Chemical Controversies
Pesticides are substances that prevent, destroy, repel, or reduce the severity of pests. Pests are living things that occur where they are not wanted or that cause damage to humans, crops, or animals. Pests can be insects, rodents, unwanted plants, bacteria, viruses, or different types of fungus. Pesticides can vary in how toxic they are to humans and the environment. Some are persistent in the environment, animals, and birds, lasting for years; others break down soon after they are released. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants licenses, or registrations, to pesticides that it has found do not pose unreasonable risks to human health and the environment; it has registered at least 865 pesticides, which are used in thousands of pesticide products.
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International Monsanto Tribunal: Fake trial distracts from real food, farming problems
[Editor's note: Kavin Senapathy is an author, public speaker and science advocate.] The verdict I predicted has landed—agri-giant Monsanto has ...
Funding for USDA’s National Organic Program tripled under Obama. What will Trump do with it?
[Editor's note: Mischa Popoff is a policy advisor at The Heartland Institute, and is the author of Is it Organic? Jay Lehr ...
Costly delays: Australia’s sluggish adoption of GMO crops carries a hefty price tag
The nation lost out on $431 million in economic gains, while also missing a chance to cut greenhouse gas emissions ...
Why I changed my mind about the need to feed my kids organic food
[Editor's note: Jenny Splitter is a writer, storyteller and mother of two.] A few years ago I learned that most ...
EU food safety chief: Critics of glyphosate safety finding are ‘playing politics’, undermining science
Politicians who attack the EU agency that ruled the weedkiller glyphosate probably does not cause cancer are in danger of ...
Wide range, high levels of pesticides found in apple orchard honeybee colonies
Honeybees - employed to pollinate crops during the blooming season - encounter danger due to lingering and wandering pesticides, according ...
Are neonicotinoid insecticide seed treatments endangering wild bees?
Environmentalists often blame neonicotinoid insecticides for the plight of wild bee species. But the science doesn't support this hypothesis, and ...
How US NGOs are exploiting Europe’s precautionary chemophobia to ban glyphosate and GMOs
Environmental NGOs have a harder time influencing the evidence-based US regulatory system, so they're taking the fight to Europe — ...
‘Wouldn’t help much’: What would a ban on neonicotinoid insecticides do for bee health?
“Everyone knows insecticides can kill bees,” says honeybee biologist Francis Ratnieks at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. “The ...
Can you be a skeptic and anti-GMO?
[Editor’s note: Myles Power is a chemist in Manchester, England.] Over the past year, I have been giving a talk to ...
‘Thirsty plants’ to land conservation: How biotechnology helps address developing world’s agricultural challenges
[Editor's note: Sarah Evanega holds a doctorate in plant biology from Cornell University, where she is the director of the Alliance ...
Will corporate mergers in agriculture spur innovation?
[Editor's note: Ed Wiederstein is a former president of the Iowa Farm Bureau and a farmer in Iowa.] When funding was more ...
‘Non-GMO’ ranked near top, ‘organic’ at bottom in study of consumer meat preferences
For many consumers, buying a gallon of milk is much more complex than finding the preferred fat content and expiration ...
Will California break with EPA and ban chlorpyrifos pesticide?
Approximately one million pounds of chlorpyrifos—about 20 percent of what’s used nationwide—are applied annually in California to dozens of food ...
‘Glyphosate is vital’: Scottish farmers launch campaign to support herbicide’s reauthorization
As the EU decision on whether or not to re-authorise the herbicide glyphosate approaches, a farming union has called on ...
‘Backlash’ against GMOs may be more about corporate power than science
Much of the backlash against GMOs is less about genetic engineering and more about the business practices of the corporations ...
There are no GM oranges — So why is Tropicana deceiving consumers with Non-GMO label?
[Editor's note: Greg Jaffe is the Director of the Project on Biotechnology for the Center for Science in the Public ...
March for Science: Agony and ecstasy of a Malaysian agricultural biotechnology science communicator
In many ways, communicating science can be more difficult than scientific research. As advances in biotechnology speed up, scientists around ...
Sorghum resistant to herbicide, drought, pests in advanced development
For the past several years sorghum research has lagged behind that of corn and soybeans, but that could soon change ...
Bee experts say ditch Cheerios’ wildflower seeds, plant native ones to fight pollinator decline
[Editor's note: Jenna Gallegos is a 5th year plant biology PhD student at the University of California, Davis.] Honeybees are ...
Insect-resistant Bt GMO eggplant helps Bangladesh farmers increase income, reduce pesticide use
[Editor's note: Deb Carstoiu is managing director of plant biotech communications at CropLife International.] The eggplant, known in Asia as brinjal, ...
Video: Has organic farming ‘ideology’ spread through the scientific community?
[Editor's note: Andrew McGuire is an agronomist at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources.] At the core ...
Boulder County, Colorado to phase out GMO crops and neonicotinoid insecticides
Boulder County commissioners voted 2-1 on Thursday [April 13, 2017] to approve the latest version of their plan for phasing ...
Does the administration’s block of the chlorpyrifos pesticide ban signal a changing regulatory landscape?
One of the first things this administration did was to rescind a government proposal to ban a pesticide used on ...
Green meal: GMO foods, synthetic milk, lab-grown meat on the menu
Feeding the 10 billion will require some creative solutions – and unpalatable compromises. Perhaps we can learn to love algae, ...
Neonicotinoid fiasco: How American NGOs turn Europe against science, push EU towards insecticide ban
The current EU ban on neonics has been disastrously counterproductive, resulting in an increased use of more damaging pesticides, mainly ...
Canada’s food regulator finds herbicide glyphosate on 30 percent of samples — But only 1.3 percent above ‘acceptable’ limit
Canada's food regulator has found traces of the controversial herbicide glyphosate in nearly 30 percent of about 3,200 food products ...
