By Leah Douglas
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -More than 250 groups representing farmers, ranchers, and agrochemical companies urged the Trump administration on Tuesday to seek their input on future activities of the Make America Healthy Again commission, after the body’s first report pointed to pesticides as a possible health risk.
The farm sector has been pushing for more involvement in the work of the commission, established by President Donald Trump in February and named for the social movement aligned with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The commission is tasked with identifying the root causes of chronic disease, and Kennedy has pointed to highly processed food and chemicals such as food dyes as contributing to poor health outcomes.
The MAHA report released in May was produced without adequate input from the farm sector and as a result, “contained numerous errors and distortions that have created unfounded fears about the safety of our food supply,” said the letter sent on Tuesday morning to Kennedy, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.
“The MAHA Commission would benefit from inviting public comment and formally including representatives from food and agriculture in any future reports,” said the letter. Its signatories included the American Farm Bureau Federation and trade groups for corn, soy, livestock, and other farm products.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said the agency welcomes farmers’ input.
“Their perspective is essential to the mission of the MAHA commission, and we look forward to continued dialogue to ensure our work will Make America Healthy Again,” the spokesperson said.
The USDA and EPA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Before the release of the MAHA report, the farm industry had pressed the administration not to mention pesticides, which industry groups say are critical tools for maintaining a competitive American farm sector.
The report, which contained errors including the citation of nonexistent studies, pointed to crop protection tools like pesticides and insecticides as possible contributors to negative health outcomes, but noted that agrochemicals are subject to robust EPA review.
Trump directed the MAHA commission to produce a second report in August that contains a strategy for tackling childhood chronic disease.
Rollins and Kennedy have been working together to advance other MAHA priorities, including urging states to bar junk food and sodas from the nation’s largest food aid program and revising the dietary guidelines that make recommendations on what Americans should eat.
(Reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Rod Nickel)
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