Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/category/government/)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has allowed Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta to halt its water monitoring program of a pesticide linked to reproductive issues and cancer that is found in the drinking water of millions of Americans because of COVID-19 restrictions.
As more and more Smithfield workers in South Dakota fell ill with COVID-19, the company's workers at a Missouri plant contended with policies that made social distancing almost impossible, according to an affidavit from a plant worker filed in a lawsuit last week.
Four Illinois nursing homes already identified by federal medical authorities as having a history of serious quality issues have suffered outbreaks of the coronavirus in the past two months.
As coronavirus cases mounted at meatpacking plants this month, the federal government granted 15 poultry processors waivers to cut chickens faster, usually by crowding more workers onto their production lines.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector tasked with ensuring safe food quality at meat processing plants died Thursday after testing positive for COVID-19, a source who was on a call in which the federal agency confirmed the death told USA TODAY.
The EPA’s failure to meet its own benchmark was unlawful and a decision to approve Monsanto's dicamba-based herbicide should be vacated, a federal lawsuit filed by a coalition of farmers and conservationists alleges. Documents included as part of the lawsuit show that the EPA ignored its own scientists’ recommendations for a larger buffer zone around fields to protect endangered species and that Monsanto had dozens of off-target incidents during its testing of the herbicide.
This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that soybean farmers in 25 states are now able to spray a pesticide that the agency has determined is likely to cause cancer and drift hundreds of feet from where it is applied.
The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting conducted an eight-month review of health studies, government data and interviews with researchers, undocumented residents and community leaders on the aftermath of the 2018 raid in Mt. Pleasant, finding that families and the community remain traumatized by the events, long after the attention by national media and local support waned.
Crop insurance and other farm support programs are set to receive big cuts in President Trump’s proposed 2021 budget.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Kraft Foods Group, Inc. have reached a tentative second out-of-court agreement in an ongoing saga that stemmed from the food company’s alleged wheat futures market manipulation nearly a decade ago.