Monarchs in trouble: Where is the EPA?
by Lisa Archer, food and technology program director
Outside the White House on a Wednesday afternoon in May, Friends of the Earth joined allies and activists to hold a press conference on the environmental and human health impacts of glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup®.
Armed with more than 500,000 petitions from concerned people across the United States, the group demanded that the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) pull the license for the popular herbicide that has been designated as a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization (WHO). Because of its widespread use, glyphosate contaminates a wide variety of food and drinks. It’s also a primary factor in the decimation of the iconic monarch butterfly.
After they addressed the press, a group of five, including Tiffany Finck-Haynes, food futures campaigner at Friends of the Earth, marched down the street to the offices of the EPA, where they had arranged to meet an agency representative who had agreed to accept the petitions. But instead of being welcomed into the public building, security turned them away. According to Finck-Haynes, “They said if we wouldn’t move, they’d have us arrested.”
Where do the EPA’s loyalties lie?
In recent months, the public has had many reasons to question the EPA’s loyalties to the public it purports to serve. Days before the press conference, the agency posted a long-delayed report on its website declaring glyphosate unlikely to be carcinogenic to humans.
The EPA’s suspicious actions and abrupt reversal in the face of media scrutiny raise questions about whose interests the agency is focused on serving: the American public and the monarch butterfly, or the pesticide industry?
The EPA’s Cancer Assessment Review Committee (CARC) issued the highly anticipated report after a seven-year risk assessment study. Within days, questions were flying about the legitimacy of the report’s findings and the fact that CARC relied on industry-funded research from chemical companies. The bevy of questions forced the EPA to pull the report almost immediately, with a spokeswoman saying the documents were “inadvertently” posted and that the
agency’s “assessment is not final,” despite the report being labeled as such and signed by committee members.
The EPA’s suspicious actions and abrupt reversal in the face of media scrutiny raise questions about whose interests the agency is focused on serving: the American public and the monarch butterfly, or the pesticide industry?
Monarchs under threat
Over the last 20 years, the planting of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO), herbicide-tolerant “Roundup® Ready” corn and soy crops has meant an increase in the use of glyphosate. One of glyphosate’s casualties is milkweed, the only food that young monarch larvae eat.
As milkweed has disappeared under an assault of glyphosate, so have the monarchs. The last two decades have seen the population decline by 90 percent. Today, experts estimate that the iconic pollinator would need to recover by an almost five-fold increase just to reach baseline population levels. That’s going to be hard to do given the chemical onslaught the monarchs face. In fact, nearly 200 million pounds of glyphosate are used in agriculture every year, including on common crops like soy, corn and wheat.
Worldwide, a recent United Nations study found that a full 40 percent of invertebrate species, including bees and butterflies, are on the verge of extinction. One of the primary culprits is chemical-intensive industrial
agriculture.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has received formal legal petitions demanding the monarch butterfly be listed as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. More than 500,000 Americans — including many readers of this newsmagazine — have signed petitions calling for this important protection. The EPA, however, has offered little more than delays
and obfuscation when it comes to glyphosate.
Our butterflies have powerful allies
The WHO is one of the most prominent voices urging us to rethink our use of the popular herbicide. In 2015, the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared the toxic chemical a probable carcinogen. Since then, a number of countries have acted to limit glyphosate. France announced a partial ban. The European Parliament recommended the license for glyphosate not be renewed. And the Netherlands, Brazil, Colombia and Sri Lanka are all taking steps to ban the chemical.
The campaign to limit the herbicide is gaining ground here in the U.S. The state of California listed glyphosate as a carcinogen last year, and the FDA recently announced that it will start testing food for Roundup®.
We asked [the EPA] how many times they threatened to arrest people from the pesticide industry, but we didn’t get an answer.
But Monsanto, which earns roughly $5 billion a year from the sale of glyphosate, is not giving up without a fight. Calling the debate about Roundup® “political,” the company launched a slick public relations campaign to appear concerned and “help” address the Monarch problem. The company denies that Roundup® poses risks to human health or the environment when used “correctly.” It also praised the EPA’s report, with a spokesman saying the agency does a “nice job of explaining all of IARC’s mistakes.”
Friends of the Earth is committed to challenging Monsanto’s stranglehold on our agriculture system. “Clear science shows glyphosate is harming our
environment — leading to the decline of monarch butterflies and the ecosystems we depend on for sustainable food and farming systems, and it’s likely also harming our health. We are at a critical moment in the fight to end the rampant use of this toxic pesticide,” says Finck-Haynes.
As part of our broader pollinator strategy, we’re supporting Senator Jeff Merkley’s (D-OR) Pollinator Recovery Act of 2016. The bill, introduced during
National Pollinator Week this spring, offers financial incentives to farmers who don’t use chemicals like glyphosate on their crops, who increase pollinatorfriendly habitats appropriate to their region and who adopt novel integrated pest management practices that reduce the application of pollinator-toxic insecticides and herbicides.
Until the EPA releases its final report, Friends of the Earth will continue to put pressure on the agency to revoke glyphosate’s license and take other strategic actions to protect monarchs and other pollinators affected by our over-reliance on toxic pesticides and herbicides like glyphosate.
We have our work cut out for us. As Finck-Haynes said after her encounter with EPA security, “It goes to show how little they’re willing to work with the public. We asked how many times they threatened to arrest people from the pesticide industry, but we didn’t get an answer.”
When the EPA refuses to take half a million comments from the public while relying on industry science to write their reports — and then attempts to hide its own actions — it’s clear that the agency puts Monsanto’s profits ahead of people, pollinators and the planet.
It’s time for us to make sure the EPA works for the monarchs and all of us, not Monsanto.
Take action to protect our pollinators at foe.org/beeaction!
