Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/category/opinion/)
Slowing or reversing the negative impacts of climate change will need to be an all-hands-on-deck affair. And that means you and me too. We can begin by controlling what in blue blazes is happening in our kitchens.
JBS SA owned Pilgrim's Pride is the second-largest chicken processor in the United States. But now as it turns out Pilgrims Pride is also more crooked than Lombard Street.
We now have an admission of guilt from EPA that it wrongly issued 2018 dicamba registrations for Bayer's XtendiMax herbicide, BASF's Engenia herbicide and Corteva's FeXapan herbicide. New acting assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Michal Freedhoff said as much to EPA staffers in an internal e-mail on March 10 that read in part:
Everybody kept telling us that USDA's new Swine Inspection Service was just dandy. Former USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue literally gushed and fawned over it:
Many 3D observers suggest the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated 3D printing. Now we learn it's just a hop, skip, and a jump from churning out metal and plastic parts to wait for it...ribeye steaks.
Last month Bayer AG offered up its latest Goldilocks offer to settle potential future lawsuits from plaintiffs claiming Roundup herbicide gave them cancer. Bayer is hoping the deal will be judged “just right” by Northern District of California judge Vince Chhabria who after poking through Bayer's first bowl of porridge decided it too hot if not downright unlikely to pass constitutional muster.
Well, times are changing, and Big-Meat won't be able to be so caviler to the shiny new House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis chaired by U.S. Representative Jim Clyburn. The South Carolina Democrat wasted no time after his appointment to demand Big-Meat to account for its COVID response.
So, to summarize, environmentalists hate the dicamba registrations. Farmers hate the dicamba registrations. A huge turnover at the top of EPA is underway due to last November's elections. And the clock is ticking on the start of the 2021 planting season. If that's not a whole bunch of uncertainty surrounding dicamba, I don't know what is. Time is of the essence and the feds and courts need to quickly provide guidance.
Of course, they denied it. We didn't do anything wrong. There ain't any liability! Such was the tired worn-out rhetoric of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation and Tyson Foods, Inc in agreeing to settle a long-running civil suit filed by Maplevale Farms claiming the two Big-Meat giants fixed prices on broiler chickens.
No, I'm thinking about the silos that have created a journalistic us vs. them mentality. The last four years of verbal combat in Washington D.C., and to be honest just about everywhere, has exacerbated a toxic atmosphere akin to the Hatfields and McCoys. It is partisanship on super-steroids.