At a time when climate-related headlines often read like obituaries for our planet, Earth Day 2025 offered something rare – a reason for hope. Not the naïve optimism that suggests salvation is assured, but rather compelling evidence that we can make people act for good when we get the messaging right.
By Carey Gillam
Exposures to pesticides and other chemicals, ultra-processed foods and over prescription of medications are among the factors contributing to an epidemic of chronic disease in America’s children, according to a government report issued Thursday by the Trump administration’s controversial “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission.
LA MOTTE, Iowa — Ray Bickel spent over a decade driving a truck through giant corn and soybean fields in Clinton County, Iowa, applying pesticides. He says it was good work, while it lasted. In 2017, he had a heart attack. The doctors ran tests to find out what caused it and found something else.
By R. Thomas Zoeller
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently targeted synthetic dyes in food, calling on food companies to eliminate their use. But dyes are not the only harmful petroleum-based chemicals in our food.
By Carey Gillam
Consumers looking for healthy foods grown without the use of chemicals have long been able to shop grocery aisle for products carrying an “organic” label, a designation associated with natural processes that focus on soil health, animal well-being, and protections of delicate ecosystems.
By Carey Gillam
Residents of a Michigan community whose drinking water was polluted with toxic chemicals from a long-shuttered paper mill continue to have high levels of the compounds in their bodies, even years after the community switched to alternate water supplies, according to a new study.
By Timothy Wise
On March 17, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo signed into law a constitutional reform banning the cultivation of genetically modified corn. The action followed a December ruling by a trade tribunal, under the US-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement, in favor of a US complaint that Mexico’s 2023 presidential decree, with broad restrictions on the consumption of GM corn, constituted an unfair trade practice by prohibiting the use of GM corn in tortillas.
German agrochemical company Bayer — last week holding its annual shareholders meeting (AGM) – should not be seeking legal impunity. Nor should any other corporation. In an open letter to Bayer’s shareholders, over 100 organizations from the EU, US and around the world warned them that Bayer is doing precisely that.
By Carey Gillam
Farm groups were cheering moves announced this week by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that will alter protections for endangered species to allow for easier use of certain pesticides in agriculture.
By Carey Gillam
Billed as a type of food system that works in harmony with nature, “regenerative” agriculture is gaining popularity in US farm country, garnering praise in books and films and as one of the goals of the Make America Healthy Again movement associated with new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.