Scott Faber leads EWG’s government affairs efforts to reform food, farm, water, and chemical safety policies. Faber is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
(Heritage and Environmental Working Group) may not agree on much, but we agree that farmers are sophisticated business leaders who should make their money in the market — not by becoming more dependent on federal support
That would be as if the owners of a casino were engineering the slot machines to pay off every time the mob pulled the handle. A farm safety net that pays off every year is not a safety net. It’s a trampoline.
Inflation doesn’t just affect cotton, rice, and peanut farmers, it affects all farmers. This proposal to increase price references will overwhelmingly benefit the largest white producers of those three crops.
If [Tyson’s] Brazen Beef could carry this claim, what’s to stop other companies from making similar claims based on science and other data that’s simply unavailable to all of us?
When you grow a plant, whether it’s a sweet potato or rice, the plant will take up the metals through its roots into the plant. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it is easy to avoid toxic metals by choosing where you plant.
There are lots of misleading claims on food, but it’s hard to imagine a claim that’s more misleading than ‘climate friendly’ beef. It’s like putting a cancer-free label on a cigarette. There’s no worse food choice for the climate than beef.
If you live in a place like Oscoda, a lot of the PFAS that's in your drinking water is coming from those military installations. If you don't live near a base, it's more likely that PFAS is coming from industrial releases.
We also urge baby food manufacturers to conduct continuous testing of heavy metals in all their products and make all testing results publicly available.
If we do everything right — if we reduce energy-related emissions [and] transportation-related emissions as much as we all need, and we don't address emissions from agriculture, we are still not going to avoid a climate catastrophe.
