NPR’s Juana Summers speaks with Helena Bottemiller Evich, founder and editor in chief of Food Fix, about tensions between the MAHA movement and President Trump over glyphosate.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Make America Healthy Again supporters are angry, and it’s putting Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a tough spot between his boss and his fans. And here’s why. Last week, President Trump issued an executive order to increase domestic production of glyphosate, which is commonly used as a weed killer. You might know it by the brand name Roundup.
And it immediately ignited an uproar in the MAHA movement. Kennedy and his base have long believed glyphosate is a health risk, but now Kennedy says he supports Trump’s order. So is this the beginning of a fallout between Trump and some members of his base? To help us unpack this, we’re joined now by Helena Bottemiller Evich. She’s founder and editor-in-chief of the Food Fix newsletter. Welcome to the program.
HELENA BOTTEMILLER EVICH: Thanks for having me.
SUMMERS: OK, so just for starters, is this a fallout, a strain in the relationship? Or how would you describe what is happening right now between MAHA and Trump?
BOTTEMILLER EVICH: So I don’t yet see this as a full-blown divorce, but we are definitely seeing a marital spat, and it’s all happening in the public.
SUMMERS: OK, so glyphosate, which is an active ingredient in Roundup, as we mentioned, is at the center of this very sort of public, messy spat. Why is it such a cornerstone to the MAHA agenda?
BOTTEMILLER EVICH: So I think MAHA at its core is really a concern about chronic disease, and there’s a lot of different ways that people plug into this. Some of the MAHA moms that you’ll hear about are concerned about vaccines. Some of them are concerned about environmental toxins. They’re concerned about microplastics.
Pesticides is one of those kind of core concerns, and that’s where glyphosate falls into this. It’s the most commonly used herbicide in the U.S., and a lot of MAHA moms want to see it dramatically reduced or even banned. And that has set up this conflict. We have an administration that is decidedly more deregulatory. They want to be more industry friendly. And this is really a big point of conflict.
SUMMERS: And as I understand it, the science on glyphosate is pretty complicated. There’s strong evidence for an association between the chemical and diseases like lymphoma and Parkinson’s, but the level of exposure matters a lot, is that right?
BOTTEMILLER EVICH: So there is a really active debate in this space. The EPA has ruled that glyphosate is not likely to be a carcinogen. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is more commonly known as IARC – that’s part of the World Health Organization – they ruled that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic. That was mainly looking at animal studies.
One of the key studies that everyone has long pointed to to sort of back up the safety of glyphosate, however, was recently retracted, and that has thrown up this red flag and I think really fueled even more MAHA concern that there are reasons to think that glyphosate might be contributing to cancer. Juries in the U.S. have awarded billions of dollars to individuals who believe their cancer cases were caused by glyphosate. And Bayer, which makes glyphosate, is now under tremendous pressure in the courts.
SUMMERS: Back in 2018, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. won a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the maker of Roundup, arguing that the weed killer likely caused his client’s cancer. So why do you think it is that he is now moving to fall in line with President Trump’s plan to produce more of it in the United States?
BOTTEMILLER EVICH: So what Kennedy has said publicly is that he personally believes that glyphosate does cause cancer. That is not the Trump administration’s official position, to be very clear. He has backed the president’s executive order here, basically saying, look, the U.S. agricultural system currently relies on this, and we can’t just walk away from it. It would be disastrous. He backs up the idea that we need to produce more domestically for national security reasons.
SUMMERS: I know that you have been spending some time reading and hearing from members of this group. Based on what you know and what you’ve learned, how do you think this might end?
BOTTEMILLER EVICH: I really don’t know where all of this is headed, but I think the big central question at the heart of all of this is whether a deregulatory, sort of traditional Republican stance can square with what the MAHA movement fundamentally is asking for, which is a crackdown on toxins in the environment, toxins in the food supply. And they are hoping that at the end of the day, Kennedy and the noise that they make on the outside can maybe shift the Trump administration in their direction. I don’t know that that will work, but that is what they are hoping for.
SUMMERS: Helena Bottemiller Evich is founder and editor-in-chief of the Food Fix newsletter. Thank you.
BOTTEMILLER EVICH: Thanks so much.
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