An Urban's Rural View

Farmers are bracing for the next round of recommendations from the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The recommendations are expected to be unveiled soon. Farmers fear they'll attack one of their most important crop-protection tools, glyphosate.

The fears are probably overdone. The Secretary of Agriculture and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency both sit on the MAHA commission that Kennedy chairs. They're certain to have pushed back against attacks on the herbicide.

Moreover, Kennedy himself has promised the upcoming MAHA report won't jeopardize the business model of the many farmers who rely on glyphosate. (https://www.cbsnews.com/…)

That doesn't mean he's changed his mind about glyphosate, however. RFK Jr. is a long-time crusader against pesticides generally and glyphosate in particular. He's often blasted glyphosate as "poison." Several years ago he was one of the lawyers in a big successful suit against Roundup. (https://www.forthepeople.com/…)

Kennedy fought to keep pesticides in the first MAHA report last May. They were mentioned even though the report essentially conceded there is little hard evidence they make food unhealthy. (https://www.dtnpf.com/…)

And could Kennedy's dislike of glyphosate have played a role in the Trump administration's intervention last month in the recipe for Coca-Cola? It's easy to speculate that it did. The administration has never explained its interest in the matter; to me, glyphosate is the possibility that makes the most sense.

The story began with President Donald Trump's announcement that the Coca-Cola company had agreed to replace high-fructose corn syrup with "real cane sugar." That turned out to be an exaggeration.

A couple days later the company said it would make cane-sugar Coke available as an option, not as a replacement for HFCS. (The company chose HFCS four decades ago because it was cheaper; it still is.)

With the company's announcement, the story died. Too bad. Had it lived, journalists might have gotten around to asking why the president was so concerned about HFCS.

The scribes could have eliminated two possibilities. It probably wasn't a personal thing. While some people think cane-sugar Coke tastes better, Trump drinks Diet Coke, which contains no sugar of any kind.

It probably wasn't about jobs, either. Switching sugars would kill more American jobs than it created. Much of the cane sugar would have to be imported.

Suspicion would turn, then, to the possibility that it was something the president's health and human services secretary whispered in the president's ear. Confirming the suspicion, Kennedy called the company's decision "a MAHA win."

Does Kennedy really believe that HFCS is more likely to cause obesity than cane sugar? Surely he knows that nutritionists say both have the same effect on the human body: nutrition-free calories.

They say, and many of Kennedy's MAHA fans agree, that 10 teaspoons of added sugar in a 12-ounce drink is several teaspoons too many regardless of the sugar's origin. Cane, beets, corn -- it's all basically the same. Sugar is sugar.

MAHA fans interpreted the administration's Coca-Cola intervention as motivated by glyphosate concerns. An influencer who calls herself the Food Babe said Kennedy "understands how food is produced in this country. He understands the downstream impacts on human health." (https://www.washingtonpost.com/…)

Because the herbicide is sprayed on corn, the MAHA fans' logic goes, there must be residual glyphosate in high-fructose corn syrup. Residual HFCS poses a health risk, the MAHA-ites believe. Therefore, HFCS should be eliminated from Coca-Cola -- and anything else humans consume.

There don't appear to be any peer-reviewed studies supporting the supposition that Cokes contain residual glyphosate at levels hazardous to human health. But studies of a wide variety of foods have shown residual levels of glyphosate, many below levels deemed safe, others above.

Portuguese scholars who reviewed every food study done this century that they could find concluded a few years ago that "there is no consensus in the scientific community about the toxicity of glyphosate." (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/…)

Governments are divided, too. The World Health Organization considers glyphosate a "probable carcinogen." The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, on the other hand, has long held that glyphosate applied in conformance with label restrictions isn't hazardous to human health.

The tides have lately been turning against glyphosate. Plaintiffs who work with the herbicide have won several lawsuits blaming it for their cancers. A recent study by European and American scientists found rats developed tumors from imbibing glyphosate at levels some governments have deemed safe. (https://publichealth.gmu.edu/…)

Time will tell whether that study stands up to scrutiny. In Europe, it may end up being enough to revoke permissions. The Europeans favor the precautionary principle: require incontrovertible proof that a substance is safe.

The U.S. has traditionally required proof that a substance is unsafe. Could the Trump administration under Kennedy change that?

RFK Jr. might well keep his word and refrain from attacks on glyphosate in the upcoming recommendations. He probably doesn't have the clout to beat back the objections from the Secretary of Agriculture and farm lobbyists.

But farmers are still right to be worried. There's little doubt about the direction Kennedy would take glyphosate policy if he could.

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanize@gmail.com

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