Banning Modern Agriculture and High Crop Yields?

Paul Driessen July 25, 2022

In just seven decades, America’s conventional (non-organic) farmers increased per-acre corn yields by an incredible 500% – while using steadily less water, fuel, fertilizer and pesticides – feeding millions more people. Among the many reasons for this miracle is their ability to control weeds that would otherwise steal moisture and nutrients from this vital food, animal feed and fuel (ethanol) crop. 

Long-lasting herbicides don’t just control weeds. They also promote no-till farming, which helps farmers save costly tractor fuel and avoid breaking up soils – thereby reducing erosion, retaining soil moisture, safeguarding soil organisms, and locking carbon dioxide in the soil (reducing risks of “dangerous manmade climate change,” some say). 

In the United States, the second most widely used herbicide after glyphosate (Roundup) is atrazine, which is critical to controlling invasive and hard-to-kill weeds impervious to other herbicides. Atrazine is used on 65 million acres of corn, sorghum and sugarcane. That’s equivalent to Colorado or Oregon, on croplands scattered across a dozen Midwestern states. It’s also used on millions of acres of golf courses, lawns and highway medians nationwide.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has periodically reviewed atrazine science – which now comprises more than 7,000 studies over the past 60 years. It has found the herbicide is safe for people, animals and the environment. 

But that hasn’t stopped the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Pesticide Action Network (PAN) and other groups from campaigning to have atrazine banned outright or regulated into oblivion. 

Extreme environmentalists also oppose fossil fuels, genetically engineered crops, and manmade fertilizers and insecticides. But they are silent about dangerous “natural” organic pesticides, including many that are lethal to bees and fish – and about cadmium and other toxic metals that can leach out of solar panels dumped in landfills – even though all these toxic chemicals could end up in our waterways. 

Last year, I explained how activists successfully used collusive sue-and-settle lawsuits to force EPA to develop a formal process for evaluating whether endangered species were “likely” to be “adversely affected” by exposure to common pesticides. Facing court-ordered deadlines for completing the new assessments, the agency unsurprisingly found that the vast majority of species would “likely be adversely affected” by herbicides and other pesticides. 

But it did so by employing the standard that even one affected plant or animal of a species would trigger prohibitions on using the chemicals. EPA also utilized hopelessly deficient satellite imagery, statewide crop and atrazine data, toxicity studies of unrelated laboratory animals, computer models, and best guesses. The garbage-in/garbage-out exercise bears little relation to real-world use, exposure or risks. 

CBD, PAN and other anti-pesticide groups recently sued EPA again, in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. EPA used the lawsuit to justify asking the court to order the agency to “reconsider” a 2019 regulation. So now EPA has proposed that detectable levels of atrazine in US aquatic ecosystems must not exceed the astonishingly low average level of 3.4 parts per billion (ppb) over a 60-day period. 

EPA calls this the “concentration equivalent level of concern,” or CE-LOC. But 3.4 ppb is equivalent to 3.4 seconds in 11,500 days – nearly 32 years! Atrazine isn’t plutonium. It’s been used and studied since 1958. To suggest that 3.4 ppb could devastate American ponds and rivers defies reason, and science. 

These outfits aren’t even dealing with actual field or pond observations and evidence of harm. They’re talking about extrapolations, backed up mainly by secretive models, conjectures and activist pressure. However, the effects on American agriculture are likely to be profound, and widespread. 

This focus on protecting aquatic life goes back two decades or more; it is so “inside baseball” in its details and complexity that eyes roll and readers fall asleep. The essence is this. Barely three years ago, EPA set the atrazine CE-LOC at 15 ppb, based on a host of government, academic, industry and activist studies and comments. Even the US Geological Survey and Agriculture Department weighed in. Prior to that, it was the still-reasonable level of 10 ppb. 

In 2016, EPA proposed but ultimately rejected the 3.4 ppb LOC, after numerous farmers and scientific groups pointed out the shoddy methods and poor science the agency used to get there. But this June 30 – employing the court order that the agency itself asked for – EPA “re-evaluated” its decision. The agency dishonestly claimed it had intended all along to set that extremely low standard, and presented its decision for public comment, almost as a fait accompli. 

Anticipating the uproar its proposal would cause, EPA said it would seek “external peer review” of its aquatic species risk assessment and 3.4 ppb decision. But this is a far cry from having a formal, balanced  Scientific Advisory Panel do a full, impartial, scientific review, under standards actually set by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). 

This 3.4 ppb LOC will result in major restrictions on atrazine use and/or necessitate extensive, expensive measures by farmers to control runoff – all based on estimated, predicted, computer-generated atrazine levels across multi-county or multi-state watersheds in which atrazine-based herbicides are used on acreage in who-knows-what proximity to those watersheds. 

The near-zero LOC amounts to an effective ban on using atrazine-based  herbicides – amid growing international grain shortages, widening hunger, soaring fuel and fertilizer prices, increasing mandates to turn more corn into ethanol (to replace “non-renewable” gasoline), and other important considerations. 

This Biden EPA decision certainly looks like a “major federal action,” representing a “transformative expansion” in EPA’s regulatory authority, and raising “major questions” about what specific language in FIFRA gives EPA such enormous, unprecedented authority. It would certainly seem that this 3.4 ppb edict defies the legal standards just recently articulated by the US Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA, regarding the agency’s asserted authority to regulate power plants in the name of climate change – wherein the court used precisely those quoted terms to reject EPA’s arrogation of authority. 

EPA’s proposed standard would certainly result in significant regional and national political, economic and agricultural consequences. It would certainly affect a significant segment of the US economy – and intrude into arenas that are the province of the US Departments of Agriculture and Energy. It would also undermine EPA’s own climate change mitigation and prevention initiatives. 

America’s premier environmental agency seems to be telling the Supreme Court, try and stop us again. 

Biden Administration policies have already made energy insanely expensive (up to $5 a gallon for regular and $9 in some California cities), created supply chain crises for baby formula and other essential consumer goods, and sent inflation soaring to 9.1% annualized, compared to 1.5% in January 2021. These policies are battering millions of American families. 

The President just returned from Saudi Arabia, where he begged the king and prince to produce more oil, so that Team Biden can continue restricting production of America’s own vast petroleum resources. This is embarrassing, demeaning, hypocritical and destructive. 

Amid widespread hunger in Sri Lanka, and even in Germany and the UK, due to extreme green policies, Team Biden seems to think it should cause still more damage – and must kowtow more to extremists.

As the nation flirts with the possibility of recession, would Team Biden really risk another Depression Era Dust Bowl – which occurred in part because of too much plowing, amid still-record high temperatures and droughts decades before anyone conceived of manmade, fossil-fuel-driven climate crises? 

This 3.4 ppb LOC is bad science, bad policy, bad agriculture, bad economics, and perverse morality. Anyone wishing to weigh in on the proposal can submit comments until September 6. 

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.

 

Preserving courtroom and verdict integrity

Our civil justice system is as much at risk as the integrity of ballots, elections and democracy

By Paul Driessen

Big Media, Big Tech, Big Academia, the Deep State and the Cancel Culture clearly aligned with the Democrat Party, to resist, block, impede and impeach a duly elected President Trump, during and after the 2016 election and the 2020 election cycle. Computer “glitches” that too often operated in only one direction, backroom ballot counting, improper ballot harvesting and backdating, and other actions have increased concerns that the integrity of America’s elections and democracy is threatened.

Equally worrisome is growing evidence that the integrity of our courtroom proceedings and jury verdicts is also at risk. Indeed, many of the same forces arrayed against fair and honest elections have also combined to influence jurors (and judges), making them more inclined to support huge verdicts in favor of “victims of greedy corporations” that deliberately put dangerous products on the market.

In some of the most notorious lawsuits in decades, lawyers representing cancer patients have succeeded in persuading San Francisco area juries to award clients $78 million to $1 billion per person in compensatory and punitive damages – based on highly questionable assertions that the victims’ use of the chemical glyphosate in Roundup weed killer was the sole reason they got cancer.

Bayer AG acquired glyphosate creator and Roundup manufacturer Monsanto in 2018 and is thus the defendant in the cases. The verdicts, plus lack of success so far with appeals to the California Supreme Court, persuaded Bayer to settle tens of thousands of other pending cases for $10.9 billion (of which the mass-tort law firms will get some 40%), but without admitting any wrongdoing.

The Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals is reviewing another appeal, and the US Supreme Court could (and should) weigh in on how the trials were conducted, which evidence was permitted or excluded during the trials, and serious questions of collusion and tampering with original experimental data.

Federal District Court judges reduced the awards to less outrageous amounts. However, the way they and plaintiff lawyers conducted the trials raises serious questions of bias and even fraud – as detailed in my Fall 2020 Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons paper and in scores of articles referenced in it.

Glyphosate was introduced in 1974 and is licensed in 130 countries; it’s the world’s most widely used herbicide. Millions of homeowners, gardeners and farmers use it regularly to control weeds.

Respected consumer protection organizations like the US Environmental Protection Agency, European Food Safety Authority, Food and Agriculture Organization, and Health Canada (some 3,300 studies in all) have concluded that glyphosate is safe and non-carcinogenic. The still ongoing U.S. Agricultural Health Study has followed some 52,000 farmers and other pesticide applicators and 32,000 of their spouses for two decades – 80% of whom use glyphosate. The study has found no glyphosate-cancer link.

Cancer epidemiologist Dr. Geoffrey Kabat says glyphosate is “environmentally benign” and has an acute toxicity level lower than that of table salt, vinegar, chocolate or coffee.  

Only one agency, the France-based International Agency for Cancer Research, says otherwise. It calls glyphosate a “probable” human carcinogen, based primarily on two mice studies, and has been accused of manipulating even those studies (while ignoring contradictory studies) to get its desired results.

IARC does not do its own research. Instead, it relies on third-party “exposure tests” in laboratory animals to determine whether a chemical, food or occupational activity might cause cancer – even if only at extremely high levels that no animal or human would ever be exposed to in the real world. It refuses to utilize actual “risk assessments” – the modern approach that examines the exposure level at which a substance might actually have an adverse effect on laboratory animals, and presumably people.

The agency’s glyphosate review was proposed by a US government statistician who then helped design the study and served as special advisor to the IARC “working group” that evaluated it. He allegedly did this while also being paid as an advisor to the anti-chemical Environmental Defense Fund, on unspecified “other issues” for law firms involved in the glyphosate cases, and now as an expert witness in the cases.

Former National Cancer Institute statistician Dr. Robert Tarone discovered that IARC’s glyphosate review panel based its carcinogenicity finding on just two studies of mice that for two years were fed diets containing up to 30,000 ppm glyphosate! In the male mice, they found cancerous tumors in 1 of 49 mice at 0 ppm, 0 of 49 mice at 500 ppm, 1 of 50 mice at 5,000 ppm, and 2 of 50 mice at 30,000 ppm. In other words, they found the same rates cancer at 0 and 5,000 ppm and only one more tumor at 30,000 ppm. Data excluded from IARC’s report found no tumors in female mice, even at 30,000 ppm!

And yet, incredibly, the IARC ruling is being used by predatory tort lawyers to claim that glyphosate causes leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, lung, brain and thyroid cancer, heart and kidney disease, nerve damage, multiple sclerosis, respiratory illness, birth defects and infertility.

Just as bad, judges in the cases thus far nevertheless allowed plaintiff lawyers to present the IARC findings, and inflame juries with lurid tales of corrupt corporate criminals and admittedly tragic stories of clients suffering from cancer allegedly from using Roundup The judges prevented Bayer attorneys from presenting evidence from EPA and other agencies that glyphosate is safe and non-carcinogenic.

Equally amazing, the mass-tort lawyers were permitted to assert (and persuade jurors) that their clients were afflicted with cancer solely because of glyphosate – and not from any of the more than 500 other chemicals, substances, industrial processes and occupations that IARC has ruled are definite, probable or possible human carcinogens ... even though their clients were almost certainly exposed to many of them.

At no point, it appears, were defense attorneys able to ask questions about the cancer-victim plaintiffs’ family cancer histories; eating, exercise and sleeping habits; consumption of high-fat foods versus fruits and vegetables; and other lifestyle choices that play significant roles in whether people get cancer.

At no point, it appears, were victims asked how often they might have been exposed to sunlight, asbestos, processed meats, acetaldehyde in alcoholic beverages or any of the 116 other substances and activities in IARC’s list of definite human carcinogens. Nor were they asked about their exposure to anabolic steroids, malathion, red meat, emissions from high-temperature food frying or any of the 78 other substances and agents (besides glyphosate) in IARC’s list of probable human carcinogens (or 314 possible carcinogens).

Even more astonishing, the plaintiffs and their lawyers were never compelled to explain how they and their doctors and other experts were able to conclude that family history, lifestyle choices and exposure to dozens or even hundreds of other substances on IARC’s lists of human carcinogens caused or contributed to their cancer – and that their cancer was due solely to their exposure to glyphosate.

Just as outrageous, juries were permitted to grant massive punitive damage awards – which require clear evidence that Bayer (and Monsanto) had deliberately engaged in harmful conduct with malice or deception. In view of all the issues and facts presented here, in my medical journal paper and by many other sources, assertions of malice or deception are simply not supported by any persuasive evidence.

Collusion, corruption, fraud and billion-dollar payoffs have become an epidemic, in courtrooms and regulatory agencies, in medical and scientific journals, and beyond. They make it essential that the US Supreme Court take these cases on appeal – perhaps under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals.

That 1993 decision requires that scientific evidence must be relevant, reliable, peer-reviewed, and confirmed by more than just circumstantial links between an alleged cause and the injury in question. That standard is especially important where, as seems to be the case with glyphosate, the evidence and expert testimony resulted from research conducted for the purpose of litigation.

With looming litigation likely to include breakfast cereals “contaminated” with traces of glyphosate or GMO grains, the Supremes should set guideline for how far law firms can go in setting up and pursuing cases, influencing judges and jurors, and working (colluding) with regulatory agencies, activist groups, expert witnesses, journalists and others in fomenting, litigating and supporting their lawsuits.

Transparency and integrity are essential, in litigation, elections, legislation, regulation and climate science.  

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.

 

EPA Science Could Torpedo Roundup Lawsuits

Paul Driessen Jan 13, 2020

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently issued a finding that could – and certainly should – undermine some of the most outrageous lawsuits and jury awards in American history.

Bolstered by San Francisco area juries that have given multi-multi-million-dollar awards to clients who claim glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup weedkiller) caused their cancer, jackpot justice lawyers have recruited some 20,000 additional “corporate victims” who hope to reap their own fortunes.
Their cases are based on the assertion that:

(a) Bayer-Monsanto negligently or deliberately failed to warn consumers that the glyphosate it manufactures is carcinogenic;  

(b) the plaintiffs used Roundup at some point in their lives; and  

(c) their short or long-term use of the chemical caused their Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma or other cancer. Those claims are dependent on several essential factors.

First and foremost, a 2015 determination by the France-based International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) that glyphosate is a Group 2A probable human carcinogen. Second, a 2017 decision by the State of California to add the chemical to its Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act (Prop 65) official list of carcinogens, based on the IARC decision. Third, the state’s requirement that all Roundup labels must therefore carry prominent warnings that the product “probably” causes cancer.

Monsanto and Bayer insist that their product is safe and non-carcinogenic; Roundup labels thus did not carry warnings. But that gave plaintiff lawyers the opportunity to argue in pleadings, courtroom statements and media ads that the company negligently or deliberately caused serious health risks.

In the minds of presiding judges and jurors, if it was “possible” that even short or occasional exposure to Roundup could have caused cancer – even if it was an extremely remote likelihood – the manufacturer was guilty, and liable. Hence, awards in the tens of millions or even billions of dollars were justified.

There are numerous fundamental, even monumental, problems with this strained reasoning – and they are likely to be exacerbated by the August 7, 2019 EPA decision and strongly worded guidance letter.

IARC is virtually the only organization in the world to conclude that glyphosate is carcinogenic – and it based its conclusions on examining just eight studies. Far worse, subsequent reviews by epidemiologist Dr. Geoffrey Kabat, National Cancer Institute statistician Dr. Robert Tarone, investigative journalist Kate Kelland and “RiskMonger” Dr. David Zaruk demonstrated that the IARC decision resulted from bias, improper revision of study data and/or results, and collusion between glyphosate trial lawyers and the IARC consultant who led the agency’s investigation and was paid handsomely by the trial lawyers.

Equally outrageous and illuminating, IARC classifies red meat, very hot beverages, emissions from frying food, even doing shift work as “probable” human carcinogens – in the same category as glyphosate. It lists pickled vegetables and caffeic acid in coffee, tea and broccoli as “possible” human carcinogens. It even admitted that its glyphosate decision was based on only “limited” evidence of cancer in humans and “sufficient” evidence of cancer in experimental animals. IARC seems to say everything causes cancer.

Perhaps that is because, to reach its conclusions, the agency relies on what toxicity experts call “exposure” or “hazard” tests. That antiquated approach uses lab animals to determine whether a chemical might cause cancer – even if only at ridiculously high levels that no animal or human would ever be exposed to in real life. It refuses to rely on the modern approach of assessing actual risk, by determining the exposure level at which a substance might actually have an adverse effect on animals or humans.

And yet the judges in these cases let the plaintiff lawyers focus on IARC’s claims of carcinogenicity, while they prevented defense attorneys from countering IARC cancer claims or discussing its gross misconduct. They even barred the presentation of extensive evidence that glyphosate is not carcinogenic.

In fact, glyphosate has been used safely since 1974. It is now licensed in 130 countries for more than 100 food crops. Over the past four decades, respected agencies and organizations worldwide have conducted over 3,300 studies, and every one of them concluded that glyphosate is safe and non-carcinogenic.

Reviewers include the European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Germany’s Institute for Risk Assessment, Australia’s Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, Japanese and New Zealand agencies, and the US Environmental Protection Agency. “No pesticide regulatory authority in the world considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed,” Health Canada noted. Meanwhile, the National Cancer Institute’s ongoing Agricultural Health Study has evaluated 54,000 farmers and commercial pesticide applicators for over two decades – and likewise found no glyphosate-cancer link.

Amid all of this, the “cancer victim” patients and their lawyers benefitted immensely from endless print, radio, television, online and social media campaigns that have misinformed, pressured, harassed and intimidated prospective judges and jurors. Many of these campaigns and several “educational think tanks” are funded, directly or indirectly, by the predatory tort lawyers and their anti-chemical activist allies.

To top it off, the judges and tort lawyers have made it difficult or impossible for Bayer-Monsanto attorneys to present other highly relevant evidence: such as plaintiffs’ family cancer history and personal dietary and other lifestyle choices – and their exposure to scores of other definite, probable and possible carcinogens on IARC’s list of hundreds of human cancer risks, including those mentioned above.

The supposed corporate cancer victims were allowed to argue that, despite all these other factors, including multiple other carcinogen exposures, their cancer was due solely to their exposure to glyphosate.

Enter EPA. The agency had already conducted lengthy and extensive reviews of the global compendium of studies and regulatory decisions on glyphosate – and had likewise concluded that “glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans.” But at least one judge blocked the introduction of the EPA analyses, claiming “the primary inquiry is what the scientific studies show, not what the EPA concluded they show.” He didn’t seem to mind that IARC doesn’t do original studies either – and its ruling on glyphosate was based on what IARC concluded eight studies showed, while ignoring 3,300 contradictory studies.

It will henceforth be much harder for tort lawyers and trial judges to pull that cute little tactic off again. As noted above, EPA has issued a guidance letter – based on (a) its careful “independent evaluation” and reexamination of scientific studies and regulatory determinations around the world; and (b) its regulatory and labeling authority under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).

Not only does EPA “disagree with IARC’s assessment of glyphosate.” It concludes that the chemical “is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” Equally important, based on its findings, EPA now holds that any “Proposition 65 warning language” based on claims that glyphosate is carcinogenic “constitute[s] a false and misleading statement.” Any products bearing Prop 65 warning statements due to the presence of glyphosate in them are thus “misbranded.” EPA will no longer approve such labels, and any such warnings “must be removed from all product labels where the only basis for the warning is glyphosate.

Applying that decision to these lawsuits, because glyphosate is not carcinogenic, Bayer-Monsanto was and is under no obligation to put warning labels on Roundup containers, stating that the chemical causes or “probably” causes cancer in humans. In fact, the company is legally obligated not to issue such warnings, because they would make the label “false and misleading.”

There is therefore no basis for cancer claims based on IARC’s erroneous, sloppy, collusive, even fraudulent “science.” Thus there is no legal or scientific basis for these lawsuits and jury awards.

It’s time for trial and appellate court judges – and state and federal regulatory authorities – to implement these EPA findings in courtrooms, in news and activist website statements, and in the ubiquitous ads that are trolling for still more Roundup-glyphosate “victims” and predatory tort lawyer clients.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change and economic development.

Trials should be settled by ‘scientific evidence, not speculation and emotion’: In unusual twist, California medical groups join appeal of jury verdict finding Monsanto’s Roundup causes cancer

Tim Barker | October 16, 2019

Doctors and medical professionals in California have stepped into the ongoing courtroom fight between Bayer/Monsanto and a former groundskeeper who blames the popular Roundup herbicide for his terminal cancer.
Last month, three state medical associations filed an amicus brief supporting Bayer’s appeal of a jury’s verdict in a civil suit that found the weedkiller to have been a factor in causing Dewayne Johnson’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Initially, the San Francisco Superior Court jury awarded Johnson $289 million, but that figure was later reduced by a judge to $78 million.
The verdict is under appeal by Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in mid 2018 and is facing an avalanche of similar lawsuits across the country. Now it finds itself with several new allies, following the move by the California Medical Association, California Dental Association and California Hospital Association..........To Read More....

Retraction of GM-Maize Rat Study Findings

Posted by jennifer, November 29th, 2013 - under Information, News.

Dear ABCA Subscribers,

The journal Food and Chemical Toxicology today announced the retraction of the article Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize by Séralini et al first published online in September 2012.

Shortly after the article was originally published, the journal received many letters to the editor expressing concerns about the validity of the findings, the proper use of animals and even allegations of fraud.

The study alleged that biotech corn and herbicides caused tumours and organ damage, and led to premature death in laboratory rats.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), in agreement with food safety regulators globally, rejected the conclusions of the study, finding “On the basis of the many scientific deficiencies identified in the study, FSANZ does not accept the conclusions made by the authors and has therefore found no justification to reconsider the safety of NK603 corn.”....To Read More....