Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) require more pesticide use on crops, say the authors of a 16-year study published in Environmental Sciences Europe. According to the researchers, 527 million pounds of a toxic herbicide have inundated farmlands since 1996. What’s more, this abhorrent amount is much greater than that promised by Monsanto, which claims that GM crops require smaller doses of herbicides like the company’s best-selling Roundup Ready.

This study found, however, that although farmers did reduce Roundup Ready use by 2 percent between 1996 and 1999, herbicide use resurged with a vengeance thereafter. This was a result of the emergence of “superweeds” that resist herbicides, requiring farmers to use more of it with each application.

Herbicide and Pesticide Use Damage Humans, Environment

These “superweeds” have become resistant to glyphosate, a chemical found in Roundup Ready. Rootworms, too, may be becoming resistant according to ongoing research by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Additionally, a recent French study by the University of Caen found glyphosate and herbicides like Roundup to be actively toxic to human cells—findings which led to Russia’s suspension of Monsanto crop imports. Earth Open Source, a nonprofit organization with volunteers as well as several international scientists and researchers, has linked glyphosate with birth defects. Worse (but predictable) is that in 1993 Monsanto ...

House Republican Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced Friday that after next week, the House will stand in recess until November 13. His plan for a nearly two month vacation will undoubtedly allow more time for campaigning, but will leave several vital bills awaiting action.

Among the important legislation the House will likely not address before the November elections:

1. Violence Against Women Act re-authorization. Though a bipartisan Senate majority passed the a strong re-authorization bill in April, the Republican House leadership refused to allow a vote on the Senate version of the bill. The House passed a watered down version on a mostly-party lines vote, leaving victims to wait for House action.

2. The American Jobs Act. Republicans have been blocking President Obama’s jobs legislation for more than a year. Though House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) promised in 2010 that a GOP Congress would focus on job creation, he has blocked this bill’s immediate infrastructure investments, tax credits for working Americans and employers, and aid to state and local governments to prevent further layoffs of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public safety officials.

3. Tax cuts for working families. In July, ...

The 2012 Farm Bill is still languishing in the House, with GOP leadership in the chamber intentionally preventing action on the legislation for political reasons. According to the New York Times, “House leaders declined to take up either [the Senate or the House] version of the legislation. They are not eager to force their members to take a vote that would be difficult for some of them, nor would they wish to pass a measure largely with Democrats’ votes right before an election.”

But without a new five-year Farm Bill or at least a temporary extension of current legislation, the Department of Agriculture may be forced to shutter almost all of its operations.

The Farm Bill serves as a mass funding mechanism for the USDA — it provides funding for roughly 90 percent of the Department’s operations, meaning those operations may have to shut down if the Farm Bill isn’t renewed. According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Commission, the effect of even a temporary shutdown could be long-lasting:

USDA would be forced to occupy a multiple-month holding pattern, temporarily stopping many services and programs. Program administration involves a certain amount of planning and preparation, stakeholder input, rule making, and outreach. Even if program opportunities aren’t announced until later in the year, the preparation work that leads up to announcements takes time and certainty. Programs can’t simply be “turned off” and then ...

The nation's largest produce-safety testing program narrowly escaped closure thanks to a last-minute grudging reprieve from the Agriculture Department, and finding a permanent solution to keep tainted fruits and vegetables from reaching consumers could take an even bigger effort.

Each year, the tiny program screens thousands of produce samples. It has found more than two dozen bacteria-laced examples that prompted recalls of lettuce, tomatoes and other foods from grocery stores.

It was at risk of being scrapped after President Barack Obama's proposed budget slashed the effort's funding earlier this year. But USDA spokesman Justin DeJong said late Monday that although the Microbiological Data Program "does not align with USDA's core mission," it will operate through December, using existing agreements with states to keep testing for salmonella, E. coli and listeria over the next six months.

Public health officials and food safety advocates have long argued that getting rid of the program would leave the country without a crucial tool to investigate outbreaks of deadly food borne illnesses.

If samples test positive for bacteria, it can trigger nationwide recalls and keep contaminated produce from reaching the public.

Dr. Robert Tauxe, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's top food-germ investigator, has said the program's information can be key to pinpointing foods tied to outbreaks, and it could not easily be replaced by companies' internal tests or more modest federal sampling programs.

The CDC said contaminated fruits and vegetables caused nearly one-third of the major multi state food borne illness outbreaks last year.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., a longtime food safety advocate, said she would continue to push for the program to stay open beyond the year's end, since the House and ...

This year’s drought ranks as one of the top 10 worst U.S. droughts for the last century. With more than half the country (54 percent) experiencing drought conditions, it’s the single worst drought since the 1950s.

It is hot all over. NOAA said in its June “State of the Climate Global Analysis”:

This is the second month in a row that the global land temperature was the warmest on record for that month.

While it has been hotter than the 1930s in many places in this country, the drought hasn’t been quite as bad as the worst of the original Dust Bowl. But if we don’t act soon to slash greenhouse gas emissions, we are on our way to far worse as climate change fuels more frequent and more ...

Laboring in the blackberry fields of central Arkansas, the 18-year-old Mexican immigrant suddenly turned ill. Her nose began to bleed, her skin developed a rash, and she vomited.

The doctor told her it was most likely flu or bacterial infection, but farmworker Tania Banda-Rodriguez suspected pesticides. Under federal law, growers must promptly report the chemicals they spray.

It took the worker, and a Tennessee legal services lawyer helping her, six months to learn precisely what chemical doused those blackberry fields. The company ignored her requests for the information. The Arkansas State Plant Board initially refused to provide records to her lawyer, saying it didn’t respond to out-of-state requests. An Arkansas inspector, dispatched after the complaint, didn’t initially discern what pesticides were used the day the worker became ill, records show.

When answers finally arrived — the fungicide was Switch 62.5WG, a chemical that can irritate the eyes and skin — Banda-Rodriguez had already left Arkansas to follow the season to Virginia and ultimately returned to Mexico. She never learned whether the pesticide sickened her.

The episode is as telling a snapshot today as it was six years ago for one of America’s most grueling and lowest-paying vocations. Pesticides can endanger farmworkers, but thin layers of government protect them and no one knows the full scope of the environmental perils in the fields.

The Environmental Protection Agency administers a Worker Protection Standard meant to regulate pesticides and protect workers and handlers. Yet the agency maintains no comprehensive database to track pesticide exposure incidents nationwide.

In 1993, the Government Accountability Office (then called the General Accounting Office) warned that the ...

Since mandatory labeling of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in the food supply is still just a cause worth fighting for in the United States, avoiding these toxic poisons can be difficult and confusing for many people. But once you know which crops tend to be GM, and learn how to identify the ingredients derived from them in foods, the process becomes a lot simpler.

The Supreme Court on Monday struck down California's ban on the slaughter of downed swine, saying the state strayed too far into federal territory.

In a case closely watched by other states as well as the multi-billion dollar livestock industry, the court’s liberal and conservative justices unanimously ruled that long-standing federal law preempted California’s 2008 measure.

"The California law runs smack into the (federal) regulations," Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court.

Kagan's 14-page decision emphasized that the Federal Meat Inspection Act covers a "broad range of activities at slaughterhouses" and that it "expressly" preempts the state law.

The California law in question prohibits the slaughter of non-ambulatory pigs, sheep, goats or cattle. These are animals that can't walk, because of disease, injury or other causes. The state law further requires that the downed animals be euthanized.

Federal law bans the slaughter of downed cattle, and the challenge heard Wednesday was to the state provision that covers swine.

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Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are fending off accusations that they made racially tinged remarks about African-Americans and public assistance.

Gingrich accused the news media Friday of taking a comment he made earlier in the week at a New Hampshire town hall meeting out of context. He said there that if he were invited to address the NAACP annual convention, he was prepared to tell the civil rights organization why "the African-American community should demand paychecks, and not be satisfied with food stamps."

"Now there's no neighborhood I know of in America where if you went around and asked people, 'Would you rather your children had food stamps or paychecks?' you wouldn't end up with a majority saying they'd rather have a paycheck," Gingrich said, according to a transcript written from a video of the event. "And so, I'm prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I'll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks, and not be satisfied with food stamps."

Some African-American leaders and civil rights group considered Gingrich's words racially insensitive. They've noted that Gingrich often refers to President Barack Obama as the "food ...

How small-minded is Congress? How tangled-up in a right-wing ideological knot is it? How subservient to corporate lobbyists is it?

The answers to these three questions are: pizza, tomato paste, and spuds.

At a time when doctors and nutritionists are sounding a national alarm about a diabetes epidemic caused by gross obesity, including in children, the Congress of the United States of America, in all its majesty, has killed an effort by the Agriculture Department to make school lunches healthier. Why?

Three reasons:

One, Congress is incapable of meeting America's big needs, so it's rationalizing its existence by messing with the small stuff. Two, the right-wing ideologues in Congress are so batty that they even oppose federal rules to improve our children's health. Three — and most significantly — the French fry lobby, tomato paste lobby, and frozen pizza lobby put big bucks into congressional campaigns, and they pulled the strings of our lawmakers.

So the financial interests of corporate powers — including Coca Cola, ConAgra, and Del Monte — have overridden the interest of ...

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a longtime advocate of children’s nutrition, today released the following statement after language was inserted into the Fiscal Year 2012 Agriculture, Rural Development Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations act that prevents the Department of Agriculture from implementing new school lunch standards.

“I strongly support a number of provisions in H.R. 2112, the Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food & Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, such as the vital funding for low-income food assistance programs. I must voice my outrage at language included in this legislation which blatantly ignores and imperils the health of this country’s school children.

“Just days ago, language was inserted into H.R. 2112 which prevents the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) from implementing important new school lunch standards that are scheduled to go into effect next year.  The language also allows pizza, if it has at least two tablespoons of tomato paste, to be defined as a vegetable.   

“Childhood obesity is a disease affecting 17% children throughout the country. According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, childhood ...