By Michael Grunwald
Copyright nytimes
This essay is part of a series on environmental health.
Glyphosate just sounds like nasty stuff. It’s the main active ingredient in the common weedkiller Roundup, and the natural-health influencers focused on toxic chemicals invading our food and bodies routinely denounce it as a people-killer.
President Trump’s health secretary and Make America Healthy Again leader Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has condemned it as a poison fueling a disease crisis. Mr. Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Casey Means, wrote on X that it’s driving a “slow-motion extinction event,” begging her followers: “For the love of God never buy Roundup.” In May, the administration’s initial MAHA report on childhood disease linked glyphosate to “a range of possible health effects,” from cancer to ominous “metabolic disturbances.”
But the administration’s follow-up strategic plan in September didn’t mention glyphosate. It didn’t propose any tighter regulations of any agricultural chemicals. Now many MAHA activists believe that Mr. Kennedy has abandoned his principles to appease Mr. Trump’s agricultural donors, and that the Roundup crisis will only get worse.
They’re right: Farm interests are driving Mr. Trump’s farm policies. But they’re also wrong: There is no Roundup crisis.
