White House orders study of pesticide health risks in food supply

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 25 directing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen research, innovation and public-private partnerships around regenerative agriculture and cumulative chemical exposures in the food supply. The order does not provide new federal funding, new regulations or legislation to curb pesticide use.

The order builds on a February 27 plan from HHS, USDA and EPA that pledged more than $1 billion in investments tied to farm modernization and long-term food-supply security. That package included $100 million at HHS for research into cumulative chemical exposures, another $100 million to reduce reliance on chemical crop protection tools, and a $30 million EPA grand-prize challenge to find alternatives to pre-harvest desiccation pesticide use. The June 25 order also directs HHS to launch a National Institutes of Health Grand Prize Challenge and tells ARPA-H to prioritize technologies that cut dependence on chemical crop protection tools.

The new directive came after a different Trump order on February 18 used the Defense Production Act to protect domestic production of glyphosate-based herbicides and elemental phosphorus. There was only one domestic producer of those products, and the White House gave Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins authority to help secure supply. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended that earlier move on February 23, warning that abruptly removing pesticides would reduce yields, raise food prices and trigger major farm losses.

MAHA activists publicly blasted the glyphosate order, and some threatened primary challenges against lawmakers who backed pesticide-liability protections. Rollins said on February 26 that the alliance with MAHA remained unchanged and framed the glyphosate fight as a national-security question.