Food & Ag Features Archives - Genetic Literacy Project

An ambitious federal effort is pouring some $700 million into scaling “regenerative” agriculture, framed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a sustainable alternative to modern farming. In a recent video, Kennedy promoted the approach as a way to rebuild nutrient density, cut chemical use and raise farmer profits while protecting the land for future generations. The rhetoric is appealing, but it badly misrepresents the realities of food production.

Regenerative agriculture, as defined by groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, is long on flowery language—“restore soil and ecosystem health, address inequity”—and short on operational clarity. Advocates typically reject or minimize the modern tools of intensive agriculture in favor of older, less-efficient methods. Some practitioners do pursue useful questions about soil nutrient management and plant resilience, but that work is not what Kennedy is selling. He presents regenerative practices as a superior system overall, which the evidence doesn’t support.

Pesticide safety remains one of his central targets. Critics have long argued that residual exposures, though individually tiny, become dangerous when “added up.” That cumulative-exposure gambit ignores how regulation actually works. Maximum residue levels are set with large safety factors; the resulting exposures are so low that neither single chemistries nor combinations reach levels of toxicological concern.

Moreover, synthetic products are designed for greater stability, lower off-target movement and higher efficacy. Modern herbicides, rejected by Kennedy as his allies, have also enabled widespread no-till and low-till systems that leave soil structure intact, sequester carbon, retain moisture and reduce fuel use—outcomes regenerative advocates claim to prioritize.

Claims of superior nutrient density in regenerative or organic crops have also not held up under scrutiny. Nutrient profiles track growing conditions, variety and soil amendments far more than production system labels. Yields, by contrast, are consistently lower under restrictive regimes. Lower productivity raises food costs and undercuts the equity goals that advocates often invoke.

Many years of experience with romanticized alternatives show the same pattern: lower yields, higher costs and no meaningful safety dividend for consumers. Modern conventional systems have delivered the safest and most abundant food supply in history on less land with fewer inputs. That record is not improved by subsidizing a return to methods that could not feed the present population, let alone the projected future one. Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they critique RFK Jr.’s regenerative farming pitch.

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

Long-debunked myths about organic farming and food safety are surging again on social media, fueled by selective studies and fear-driven algorithms. On this crossover episode of Talking Biotech and Facts & Fallacies, Cam English is joined by geneticist and farmer Dr. Kevin Folta to explain why these claims—e.g., switching to organic food reduces disease risk—keep returning and why they harm consumers and farmers.

Even experts who should know better amplify these false narratives about organic food’s superiority, often chasing virality rather than sticking to the evidence. The result is a familiar cycle in which weak observational data and out-of-context abstracts are presented as proof that conventional produce carries serious downsides.

These messages gain traction because most people struggle to evaluate risk accurately. Air travel, for instance, terrifies many people—up to 40 percent of travelers experience some degree of flight anxiety—even though it remains one of the safest forms of transportation. Yet many of the same people drive to the airport without a second thought, despite the fact that driving is far riskier on a per-mile basis: recent U.S. data show roughly 177 times higher fatality risk for passenger vehicles than for commercial flights. Statistical safety, however, often fails to override the visceral sensation of sitting in an aluminum tube at 30,000 feet.

The same gap appears when consumers confront pesticide residues measured in parts per billion. The residues are real, yet they sit far below levels that regulatory science deems harmful. Organic production uses its own approved pesticides, some with higher toxicity profiles than modern synthetics, while both systems operate under strict residue limits designed to protect public health.

The practical consequences are clear. Myths shape shopping habits, prompting many households to pay premiums for organic labels that deliver no meaningful safety or nutritional advantage on pesticide exposure. That added cost falls hardest on families already stretched thin. At the same time, the messaging harms American farmers—particularly the contract growers and family operations who produce the bulk of conventional fruit and vegetables on razor-thin margins. When fear reduces demand for safe, nutritious produce, those farmers absorb the economic hit.

Clearer communication remains the most effective response: placing residues in proper context, distinguishing genuine hazards from trace exposures, and refusing to let long-settled science be displaced by viral anxiety. Join Kevin Folta and Cam English as they break down the resurgence of some of the most persistent food-safety myths.

Kevin M. Folta is a professor in the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida and host of the Talking Biotech podcast. Follow Professor Folta on X @kevinfolta

Cameron J. English is the executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

Even credentialed scientists are susceptible to the pressures of social media virality, sometimes venturing well beyond their expertise to promote popular but misleading health narratives. Last week, Dr. Rhonda Patrick of FoundMyFitness, typically a reliable source of science-backed info on nutrition, urged the public to switch to organic food to cut their pesticide exposure. With over 1.4 million followers, Patrick’s message amplified a widespread fear but ignored critical scientific context.

The simple, oft-overlooked truth is that pesticide residues in both conventional and organic foods occur at trace levels that regulatory science deems safe. Maximum residue limits (MRLs) and allowable daily intakes (ADIs) incorporate large safety factors—often 10- to 1,000-fold—below doses showing no adverse effects in rigorous toxicology testing. Consumers quite literally can’t ingest enough produce to approach these strict thresholds.

Organic production also uses pesticides, including some with higher toxicity profiles than their modern synthetic counterparts—which also help prevent far more dangerous natural contaminants like aflatoxin-producing molds, a major global cause of liver cancer.

Like many influencers before her, Patrick relied on observational studies and high-dose animal experiments to bolster her advice. These papers are frequently cited in anti-pesticide discussions, though they bear little relevance to typical dietary exposures. Likewise, detection of pesticide metabolites in urine reflects normal liver and kidney function, not toxicity.

Even among professional applicators exposed at much higher levels under strict protocols and personal protective equipment, cancer rates are often lower than the public’s very low risk—likely due to healthier lifestyles and greater fruit and vegetable consumption.

The problem with Patrick’s well-meaning but misinformed messaging is that it risks discouraging intake of nutritious produce, an actual public health priority. While organic food serves as a valid personal or local choice for those who prefer it, the evidence does not demonstrate meaningful safety advantages against conventionally grown food.

Modern agricultural tools enable abundant, affordable food supplies that have dramatically improved food security compared to historical organic practices. That’s a critical message more people need to hear.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies as they take on a pesticide myth even some scientists fall for:

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the executive vice president at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

Ever notice how the environmental movement’s doomsday predictions arrive like clockwork, each one as urgent as the last? Mass starvation, poisoned skies, civilization’s collapse: all imminent unless we repent and degrow right now. Yet here we are, decades later, and the apocalypse still hasn’t come.

From Paul Ehrlich’s 1960s population-bomb panic that promised billions would starve to the endless claims that we’d poison the air and run out of arable land, the track record is one long string of busted forecasts. But it’s not just that the predictions were wrong—they were falsified by major technological innovations and economic growth Ehrlich and his compatriots couldn’t have anticipated. This is the raw material for a very uplifting story.

Since 1970, combined emissions of the six major air pollutants have dropped nearly 80 percent. We’re feeding more people than ever while using relatively less land, thanks to yield explosions in maize (+196 percent), wheat (+218 percent), and rice (+147 percent) since 1961, gains that spared an area the size of India from the plow. Global hunger is ticking downward. And deaths from weather-related disasters have plunged more than 90 percent per capita since the 1920s.

None of this happened by heeding calls to turn back the clock. It happened because richer societies invest in better technology, cleaner chemistry and smarter stewardship. Oddly, these are the very developments alarmists reflexively demonize. And that prompts an important question: why does the modern environmental movement oppose the tools that enable sustainability?

Join Cam English on this episode of Facts & Fallacies to examine why the green movement has been so spectacularly wrong about the disasters that never come.

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

The fallacy is clear to anyone paying attention. A claim is true if it corresponds to reality, not because of the person making the claim. As the economist Ludwig von Mises observed many years ago, “Arguments from authority are invalid; the proof of a theory is in its reasoning, not in its sponsorship.”

Isaac Newton had patrons; today’s researchers secure grants from governments, universities, foundations or corporations. All carry potential biases, and singling out private industry reveals inconsistency: taxpayer-funded studies often align with regulatory agendas, while billionaire-funded NGOs bankroll research advancing predetermined conclusions on a wide variety of political issues. Why is industry money uniquely disqualifying but Greenpeace or NIH grants virtuous?

Beyond the hypocrisy, the shill gambit’s real-world consequences can be dire. Dismissing industry experts impoverishes debate. Pharmaceutical breakthroughs—from antibiotics to HIV therapies—emerged from company labs. Tech giants fund AI and computing advances we all benefit from. The solution isn’t blanket disqualification but scrutiny of methods and replication of research.

Bottom line? The shill gambit stifles innovation and empowers charlatans who claim “independence” while peddling dogma—often with opulent support from competing industries or billionaire donors. In our polarized public square, rejecting this fallacy fosters genuine scientific progress by prioritizing facts over personal insults.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as they break down the “shill gambit.”

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

Though still widely maligned today, pesticides played a pivotal role in this progression, enabling HYVs to thrive and contributing to yield surges of up to 44% from 1965 to 2010. The benefits were staggering in economic terms. A 2021 study in the Journal of Political Economy quantified that HYVs boosted incomes and curbed population growth via reduced fertility. Cumulatively, the Green Revolution saved the world trillions of dollars over 45 years—equivalent to one year of global GDP.

In risk-benefit terms, the Green Revolution’s gains—saving multitudes from starvation, reducing poverty and sparing 18-27 million hectares from conversion to cropland, primarily in developing countries—far outweighed drawbacks, especially given the annual welfare gains from related technologies by 2020. Yet, Borlaug’s work remains controversial today, with many environmental activists and some scholars alleging that his work was harmful on balance, despite the documented increases in food production.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as they examine the Green Revolution and address criticisms of Borlaug’s work.

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

“Along with the possibility of the extinction of mankind by nuclear war, the central problem of our age has therefore become the contamination of man’s total environment with such substances of incredible potential for harm … How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind? Yet this is precisely what we have done” (Silent Spring p 14-15 Kindle Edition).

Although Carson is remembered fondly for her colorful prose that helped to launch the modern environmental movement, her criticisms of pesticides were flawed in important ways. “Silent Spring was replete with gross misrepresentations and atrocious scholarship,” says former FDA scientist Dr. Henry Miller. While she was broadly correct that pesticides can be harmful to off-target organisms (e.g. DDT causing eggshell thinning in some bird species), Carson’s claim that the insecticide was driving many birds to extinction was contradicted by multiple studies published before and after Silent Spring hit bookstores.

Strikingly, annual data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey from 1966, a study launched in response to concerns Carson popularized, showed “through the end of the 1970s … no obvious pattern of overall increasing bird populations as would be expected to follow the 1972 banning of DDT if it were truly harming bird populations,” science writer Robert Zubrin noted in 2012.

But of particular note was Carson’s allegation that DDT caused a variety of illnesses, including cancer: it was speculative at the time and subsequently refuted by additional research. “…[S]tudies in Europe, Canada, and the United States have since shown that DDT didn’t cause the human diseases Carson had claimed,” Dr. Paul Offit observed in 2017:

“Indeed, the only type of cancer that had increased in the United States during the DDT era was lung cancer, which was caused by cigarette smoking. DDT was arguably one of the safer insect repellents ever invented—far safer than many of the pesticides that have taken its place.”

But the story of highly toxic DDT persists to this day, and mainstream accounts of Carson’s work maintain that her claims about pesticides were vindicated.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as they take a closer look at the risks of benefits of DDT use, and challenge some common misunderstandings along the way.

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

The guidelines aren’t perfect; they call out harmless additives and processing that have no bearing on the nutritional content of food, for example. But the media, always eager to publicly chastise RFK, Jr., has exaggerated the changes, portraying the updates as fully endorsing unrestricted meat and dairy consumption. For instance, NPR described them as going “all in on meat and dairy,” suggesting a complete reversal of prior cautions. In reality, the guidelines do not eliminate established limits on saturated fats, a common (though arguably unjustified) concern with red meat and full-fat dairy.

In fact, the guidelines explicitly retain the longstanding recommendation to cap saturated fat intake at less than 10% of daily calories, consistent with previous editions and recognizing the ongoing debate over the risks and benefits of meat and milk consumption.

Bottom line: everyone is wrong about the new dietary guidelines to one degree or another. Reporters rushed in to amplify a scandal when they should have been calling balls and strikes. Kennedy doubled down on his quasi-religious devotion to “whole foods,” and the public was left to discern the new recommendations for themselves.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as they take a closer look at the new dietary guidelines:

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

On the surface, food addiction makes sense. America remains in the throes of an obesity crisis, and heart disease—a condition heavily influenced by poor dietary choices—still kills more Americans than any other cause. Against that backdrop, the addictive nature of our favorite foods seems to explain our ongoing willingness to overindulge despite the often-fatal consequences.

But the food addiction narrative begins to unravel the more experts scrutinize it, raising questions proponents of the hypothesis don’t have good answers for. For example, only a minority of obese people fit the definition for food addiction while a larger share of patients diagnosed with anorexia do. This paradox badly undermines food addiction and goes to a broader point: the diagnostic criteria are not distinct from existing disorders. Indeed, large-scale studies show that food addiction symptoms almost perfectly overlap with binge-eating disorder and normal overeating driven by stress or restriction.

Once those factors are controlled for, an independent “food addiction” syndrome disappears. “Collectively, the present findings support the view that [food addiction] reflects a cluster of preexisting psychological constructs—such as craving, guilt, and disordered eating attitudes—rather than a clearly delineated disorder,” the authors of a July 2025 review concluded.

Perhaps more importantly, no unique addictive agent has been identified. Decades of searching for a “food drug” (sugar, fat, palatability) have failed. While some mental health experts insist there is an “emerging consensus” about the validity of food addiction, they can’t seem to settle on exactly what quality makes a certain dietary choice addictive. This seriously undercuts any attempt to analogize food addiction to a well-established substance use disorder like alcoholism.

In short, “food addiction” is a metaphor stretched into a diagnosis. It pathologizes common human struggles and distracts from evidence-based drivers of overeating: sleep deprivation, emotional distress, and the modern food environment’s relentless cue exposure. The science has moved on; the label should too.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as they take a closer look at “food addiction.”

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish

The argument goes like this: since AGS triggers harmful symptoms—severe stomach pain, low blood pressure, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea (and death in very rare cases)—people infected with the condition would switch to more climate-friendly protein sources to avoid harm. The researchers framed this proposal as a form of moral bioenhancement. “It helps [the public] satisfy their obligation not to eat meat, an obligation they would otherwise be disinclined to satisfy,” they wrote in the journal Bioethics. “The allergy presents only after eating meat: no meat, no allergic reaction.”

Since no sane person would volunteer to receive a serious, chronic food allergy, the authors proposed spreading Alpha-Gal Syndrome indirectly through “genetically engineer ticks so that they proliferate AGS.” They argue that ticks are the most viable transmission mechanism, while speculating that “it may be feasible for a person to take synthetic AGS to grocery stores and secretly inject it into beef, pork, lamb, etc.”

After their paper was savaged on Twitter, one of the authors claimed the proposal was only a thought experiment, “a hypothetical ethical framework for discussion when asked about the intent,” The College Fix reported. Still, that response raises a troubling question: why even speculate about genetically engineering insects to harm innocent people? As one of us (Cameron) pointed out in response to the “thought experiment” defense, dangerous policies that cause real harm commonly begin as hypotheticals bandied about by well-meaning intellectuals.

Join Dr. Liza Lockwood and Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as they make the case against engineering insects to spread food allergies.

Dr. Liza Lockwood is a medical toxicologist and the medical affairs lead at Bayer Crop Science. Follow her on X @DrLizaMD

Cameron J. English is the director of bio-sciences at the American Council on Science and Health. Follow him on X @camjenglish