Latest Farm Bill 2018 Updates and News Roundup

New York Times reports that a proposed sugar amendment to the farm bill was defeated in a 278-to-137 vote on Thursday by the U.S. House of Representatives. The amendment to the $867 billion bill would limit price supports for domestic sugar production. House Agriculture Committee Chairman, Mike Conaway, and Representative Collin Peterson, the top Democrat on the panel, both opposed the measure.

“The farm bill sugar program is a controversial and complex system of guaranteed prices and import quotas that keep U.S. sugar well above global prices. In recent years, lawmakers have overhauled farm programs for cotton, corn and other commodities by curbing key price subsidies, but not sugar.” Read more from NY Times here. 

NPR reports that “the future of the bill is uncertain.” Because Republican leaders, who tried to pressure their members to fall in line on the farm legislation, did not succeed in reigning the vote; House leaders are now discussing ways to bring it up again. 

Take Action to Revoke the Use of Food Additives that Cause Cancer

It’s just not right for companies to put people at risk of exposure to harmful ingredients (and in this case, adding flavorings) that are known to cause cancer. Public health advocates, including Castedy Castro from WE ACT, agree that “the FDA should do its job and make sure that food is safe before it ends up at stores.” The seven flavors in question may not be well known to consumers because they appear on ingredient lists simply as “artificial flavors.” They are benzophenone, ethyl acrylate, methyl eugenol, myrcene, pulegone, pyridine and styrene.

Earth Justice reports that, for years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has allowed food manufacturers to use the aforementioned seven such flavor additives. These flavorings can be found in processed foods, soft drinks, baked goods, candy, ice cream, and alcoholic beverages to make them ‘fruitier, tangier and nacho-cheesier.’ Basically, if you’ve eaten a food that didn’t grow directly from the ground, it could easily contain one of these potentially harmful flavorings.

So, Congress has prohibited the FDA from approving for use as a food additive “any chemical known to induce cancer in animals or humans.” Moreover, given the critical nature of this issue, Congress has also ‘demanded’ that the FDA move quickly on any petition concerning food additive safety.

Sadly, but without surprise, the FDA is not listening… So, Earth Justice is suing the agency to enforce the law; representing a wide range of organizations, including the Center for Environmental Health, Breast Cancer Prevention Partners and WE ACT for Environmental Justice, which petitioned the FDA to revoke its approval for these seven ingredients in 2015.

Hawaii Bans Chlorpyrifos Statewide In Effort To Protect Public Health and Environment

Earlier this month, Hawaii made a momentous mark in history, as it became the first U.S. state to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos; a highly toxic neurotoxin which has been listed by the EPA as a restricted use pesticide (RUP), not available for public purchase, although still widely used in industrial farming throughout our nation. Chlorpyrifos is known to cause significant damage to brain development in children, reportedly linked to reduced IQ and attention deficit disorder. Not to mention the many cases which demonstrate how exactly this pesticide is toxic to farmworkers. Nevertheless, last year, the EPA refused to ban chlorpyrifos, claiming the science is “unresolved” and decided it would study the issue until 2022. 

What Must You Know about Chlorpyrifos? The toxic pesticide now harming our children and environment.

Women Protester Descends to Ground-floor After 57 Days Spent in Treetops

Photo taken from the Gaurdian. Sign reads “BE LIKE NUTTY.”

Protester, nicknamed Nutty, has completed the longest monopod protest sit-in in US history – to stop a fracked natural-gas pipeline from being built through the state. Her final three days in the trees were spent without food. Read more from the Guardian here. 

“I was and remain tremendously grateful to have been able to make an impact in the struggle against the Mountain Valley pipeline,” she wrote in a statement to the Guardian upon her descent. “And am committed to continuing to participate in the global struggle against the processes of violent extraction, and against the structures of colonization, capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy it feeds.”