20 congresses from now, pesticide reform will pass in my lifetime

This bill will be the blueprint for that reform. So it IS important and WORTH taking a look at

Ever heard that EPA is approving new pesticides so we can transition away from older, more toxic pesticides?

Yeah, me too. They say it all the F'ing time.

Let's dig into a new proposed approval and scrutinize this a bit Inpyrfluxam is a new fungicide made by the company Valent. It is to be used as a seed treatment and foliar spray on crops like apple, corn, peanut, rice, soybean and sugar beet

We're talking like 150-200 million acres of land in the U.S.

regulations.gov/docket?D=EPA-H…

Very important study out today on the contribution of pollinators to the economic value of crops grown in the North America

On just 7 fruit and nut crops, wild bees contribute $1.5 billion and honeybees $6.4 billion of economic value to agriculture

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs… For most of these crops, the authors found that the limiting factor for high yield was pollination, not pests.

So it actually makes more economic sense to create a safe space for pollinators than to spray pesticides.

This is the trajectory of antibiotic use in plant agriculture.

Two medically-important antibiotics, oxytetracycline (left) and streptomycin (right) are increasingly being used as pesticides on fruit trees. This is still a drop in the bucket compared to animal agriculture, but a very worrisome trend nonetheless.

When used in broadcast pesticide spraying, these antibiotics can cover hundreds of thousands of acres of land

Ouch. Not going to lie, this one stings a bit

I strongly disagree with the opinion, but here's a quote from it:

"Ultimately, EPA’s evaluation of 2,4-D volatility probably could have been better. But it is not our role to second-guess EPA’s conclusion"

dtnpf.com/agriculture/we… That is an actual statement in the majority opinion.

So that's where we are, even the judges think EPA could have done better, but they feel like it is not their place to do anything about it

Now we're left with an EPA that does shoddy science and is not held to account

Last year I published a paper on pesticides that are used in the US, but banned in other agricultural nations like the EU, China and Brazil

Here's the story of a pesticide that was thought to have been phased out in the US, but actually wasn't - aldicarb

ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11… The story begins with - if you read my paper you, know the answer - voluntary cancellation

Our backwards pesticide laws make it very hard for EPA to cancel/ban a pesticide, so the agency often negotiates a "voluntary cancellation" with a company to phase out a pesticide

Oooof! The 2017 USGS pesticide use data came out recently and it's not good. Just look at what happened the first year dicamba was approved on GE crops

USGS makes high-end and low-end estimates. These graphs are made with the low-end estimates and likely underestimate use Parquat use is still skyrocketing in the U.S. despite being banned in much of the world

This is all too common and mirrors my experience in requesting a retraction for a series of articles on glyphosate published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology for undisclosed conflicts of interest

retractionwatch.com/2020/06/30/a-t… The evidence was clear, some of the authors were aware that the declared conflicts of interest were false, making it seem like they were more detached from Monsanto than they were

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

So glad that @AudubonAR is doing this again. There is precious little monitoring for dicamba damage being done, making us over-reliant on the vastly under-represented incident reports filed by citizens

nwaonline.com/news/2020/jun/… And here's my heart-felt plea to report dicamba damage when you see it.

2020 is going to be a rough year for damage and the next month is when most of it will be apparent

It is so important for the states and feds to have an accurate accounting of the off-target damage