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The EPA moves to ban acephate pesticide over health risks

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a ban on acephate, a pesticide linked to potential harm to children's developing brains. Sharon Lerner reports for ProPublica.In short:The EPA proposed banning acephate after a recent ProPublica report highlighted the agency's controversial risk assessment.Evidence indicates that acephate poses risks to workers, the public, and children through contaminated drinking water.The proposal to ban acephate applies to all food crops but would allow usage on non-fruit and non-nut bearing trees.Key quote: “The pushback on this is going to be really intense. I hope they stick to their guns.”— Nathan Donley, scientist at the Center for Biological DiversityWhy this matters: Banning acephate reflects a shift toward stricter regulation of potentially harmful chemicals that have been used in agriculture for decades. Read more: New analysis warns of pesticide residues on some fruits and veggies.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a ban on acephate, a pesticide linked to potential harm to children's developing brains. Sharon Lerner reports for ProPublica.In short:The EPA proposed banning acephate after a recent ProPublica report highlighted the agency's controversial risk assessment.Evidence indicates that acephate poses risks to workers, the public, and children through contaminated drinking water.The proposal to ban acephate applies to all food crops but would allow usage on non-fruit and non-nut bearing trees.Key quote: “The pushback on this is going to be really intense. I hope they stick to their guns.”— Nathan Donley, scientist at the Center for Biological DiversityWhy this matters: Banning acephate reflects a shift toward stricter regulation of potentially harmful chemicals that have been used in agriculture for decades. Read more: New analysis warns of pesticide residues on some fruits and veggies.

Milk Can’t Catch a Break

The bird-flu panic has gotten out of control.

Milk is defined by its percentages: nonfat, 2 percent, whole. Now there is a different kind of milk percentage to keep in mind. Last week, the FDA reported that 20 percent of milk it had sampled from retailers across the country contained fragments of bird flu, raising concerns that the virus, which is spreading among animals, might be on its way to sickening humans too. The agency reassured the public that milk is still safe to drink because the pasteurization process inactivates the bird-flu virus. Still, the mere association with bird flu has left some people uneasy and led others to avoid milk altogether.That is, if they weren’t already avoiding it. Milk can’t seem to catch a break: For more than 70 years, consumption of the white liquid has steadily declined. It is no longer a staple of balanced breakfasts and bedtime routines, and milk alternatives offer the same creaminess in a latte or an iced coffee as the original stuff does. Milk was once seen as so integral to health that Americans viewed it as “almost sacred,” but much of that mythos is gone, Melanie Dupuis, an environmental-studies professor at Pace University and the author of Nature’s Perfect Food, a history of milk, told me. In 2022, the last time the Department of Agriculture measured average milk consumption, it had reached an all-time low of 15 gallons per person.If concerns around bird flu persist, milk’s relevance may continue to slide. Even the slightest bit of consumer apprehension could cause already struggling dairy farms to shut down. “An additional contributing factor really doesn’t bode well,” Leonard Polzin, a dairy expert at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Division of Extension, told me. For the rest of us, there is now yet another reason to avoid milk—and even less left to the belief that milk is special.The risks of bird flu in milk can be simplified to this: Thank god for pasteurization. Straight from the udder, in its raw form, milk is “a substance that’s very much open to contamination if not managed well,” Dupuis said. Milk is like a petri dish of microorganisms, and before pasteurization became the norm, milk regularly caused deadly diseases such as tuberculosis, scarlet fever, and typhoid fever. The pasteurization process, which involves blasting milk with high temperatures then rapidly cooling it, is “intended to kill just about anything a cow could have,” Meghan Schaeffer, an epidemiologist and bird-flu expert who now works at the analytics firm SAS, told me.That includes the bird flu. On Wednesday, the FDA reported new results from ongoing studies reaffirming that the bird-flu fragments it found in milk and other dairy products aren’t active, meaning they can’t spread disease. The agency confirmed this using a gold-standard test that involved injecting samples into chicken eggs to see if any active virus would grow. None was detected afterward. “That process really saves us,” Schaeffer said.There is never a good time to drink unpasteurized milk, but now is an especially bad one. A number of states have legalized the sale of raw milk in recent years, part of a right-wing embrace of the beverage. Raw milk from sick cows contains bird-flu virus in high concentrations, and the FDA has warned against drinking it. There are no reports of people getting bird flu from drinking unpasteurized milk, but “it is possible” to become infected from it, Schaeffer said. Already, this has been shown in animals: This week, researchers reported that cats who drank raw milk from sick cows got bird flu and died within days.But much about bird flu and milk is unknown because the virus has never been found in cattle before now. That one in five milk samples tested by the FDA had remnants of bird flu doesn’t mean one in five cows tested positive; milk sold in stores is pooled from many different animals. Rather, it suggests that many cows may be infected beyond those currently accounted for. It may also mean that asymptomatic cows, which are not being tested, shed virus in their milk. (Milk from symptomatic cows, which can be yellow and viscous, is routinely discarded.) Although it isn’t clear how the virus is circulating among cows, a leading explanation is that it’s transmitted via contact with surfaces that have touched raw milk, including milking equipment, vehicles, and other animals.Bird flu is widespread among poultry, but it isn’t clear how long it will keep circulating among cattle. The USDA is doing only limited testing of cows, and has not shared all of its data publicly, making the full extent of the outbreak impossible to know. Even if milk is still safe to drink, the thought of bird-flu fragments swimming around in it is unappetizing for a country that has already turned away from milk.Just how much milk Americans used to drink can be hard to grasp. Consumption peaked in 1945 at 45 gallons a person annually, enough to overfill a standard-size bathtub. Americans believed that “more milk makes us healthier,” and drank accordingly, DuPuis said. Government marketing pushed milk as a necessary, perfect food that could solve virtually all nutrition problems, especially in children; milk-derived healthiness eventually became associated with strength, affluence, and patriotism. Holes in the health narrative have since appeared: Consuming too much milk and other dairy products is now considered unhealthy because of the fat content. And long-standing myths about milk, such as that its calcium is required for strengthening bones and growing taller, have largely been debunked.Today drinking milk can get you “milk-shamed” by people who think that it’s disgusting. It’s particularly unpopular with younger people, who are grossed out by the milk served in schools. Where dairy once reigned supreme, milk alternatives made of oats, almonds, soy, peas, and countless other things have found a foothold. The FDA even lets plant-based milk call itself “milk,” as I wrote last year.Less demand for milk would have consequences. “I suspect the dairy industry is on the edge of their seat,” DuPuis said. Outbreaks are expected to take a financial toll on farmers, who will not only sell less milk but also have to care for sick animals, and the costs may be passed on to consumers. In rural areas that once thrived on milk production, such as upstate New York, abandoned small farms are now overgrown with trees, said DuPuis. “Are we going to end up with fewer farms and more trees because of this latest problem? I can imagine so,” she said.The myth of milk has been eroded from many fronts: nutrition research, shifting societal norms, and an abundance of new beverages. With bird flu, it has never seemed less like the magic health elixir it was once thought to be. But the turn against milk might have gone too far. Pasteurization was invented in the 19th century, yet it works to kill modern-day pathogens. Dairy has a great track record when it comes to safety, Polzin said. And it is still a decently healthy choice, with some significant advantages over plant-based alternatives, such as having more vitamins and minerals, less sugar, and more protein. Even during the bird-flu outbreak, milk may still have some magic to it.

A Uniquely French Approach to Environmentalism

The biodiversity police might just work.

On a Wednesday morning last December, Bruno Landier slung his gun and handcuffs around his waist and stepped into the mouth of a cave. Inside the sprawling network of limestone cavities, which sit in a cliffside that towers above the tiny town of Marboué, in north-central France, Landier crouched under hanging vines. He stepped over rusted pipes, remnants from when the caves housed a mushroom farm. He picked his way through gravel and mud as he scanned the shadowy ecru walls with his flashlight, taking care not to miss any signs.Landier was not gathering evidence for a murder case or tailing a criminal on the run. He was searching for bats—and anything that might disturb their winter slumber. “Aha,” Landier whispered as his flashlight illuminated a jumble of amber-colored beer bottles strewn across the floor. Someone had been there, threatening to awaken the hundreds of bats hibernating within.Landier is an inspector in the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB), an entity that was given sweeping powers to enforce environmental laws when it was founded, in 2020. Its nationwide police force, the only one of its kind in Europe, has 3,000 agents charged with protecting French species in order to revive declining biodiversity in the country and its territories. Damaging the habitat of protected animals such as bats—much less killing a protected animal—is a misdemeanor that can carry a penalty of 150,000 euros and three years in prison. It’s a uniquely draconian, uniquely French approach to environmentalism.The environmental police watch over all of France’s protected species, including hedgehogs, squirrels, black salamanders, lynxes, and venomous asp vipers. Bats are a frequent charge: Of the 54 protected mammal species on French soil, 34 are bats. The Marboué caves patrolled by Landier are home to approximately 12 different species.[Read: How long should a species stay on life support?]When Landier visits each morning, he sometimes must crouch to avoid walking face-first into clusters of sleeping notch-eared bats, which he can identify by their coffin-shaped back and “badly combed” off-white belly. They hibernate in groups of five, 10, or even 50, dangling from the ceiling like so many living umbrellas for as long as seven months each year. If roused before spring—by a loud conversation or even prolonged heat from a flashlight—the bats will flee toward almost-certain death in the cold temperatures outside the cave.Bats, of course, aren’t the only nocturnal creatures attracted to caves. Landier has spent more than 20 years patrolling this site, beginning when he was a hunting warden for the French government. In that time, he has encountered ravers, drug traffickers, squatters, geocachers, looters, local teens looking for a place to party. When he comes across evidence such as the beer bottles, he’ll sometimes return on the weekend to stake out the entrance. First offenders might receive a verbal warning, but Landier told me he’s ready to pursue legal action if necessary. (So far, he hasn’t had to.) “I’m very nice. But I won’t be taken for a fool,” he said. In the neighboring department of Cher, several people were convicted of using bats as target practice for paintball, Landier told me. A fine of an undisclosed amount was levied against the culprits. (France prevents details of petty crimes from being released to the public.)[From the June 1958 issue: Is France being Americanized?]Across France, many of the caverns and architecture that bats call home are themselves cherished or protected. Landier told me that relics found in his caves date back to the Gallo-Roman period, nearly 2,000 years ago; on the ceiling, his flashlight caught the glitter of what he said were fossils and sea urchins from the Ice Age. The floor is crisscrossed with long wires trailed by past explorers so they could find their way back out.In nearby Châteaudun castle, built in the 15th century, several dozen bats live in the basement and behind the tapestries. At Chartres Cathedral, to the north, a colony of pipistrelle bats dwells inside the rafters of a medieval wooden gate. Bats flock to the abbey on Mont Saint-Michel, in Normandy, and to historic châteaus such as Chambord, in the Loire Valley, and Kerjean, in Brittany. In Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery, they chase insects from the graves of Molière, Édith Piaf, and Colette.France is fiercely protective of its landmarks, and that sense of patrimoine extends to less tangible treasures too. For more than a century, French law has prohibited any sparkling-wine producer worldwide to call its product “champagne” unless it comes from the Champagne region of France. As part of the French naturalization process, I had to learn to match cheeses to their region (Brie to Meaux, Camembert to Normandy). Their craftsmanship, too, is included in the cultural imagination: In 2019, the French government asked UNESCO to recognize the work of Paris’s zinc roofers as part of world heritage (the jury is still out).[Ta-Nehisi Coates: Acting French]In recent years, even animals have begun to be incorporated into this notion of cultural heritage. When two neighbors ended up in court in 2019 over the early-morning cries of a rooster—embraced for centuries as France’s national animal—the judge ruled in favor of Maurice the rooster. Inspired by Maurice, France then passed a law protecting the “sensory heritage of the countryside.” In the immediate aftermath of the Notre-Dame fire, a beekeeper was allowed access to care for the bees that have been living on the rooftop for years. The Ministry of Culture insists on provisions for biodiversity on all work done on cultural monuments.Bats, despite receiving centuries of bad press, are a fitting mascot for biological patrimony. They are such ferocious insectivores—a single bat can eat thousands of bugs a night—that farmers in bat-heavy areas can use fewer pesticides on grapes, grains, and other agricultural products. On Enclos de la Croix, a family-owned vineyard in Southern France that has partnered with the OFB, insectivorous bats are the only form of pesticide used. Agathe Frezouls, a co-owner of the vineyard, told me that biodiversity is both a form of “cultural heritage” and a viable economic model.Not all farmers have the same high regard for biodiversity—or for the OFB. Earlier this year, 100 farmers mounted on tractors dumped manure and hay in front of an OFB office to protest the agency’s power to inspect farms for environmental compliance. The farmers say that it’s an infringement on their private property and that complying with the strict environmental rules is too costly. Compliance is a major concern for OFB, especially when it comes to bats. If someone destroys a beaver dam, for instance, that crime would be easily visible to the OFB. But bats and their habitats tend to be hidden away, so the police must rely on citizens to report bats on their property or near businesses.Agriculture is part of the reason bats need protection at all. The Marboué caves’ walls are dotted with inlays from the 19th century, when candles lit the passageways for the many employees of the mushroom farm. Until the farm closed, in the 1990s, the cave network was home to tractors and treated heavily with pesticides; their sickly sweet smell lingers in the deepest chambers. The pesticides are what drove off or killed most of the bats living here in the 20th century, Landier told me—when he first visited this site, in 1998, only about 10 bats remained. Today, it’s home to more than 450.[Read: Biodiversity is life’s safety net]After several hours inspecting the cave, Landier and I ambled back toward the entrance, passing under the vines into the harsh winter light. In the next few weeks, the bats will follow our path, leaving the relative safety of the cave to mate.With summer coming on, the slate roofs ubiquitous throughout rural France will soon become gentle furnaces, making attics the perfect place for bats to reproduce. Homeowners reshingling roofs sometimes discover a colony of bats, and Landier is the one to inform them that they must leave their roof unfinished until the end of the breeding season. Most people let the bats be, even when it’s a nuisance. Perhaps they’re beginning to see them as part of the “sensory heritage of the countryside” too.Support for this article was provided by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Kari Howard Fund for Narrative Journalism

Why we keep seeing egg prices spike

With a new wave of bird flu affecting hens, egg prices are ticking up again. | Matthew Hatcher/Bloomberg via Getty Images How corporate greed plays a role in making bird flu outbreaks — and egg prices — worse. Egg prices are rising again. The culprit, again: bird flu. At least, that’s the surface-level reason. In the current wave, according to the CDC, the H5N1 bird flu has been found in over 90 million poultry birds across almost every state since 2022, and has even spread to dairy cattle, with over 30 herds in nine states dealing with an outbreak at the time of this writing. The last time bird flu struck US farms, in early 2022, egg prices more than doubled during the year, reaching a peak of $4.82 for a dozen in January 2023. During the bird flu outbreak in 2014 to 2015, egg prices also briefly soared. While prices now are still nowhere near the peak they reached in January 2023, they’ve been creeping up again since last August, when a dozen large eggs cost $2.04. As of March, we’re bumping up against the $3 mark, which is a nearly 47 percent increase. It’s also a huge increase from the price we were used to a few years ago: In early 2020, a dozen eggs were just $1.46 on average. The H5N1 strain of bird flu is highly contagious and obviously poses a big risk to hens. But the fact that bird flu outbreaks keep battering our food system points to a deeper problem: an agriculture industry that has become brittle thanks to intense market concentration. The egg market is dominated by some major players The egg industry, like much of the agricultural sector, is commanded by a few heavyweights — the biggest, Cal-Maine Foods, controls 20 percent of the market — that leave little slack in the system to absorb and isolate shocks like disease. Hundreds of thousands of animals are packed tightly together on a single farm, as my colleague Marina Bolotnikova has explained, where disease can spread like wildfire. According to the government and corporate accountability group Food & Water Watch, three-quarters of the country’s hundreds of millions of egg-laying hens are crammed into just 347 factory farms. The system also uses genetically similar animals that farms believe will maximize egg production — but that lack of genetic diversity means animal populations are less resistant to disease. When a hen gets infected, stopping the spread is an ugly, cruel business; since 2022 it has led to the killing of 85 million poultry birds. For the consumer, it often means paying a lot more than usual for a carton of eggs. Preventing any outbreaks of disease from ever happening isn’t realistic, but the model of modern industrial farming is making outbreaks more disruptive. And it’s not just these disruptions driving price spikes. Egg producers also appear to be taking advantage of these moments and hiking prices beyond what they’d need to maintain their old profit margins. “It is absolutely a story of corporate profiteering,” says Rebecca Wolf, senior food policy analyst at Food & Water Watch. Cal-Maine’s net profit in 2023 was about $758 million — 471 percent higher than the year prior, according to its annual financial report. Most of this fortune was made through hoisting up prices; the number of eggs sold, measured in dozens, rose only 5.9 percent. Last year, several food conglomerates, including Kraft and General Mills, were awarded almost $18 million in damages in a lawsuit alleging that egg producers Cal-Maine and Rose Acre Farms had constrained the supply of eggs in the mid- to late 2000s, artificially bumping prices. A farmer advocacy group last year called on the FTC to look into whether top egg producers were price gouging consumers. Are we doomed to semi-regular price surges for eggs? Our food system didn’t become so consolidated — and fragile — by accident. We got here because of three big reasons, Wolf says: by not enforcing environmental laws, by not enforcing antitrust laws, and by giving away “tons of money” to the agriculture industry. During the New Deal era, the federal government put in place policies that would help manage food supply and protect both farmers and consumers from sharp deviations in what the former earned and the latter paid. Under Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz in the 1970s, though, those policies started getting chipped away; Butz’s famous motto was for farmers to “get big or get out.” The spread of giant factory farms is in part a product of this about-face in managing supply. Because our food system is so concentrated and intermingled, it also means any single supply chain hiccup — whether due to disease, wars, or any other reason — can have ripple effects on others, affecting prices in a vast number of essential consumer goods and services. “When we have things like E. coli outbreaks, it’s hard to know where the problem lies because the way that we process and manufacture is so hyper-industrialized that you then have a problem with millions of pounds of food,” says Wolf. Thankfully, the Biden administration has been making some strides in loosening up food industry consolidation, often by shoring up enforcement of long-existing antitrust laws. But there’s still more we could do. There are bills that have been introduced to Congress, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Price Gouging Prevention Act, that would give the FTC the authority to first define what counts as price gouging and then crack down on companies that raise prices excessively. The cycle of food chain snags and higher prices doesn’t have to keep repeating. “We are maximizing profit truly over everything else — over the welfare of the animals, over the rights and wages of people who work in the food system, for even consumers who are at the grocery store,” Wolf says. “None of this is inevitable — we shouldn’t have to be here.” This story appeared originally in Today, Explained, Vox’s flagship daily newsletter. Sign up here for future editions.

We found pesticides in a third of Australian frogs we tested. Did these cause mass deaths?

Among the poisons found in 36% of the frogs tested, rodenticide was detected for the first time. Pesticides are considered a threat to hundreds of amphibian species.

Jodi Rowley, CC BY-NC-NDIn winter 2021, Australia’s frogs started dropping dead. People began posting images of dead frogs on social media. Unable to travel to investigate the deaths ourselves because of COVID lockdowns, we asked the public to report to us any sick or dead frogs. Within 24 hours we received 160 reports of sick and dying frogs, sometimes in their dozens, from across the country. That winter, we received more than 1,600 reports of more than 40 frog species. We needed help to investigate these deaths. We asked people across New South Wales to collect any dead frogs and store them frozen until travel restrictions eased and we could pick them up for testing. Hundreds of people stepped up to assist. What could be causing these deaths? Aside from the obvious suspect, disease, many people wondered about pesticides and other chemicals. One email we received pondered: Maybe a lot of these Green Frogs that are turning up dead have in fact died from chemicals. Another asked: Is there any relationship between chemicals being used to control the current mice plague in Eastern Australia and effects on frogs? In our newly published research, we detected pesticides in more than one in three frogs we tested. We found a rodenticide in one in six frogs. Pesticides have been shown to be a major cause of worldwide declines in amphibians, including frogs and toads. In the case of the mass deaths in Australia, we don’t believe pesticides were the main cause, for reasons we’ll explain. Read more: Dead, shrivelled frogs are unexpectedly turning up across eastern Australia. We need your help to find out why What did the research find? As soon as travel restrictions eased, we drove around the state with a portable freezer collecting these dead frogs. We began investigating the role of disease, pesticides and other potential factors in this awful event. We tested liver samples of 77 frogs of six species from across New South Wales for more than 600 different pesticides. We detected at least one pesticide in 36% of these frogs. Our most significant discovery was the rodenticide Brodifacoum in 17% of the frogs. This is the first report of rodenticides – chemicals meant to poison only rodents – in wild frogs. We found it in four species: the eastern banjo frog (Limnodynastes dumerilii), green tree frog (Litoria caerulea), Peron’s tree frog (Litoria peronii) and the introduced cane toad (Rhinella marina). The eastern banjo frog (Limnodynastes dumerilii) was one of the species in which rodenticide was detected. Jodi Rowley, CC BY-NC-ND How did these poisons get into frogs? How were frogs exposed to a rodenticide? And what harm is it likely to be causing? Unfortunately, we don’t know. Until now, frogs weren’t known to be exposed to rodenticides. They now join the list of non-rodent animals shown to be exposed – invertebrates, birds, small mammals, reptiles and even fish. It’s possible large frogs are eating rodents that have eaten a bait. Or frogs could be eating contaminated invertebrates or coming into contact with bait stations or contaminated water. Whatever the impact, and the route, our findings show we may need to think about how we use rodenticides. Large species like the cane toad (Rhinella marina) could eat rodents that have ingested baits. Jodi Rowley, CC BY-NC-ND Two pesticides detected in frogs were organochlorine compounds dieldrin and heptachlor. A third, DDE, is a breakdown product of the notorious organochlorine, DDT. These pesticides have been banned in Australia for decades, so how did they get into the frogs? Unfortunately, these legacy pesticides are very stable chemicals and take a long time to break down. They usually bind to organic material such as soils and sediments and can wash into waterways after rain. As a result, these pesticides can accumulate in plants and animals. It’s why they have been banned around the world. We also found the herbicide MCPA and fipronil sulfone, a breakdown product of the insecticide fipronil. Fipronil is registered for use in agriculture, home veterinary products (for flea and tick control) and around the house for control of termites, cockroaches and ants. MCPA has both agricultural and household uses, including lawn treatments. Pesticides detected in frogs and the percentages of tested frogs in which each chemical was detected. Jodi Rowley, CC BY-NC-ND What are the impacts on frogs? There’s very little research on the impact of pesticides on frogs in general, particularly adult frogs and particularly in Australia. However, from research overseas, we know pesticides could kill frogs, or cause sub-lethal impacts such as suppressing the immune system or malformations, or changes in growth, development and reproduction. Pesticides are considered a threat to almost 700 amphibian species. Unfortunately for them, frogs do have characteristics that make them highly likely to come into contact with pesticides. Most frog species spend time in both freshwater systems, such as wetlands, ponds and streams (particularly at the egg and tadpole stage), and on the land. This increases their opportunities for exposure. Second, frogs have highly permeable skin, which is likely a major route for pesticides to enter the body. Frogs obtain water through their skin – you’ll never see a frog drinking – and also breathe through their skin. Peron’s tree frog (Litoria peronii) is one of the common species in which pesticides were detected. Jodi Rowley, CC BY-NC-ND Our findings are a reminder that frogs are sensitive indicators of environmental health. Their recognition as bioindicators, or “canaries in the coalmine”, is warranted. Frogs and other amphibians are the most threatened group of vertebrates on the planet. More research is needed to determine just how our use of pesticides is contributing to ongoing population declines in frogs. So, were pesticides the major driver of the mass frog deaths in 2021? We don’t believe so. We didn’t detect pesticides in most frogs and the five pesticides detected were not consistently found across all samples. It’s certainly possible they contributed to this event, along with other factors such as disease and climatic conditions, but it’s not the smoking gun. Our investigation, with the help of the public, is ongoing. Chris Doyle, from the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, contributed to this article. Jodi Rowley has received funding from the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, Perth Zoo, the Australian Museum Foundation and other state, federal and philanthropic agencies.Damian Lettoof does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.