Hi, everybody. Thank you for being with me. You know, it's a big week this week. We've got climate week. We've got world leaders Who are meeting at the United Nations? You might have already heard something about President Trump speech in which he said to the world that climate change is a hoax So that's pretty much in keeping with the way he speaks in the way he views such things as that You know what we want to have is a sort of holistic approach to healing the world. And that has to do with the recognition that there is a natural order to things. There's a natural order to things internally and externally. And externally that has to do with respecting the ways of nature. And one of the reasons we're in such trouble in this country in so many areas is because we are putting and have been putting for decades now corporate profits before and adherence to the laws of nature and a real allegiance to sustainable practices. This has to do with the air, it has to do with the water, it has to do with the earth, it has to do with food, and we have a guest here today that is going to be able to give us some information that I think all of us want to have. See, this is the deal. We're living at a very difficult time. All of us know that. And we need to know what's happening. We can't just turn away. We can't just go into denial or certainly not go into acquiescence. We need to be clear about exactly what the Trump Administration is doing and also have a larger conversation about how things should be done in order not only to protect nature but to honor all that is natural in order to create sustainability, not only for ourselves, before children and our children's children. So I'd like to introduce you to Bill Freeze. Bill Freeze is the science director at the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit organization that supports sustainable agriculture and opposes harmful food production technologies. He's a frequently quoted expert on human health, environmental and societal implications of pesticides, and genetically engineered crops. He has testified before Congress, he has published several scientific papers, given numerous presentations to international food and agricultural officials, working together with the CFS legal team, Frees has helped win major victories, in court cases regarding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's misregulation of glycophate, dicamber and other pesticides. Bill, thank you very much for being with us. So appreciate it. No, glad to be here, Marianne. Thanks for having me. Let's start right there with the EPA, the current administrator, Lee Zeldin. I'm assuming that you will agree with me that he's there more to dismantle some of the environmental protections that we have come to expect from that agency in order to serve whether it has to do with big oil, big food, big agriculture, or any of the more corporate-backed entities, corporate entities themselves, that would like to see a diminishment of regulation so they could make more money. Is that basically correct? Yes, I think that's a good description. It's kind of a redux of Trump 1.0. We're seeing some of the same industry people being appointed, some new industry people to keep posted at EPA, including critically the division that regulates pesticides. So we have a former long-time blobbiist for the American soybean association, which really represents more the interests of agribusiness than actual soybean farmers who's been appointed to head up federal pesticide policy at EPA. And then Nancy Beck is used to be with a chemical industry lobbying group. She was in office at EPA during Trump 1.0 and she's also back. So it's not surprising. It's disappointing. I think a lot of people had hopes that with the whole Maha agenda, that things might be a little different here. But I think what we're seeing is that when push comes to shove any sort of you know, Maha initiatives are being counter-manded and things are being done according to you know what big-ag and big food want. Guttling of regulation basically. Now this, this of course would have to do with the Department of Agriculture as well as with the EPA, correct? Yes, I'm sure I haven't looked at the USDA as closely, but I know that, for instance, some of the initiatives to move USDA offices, divisions to other cities has been really a hidden way to get people to resign. You know, because you know, people have built their lives here. And we've lost a lot of good, good people through these, these moves. It's very clever the way they're doing this with firing federal employees using any methods possible, is I'm sure, you know. Yeah, nobody can say that they're not very clever and very shrewd. They had this planned obviously for a very long time. So the Environmental Protection Agency, which many people might not realize was set up by Republican President Richard Nixon, is headed by the administrative Lee Zeldin, as I mentioned before. Elon Musk, Doge, came in there. And I think they got rid of 25% of the employees, didn't they? Isn't that about right? They got rid of 25%, cutting close to a billion dollars from the agency. And of course, one of the things that has happened is a major letter signed by 200 and some odd employees of the agency saying that it's being decimated and of the 170 or so that actually signed, they have been put on administrative leave. So let's talk about the actual damage of what is doing to people's lives. I know your particular focus is on food. And you mentioned the Maha agenda. For full disclosure, I consider Bobby Kennedy, a friend of mine. You know, I love how Michael Brooks, the late Michael Brooks, used to say be kind towards individuals, but ruthless with systems. So this is not personal. Having said that, I'm deeply, deeply disappointed by what's happening in relation to food production in the United States. I do think many people were very excited. The idea that maybe with this Mha movement, America would get healthier. We're not going to get healthier if the air is less healthy. We're not going to get healthier if the water is less healthy. We're not going to get healthier if the food is less healthy. So we need to see beyond. I know you Bill have spoken quite a bit about how the maai, I think what's happening is that Trump has really used the Mahai movement as a cover for what he has really wanted us to do in favor of his corporate sponsors. So would you give us a, give us a skin-ail, what's actually happening there? Yeah, well, first I guess to start off with the EPA cuts, I think you're right. That's very, very concerning. And it's not just general cuts, but what they're cutting. And the crown jewel of EPA is, as many people, many scientists hold it, is the Office of Research and Development. And this is kind of the agency that does the core scientific research. It doesn't have regulatory roles, which is actually an advantage because it relieves it from that, you know, the pressure of the regulated companies, which is so prevalent with, you know, the pesticide division, which is, you know, in many cases, in most respects, captured by the industry at regulated. So, you know, that was a focus of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, which is, of course, one of the premier conservative groups, was to rein in and even eliminate ORD, and that's exactly what Trump is doing. So that's very problematic. And just yesterday I read that the Office of Water, which is another really good agency at EPA with integrity, their research now has to be vetted by superiors before they can even publish anything. And the Office of Water is known for working on PFAS, right? The PER and Polyflorinated Achilles substances, which are now known as forever chemicals, and are widely polluting the waters. And also, farmland through the application of sewage sludge, which is where, unfortunately, a lot of expiry toxic compounds end up. So, I don't know if this is related. I would suspect maybe it is because of the waters done done really good work, they've done assessments, they've set, you know, protective standards under the Biden administration. Some of that is being rolled back under the resultant's EPA, unfortunately. And that's, it's a particularly disappointing, because I recall during the Senate confirmation hearings, that Lee Zeldin had talked about, I believe he comes from Long Island and that his constituents are very concerned about PFAS and had actually, you know, there is contaminated in that and that part of New York. And so he was making a lot of noises about being very tough on this. And, you know, it hasn't been quite as bad as in the Roman pesticides, but he's definitely pulled back some limits on some of the PFAS limits that Biden had said on PFAS and drinking water and delayed implementation of some of the limits that had been said as well. So yeah, those are really disappointing things. And they're also of course issues with pesticides

that we could also discuss if you're interested. Well, I definitely want to discuss issues with pesticides. So everybody bill is very elegant and understated when he says that this is very disappointing. I think it's morally outrageous. P. Fast Runsons that he was just talking about has been connected to high rates of cancer, particularly breast cancer and of course, Long Island that has been an issue there. So let's be clear in our own minds how this works. First of all, Elon Musk comes in with Joe's and they simply with these agencies that we're doing as Bill said, good work. They want to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse. They were the fraudsters and they were the abusers because what they did was demolish aspects of many agencies. This doesn't just have to do with environmental issues. So you demolish, you basically seek to dismantle the aspects of democracy that are working for people. And whether there was, the Democrats would, you know, the Democrats would go one way,

the Republicans would go another way, but all within the purview of basically wanting the U.S. government to work for people. This has to do with a very nefarious agenda of some forces that clearly do not want American democracy to be working for people. So part of it is you start getting rid of employees, which Bill has already talked about how that's happened. 25% of the EPA employees, the people who have dedicated their lives as federal workers, as real civil servants. The other is even when they have good information and this research is still being done hiding it, as Bill was just saying. Or you get rid of the person like the labor statistic, you don't like the numbers, you just get rid of the person who said it I mean it's like something out of 1984 so as as Bill just said now what what the EPA said also Bill I read that yesterday actually telling these scientists yeah you can do the research you just can't publish it you have to go through us and we will decide what we will be saying to the American people and that the bottom you that the bottom line is no longer giving the American people a transparent look at what's happening, but rather giving the American people the information that we want them to have. Now I want to ask you a question Bill. And you may or may not have real deep feelings about this. You may or may not feel comfortable speaking to it. These people have grandchildren. These people don't want members of their own family getting cancer in your own minds, given that you think about these things, you work on these things. How do you explain human beings being so callous? Because it's not just people they don't know who are going to be hurt by these things. It's people they do know and that they do love. Where does your mind go around some of this? I know that you're scientists. I know that you might not want to speak too much of this, but I think people are trying to connect the dots. What's going on here that people could be so uncaring? Not just about the environment, but about human beings who are affected by all these poisons and toxins. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's a really good question. I do think about that. And I've really come to believe that we're seeing more and more that the Republican Party has become occult, basically.

And it's occult, and the past has just been occult of anti-government sentiments and anti-regulation fervor. And this kind of just dogmatic belief that any regulation is bad and that it's not based on real science. You know, they do, you know, present species reasons, you know, like we see Ted Cruz trying to, you know, argue against climate disruption, you know, in Senate hearings. One, of course, he knows nothing about it and is merely representing the interests of his constituents. But they, in this cultish mentality, they kind of convinced themselves that anything that government does that interferes with or calls into question this paradigm of endless growth, which is kind of what capitalism has been based on for a long time is just the double's work and it must not be true, and we're just going to shut our minds to it. So I think it's, I don't know if that's satisfactory, but that's kind of... Yeah, I mean, what's going on? I don't think either party can exactly be self-congratulatory at this point. And some of the things that went on whether I do the Willow project, whether it had to do with oil permits under Biden, Yes, he did a lot more investment in green energy, but he wasn't, I think Democrats need to do some soul searching as well. Yeah. And certainly, yeah. And I certainly think in the past, there was some very strong environmentalists in the Republican Party, but more and more, the old Republican Party, the old Democratic Party, it's almost like becoming distant memory. Okay, so talk to me, talk to all of us now about the specifics of what's happening in the area of food production. And also you were going to talk about the Maha agenda and where you see all that going. Yeah, yeah, I think as we've already kind of intimated, there's, I's kind of a bait and switch I think that you know our case junior did have some some good ideas and raise some real concerns that haven't received as much You know mainstream attention as they deserve The first maha report. I was very pleased to see this emphasis on the idea that we need to stop just assessing chemicals one at a time, as if that's really going to help us get out of our crisis of chronic childhood disease, part of which is due to environmental toxins, I think he's right there, and instead have cumulative assessments where you look at the exposures to multiple different toxins in the environment and in our food. And there are actually approaches that have been developed to do that. To get beyond this one at a time kind of assessment procedure, which is failing us in some ways. And yet in the second report, which is supposed to come out with strategies for how to deal with it, it's there, but it's just presented as a topic for more research. And we actually sent some stuff to the Maha people, some materials. I've researched this for several years and recommending specific things that could be done to deal with this problem of being exposed to many toxins. How do you approach that? How do you assess it? And the short story is that what scientists have been doing is they look at, you know, toxins that cause particular health impacts, say, the liver, say fatty liver, right, which is a precursor to diabetes and other diseases. assess them in a cumulative way so that you can set limits on exposure to the whole group, right? And in that way, you can start, you know, it's, in that way you can start to get it, get it some of the serious issues that RFK juniors highlighted. But again, you know, research is always good, but we need action and we haven't. We haven't had that from the EP in the past, or the FDA with food additives and food context substances. We also need that sort of assessment in those areas. So that's one kind of disappointment I had because I thought that that issue was highlighted in the First Mahal report and it just was kind of dropped. Pesticides, again, talked about in the First Mahal report, and then it's pretty clear to me that the pesticide industry got big time to the Trump administration, because not only were, you know, concerning references to pesticides and their impacts on health taken out, but there was even a public education component where EPA would work with the industry to convince the public about how robust EPA is. I mean, that's so awful. You know, many years ago I was in Washington, DC. I was at a meeting I remember in the Democratic Whip's office. And a young staffer came up to me, and he had heard me speak. And he said, Ms. Williams, what do we do about the double advocacy function of these agencies? He said the dual advocacy function. Is it what dual advocacy? You don't have a dual advocacy function. You're here to advocate for the American people. You're not here to help the people who are actually harming the health of the American people to advertise. I mean, what you just said is so horrifying. So I wonder what happens. I think probably not just with Bobby Kennedy but with a lot of these cabinet officials, even if they try to do the right thing, if the Trump administration doesn't like it, they put the word down, send the word down to the agency. We're not going to do it the way you just said. Is that your impression as well? Yeah, I think so. And there's a photo that kind of symbolizes this form. I'm sure you've seen it, but it was in, I believe, November, soon after the election, when Trump was on a plane with RFK Jr. and I think Musk and someone else, maybe one of Trump's sons. And it was the McDonald's meal. The hamburger incident? It's doing right. And it was kind of, my impression was, it was Trump,

sending the message that I'm the one in charge,

Bobby, you can talk about,

Maha, all you want, but when Prush comes to shove,

you know, it's like, I'm gonna have my way.

Which means, you know, the Heritage Foundation,

well, we'll have its way.

And so, yeah, I don't know. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. He had said, sometimes during between Trump's inaugurate, no, between the election and the inauguration, he made a speech one night about how popular Bobby was. And he said, I'm going to let him go wild on the issue of food, but just basically stay in your lane. Don't talk about anything else. Well, how can you really talk about health and not talk about the toxins in the air and not talk about pesticides and not talk about food? I know that you're really an expert on the issue of the pesticides and that's clearly where you're enthusiastic lies and it's such an important issue. I remember several years ago we were talking about the effects of a particular pesticide on a developing child's brain. And it took years before we were able to lobby enough

to gather. of a particular pesticide on a developing child's brain. And it took years before we were able to lobby enough to get the production of these pesticides to go down. And I know you've been very active with the dicamber issue. Finally, you guys got it outlawed from what I read. And then now the Trump administration is trying to put it back. Would you give us an overview of what's going on with pesticides and the current dealings of the Trump administration? Yeah. Well, to start with that, Kamba, that we have been involved with this ever since in 2017. It was first approved for spraying on GMO soybeans and cotton that are genetically engineered to withstand it. So it's an herbicide, it's a weed killer, and the main focus of genetic engineering has been to make crops resistant to herbicides, right? Because herbicides, they kill plants, not just weeds, but they can kill the crop itself. So you use the genetic engineering to make it resistant to the herbicide, and that allows much greater use. And so we've seen a huge increase in herbicide use since the advent of GMOs. And that can be is particularly concerning because it's very volatile and drift prone, which has been known for decades before this. And it turns out when you spray it on these GMOs, you're spraying a lot more of it in the heat of summer,

and that enhances the volatility. And so we've had millions of acres of crops damaged by this herbicide, the drift of this herbicide. And we're talking not just the neighboring field, but often, you know, a quarter, a half a mile, sometimes miles. The stuff gets into the atmosphere and you know just causes fence or defense for a damage.

It's destroyed, for instance, a peach orchard, the largest peach orchard in Missouri. The farmer had to sue Monsanto, fortunately successfully. And a keeper in Arkansas, a really huge operation was seeing his honey production drop precipitously because the decamadrift was killing the plants that the bees needed for nectar and pollen. And so he had to move his whole operation in Mississippi. I mean, the dangers are so obvious. My organization and others allied with us, including a small farming organization, we sued EPA. We won in 2020. We've got a ban. Trump 1.0, four months later, re-approved it. They said they had a few more studies, a few more restrictions. This will take care of it. It didn't. We sued again. Got it banned again in 2024. And now, unfortunately, now Trump is proposing to approve it once again. Again, the same corporate junk science is being used to try to justify this, and we know it's going to continue to cause devastation. A lot of farmers have complained. Unfortunately, they haven't been listened to. And instead, it's the big organizations like the American Soybean Association. And again, the head lobbyist, a former head lobbyist for that organization is now in charge of Federal Pesticide Policy DPA. So we're, you know, gearing up to fight this as well. That's just one example. And it's close to my because you know you see it impacting you know farmers you know a lot of good you know conscientious farmers now are finding themselves either being forced to grow beast like hamburger resistant crops to avoid injury right to their own soybean instance or they're being put out of business you know and it's. And it's just, it's a sad situation. It's caused a lot of, a lot of dissension in rural communities. It's, you know, turned, you know, lifelong friends into enemies, you know, farmers who sprayed that canva. And since they needed, they're damaging their neighbors. And there was even a gunshot death on Missouri Arkansas border that was the stem chroma dispute at campus. So that's been really disappointing. Yeah, there's also the whole issue of pesticide label warnings that has been kind of a hot issue. And this relates to, you know, especially took life to say, which is the active ingredient in Roundup, at least the agricultural formulations. And, you know, it's pretty clear life-sake causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, if you're exposed to it, especially if you're applying it, right? And there have been tons of lawsuits, class-action lawsuits, of dollars have been awarded. So instead of, you know, you know, facing that and either restricting or eliminating life's sake, what some red state attorneys general have done is petitioned EPA to prohibit any sort of warnings on pesticide labels, for instance, cancer warnings. And the intent here, it's a sneaky way because a lot of the lawsuits have been based on failure to warrant claims, right? The plaintiffs in these lawsuits, those people who have non-Hodgkin's informant because of using Roundup for many years, the claim has been you should have warned us. You should have at least warned us about the cancer risk. And so because EPA says, life state does not cause cancer, even though everyone else agrees it does, this preemption bill, as we're calling it, would stop those plaintiffs from getting compensation for their cancers. If that makes sense. It is such an upside down world when your government, instead of working to protect your health, instead of working to protect the safety of your children, you know, when my mother went to the grocery store, she assumed that she was buying food that was healthy for her family. And of course, when I was younger, the FDA had teeth, you know, and an FDA agent could walk into a grocery store. This is proven to cause cancer, get it off the shelf. And then I remember when the change came that all that the FDA agent could do was politely petition the CEO of the company, would you please consider what you were doing to the health of Americans? This is how our government, everybody, has been just bought and sold by these corporate interests. And now it's like when Bill was saying, the first Trump administration, yes, it was a conservative Republican administration, but it was still, it was still within the purview of not insane. This now we're talking about the proactive effort to demolish the aspects of the functioning of our government that actually have anything to do with serving the American people. Now Bill, you are biochemist yourself. And I think a lot of people have heard, oh yeah, I know it causes cancer. I've heard that these things cause cancer. You were talking about non-Hodgung's lymphoma. Can you give us a little bit of information in what way? How does this work? Is it in the food, people, and just the food? And then what happens in your body that leads to malignancy? Can you give us a little bit of a beginner's education here on how this happens? Yeah, sure. I think one thing to, you know, it's important to understand is I think that the most highly exposed people to pesticides are, you know, as you might expect the people who apply them. All right. So a lot of the cancer lawsuits have come from like school grounds keepers. One of the earliest cases involved someone who wore backpacks sprayer and sprayed, you know, weeds around the grounds of school. And it turns out that that backpack spray is often leaked so you can have very high exposures, even more so than a lot of farmers who are often in air-conditioned tabs and aren't exposed to as much. But it's true also that these chemicals pesticide residues get into food and into the water. And of course, it depends on each chemical, how much, and what foods that they get into. And what EPA does is the company will petition EPA both to register a pesticide, right, and are register for a new use of an existing pesticide, but then

also separately for what are cultolarances, which are like maximum residue limits. So basically for soybeans, you can have 20 parts per million glyphosate on soybeans, and that's legal. If it's over 20, it's considered adulterated. Now as to how often there's testing to check for whether tolerances are exceeded or not, that's not done very much. But in any case, those are kind of the major kind of exposure pathways. It's applicators. It's through the skin often or inhalation of vapor or droplets and then food and water. Those are the main ways. And then once it gets a new system, of course, chemicals have different pathways for harming you. I would just add, there's also a really big component kind of a push for using artificial intelligence in the Mahan report, which I think there's much too much confidence in the ability of some of these high-tech procedures to help protect us from harms. I really don't believe in them. And it seems more to me like a way to give Elon Musk's of the world more work to do, you know, more business opportunities for him. And more power, not just more business, but more power to influence the conversation in the direction that he wants it. You know, one of the things that you mentioned quite a bit here has to do with the farmers. And something is going on with the farmers, because the farming sector, there's a lot of support, has been a lot of support for President Trump. And now everything from those USDA cuts that so hurt so many farmers whose contracts depended on those things. But also all the things that Bill is talking about now farmers are waking up to a terrible betrayal, terrible, terrible betrayal. And I hope that Trump is hearing that loud and clear. I assume Bill that you guys are basically left out in the cold. I'm sure they never call you to ask your opinion. Do you have any ability? Obviously you're doing the research. You're letting the public know. Who such means is this? The articles you write. You're letting the public know things that we need to know in order to, you know, knowledge is power. Beyond that, what is your main work? Do you have a lobbying arm? Do you influence congressmen and senators? Tell me about the work that you do. Yeah, we're mostly, we don't really do lobbying too much. Very, very limited part of our work. Mostly we do reports as you said, public education, and then we have a pretty strong legal team. So that's a big part of our strategy for how to change things. We recognize it's not the only way to change the world, but we think it is an important part of the puzzle. So we challenge the regulatory agencies. I do a lot of, you know, there's a whole process, administrative process, from agency like EPA wants to approve the pesticide. They have put out a draft or a proposed decision and those opportunities for public comments. So I'm the one who kind of, you know, scours the science to try to, you know, you know, say pushback on EPA. No, that's not true. You're saying it's because cancer, it actually does. And then it usually were ignored in that process. But those, you know, that feedback to EPA can then be useful when, when, if we decide that we need to sue the agency for violating, you know, pesticide law, which they've often done. And then we can point to these comments and say, you ignored those or you didn't respond to those. And then that can take home. So that's a lot of work that I do, you know, to kind of support our legal team and our lawsuits. And we don't really do the lawsuits against the companies themselves, which is another important kind of legal strategy. There have been lawsuits, for instance, on dicamba. And, you know, as we discussed glyphosate on cancer, but also dicamba for crop damage. The peach farmer from Missouri, I spoke to, I spoke about a while ago, he sued Monsanto at the time before it was taken over by bear and actually won a judgment initially $250 million, which was just extremely, was mostly punitive damages because the jury found that Monsanto's lies and preventations were just so outrageous. Basically, the company knew years beforehand that I can't believe it calls all this damage and went ahead anyway. And was even counting on drift damage to, as a market employee, to tell farmers, either you buy the resistance seed that we sell or you're gonna get slammed with drift, right?

Right.

Protect your neighbor, basically. I mean, they actually use protection from your neighbor, almost like the mafia. So anyway, those, I think, are both valuable strategies. We kind of focus on trying to make the agencies get them to improve and become more honest. if not at least, you know,

I'll sue them to win, you know,

to try to get the hazardous product off the market or to be more restricted. We also work on people's capabilities and other aspects of industrial agriculture. Before we wrap it up here, I think we've all heard enough about GMOs, but would you tell us specifically why are they so dangerous? Yeah, you know, I've been involved with them for a long time from, you know, when I first got involved in this issue in the late 90s, and at first I was looking a lot at potential human health impacts, like from the BT crops as they're known, these are insect resistant crops. They've been engineered to actually produce a toxin, like say in the corn kernel, as well as in the leaves and the roots. It's a toxin that's derived from a bacteria. And I think we had legitimate criticisms. They're one of the concerns that they could cause allergies or gastrointestinal issues. And we lobbied for, you know, better regulation. Also, resistance, we didn't want to see a lot of resistance developing because then you get on a pesticide treadmill where you're always using more toxic solutions to try to kill insects that evolve resistance. But over time, I kind of decided that the, you know, the herbicide resistant crops were a more concern. And those are the most important chemicals. And as I said, they dramatically jacked up use of these weed killers. And they haven't historically received as much attention as insecticides, but they can be really hazardous in their own right, both for human health, like life, state and cancer, as well as the environment. And one thing that we did in 2014, over a decade ago, we filed a petition with the Fish and Wildlife Service to have the monarch butterfly listed as a threat of the species. Under the Endangered Species Act, and it took 10 years, but just in December of last year, just in the outgoing Biden administration, the Fish and Wildlife put out a proposed decision, said, yes, we agree with you, threatened status, which would give them on our important protections.

One reason we did this is because roundup or glyphosate

was one of the big causes for monarchs to climb.

And that's because glyphosate is really, really good

...