They call themselves “Data Center Watchdogs.” Gathering weekly at their local library in Lawrence, Kansas, a small-but-growing group of residents are preparing to battle against a foe they believe will threaten the way of life in this small college town surrounded by farm fields.

The enemy is a data center the group fears will soon target Lawrence and the larger region of Douglas County, Kansas. There are currently no applications to build a data center in Douglas County — but there are massive proposals in nearby towns. The watchdogs believe that a well-organized opposition, and learning from fellow advocates, could discourage developers from bringing in data center projects in the first place.

“We have a really strong culture of wanting to protect and preserve our prime farmland,” said Nancy Thellman, a former county commissioner who lives on a farm on the outskirts of Lawrence in an agricultural urban edge community in the Kaw River Valley.

Located about an hour outside Kansas City, Kansas, Douglas County has an abundance of farmland and the Kansas River running through it. Nestled along the curves of the river sits a 515 megawatt coal power plant. Data centers rely on ample space, water and energy to power servers.

“We have just about everything a data developer could want,” Thellman said.

Kansas is not alone: As companies like Microsoft and Google increase their AI computing capacities, so has their need for data centers to meet unprecedented electricity demands. In the US there are already over 500 operating data centers, with an additional 159 approved or under construction, and 739 active proposals, according to the FracTracker Alliance’s U.S. Data Centers Tracker.

Data centers are often proposed with a slew of economic upsides — jobs, capital investments and tax revenue. Research from Georgia Tech released in March found that when a data center opens in a county, residents see an estimated 3.5% increase in employment, 5% increase in wages, and around a 2% increase in household income. The study found that metropolitan areas tend to benefit more than rural areas.

Still, the study’s lead author, Daniel Yue, found a slight increase in employment in rural counties, and said that in some cases rural governments can still gain tax revenue or infrastructure investments, depending on the tax exemptions in place.

“One of the main benefits … is just straight up tax revenue from places that are able to tax the ongoing capital expenditures of these companies,” said Yue, an assistant professor of Information Technology Management at Georgia Tech.

As one of the organizers of the Douglas County Data Center Watchdogs, Thellman said many residents are uneasy about the potential problems a data center could bring, including a loss of land and water, and noise pollution — the humming sound that data centers generate from their cooling systems.

Another chief concern is that the energy the facilities require competes with — and can raise the price for — residential and other commercial energy needs.

A typical AI-focused data center can use the equivalent electricity as 100,000 households, according to the International Energy Agency. Multinational investment bank Goldman Sachs forecasts global power demand for the centers will jump 50% by 2027 and as much as 165% by the end of the decade.

The Trump administration is encouraging data center expansion. Last year, President Trump signed an Executive Order aimed at facilitating “the rapid and efficient buildout of this infrastructure by easing Federal regulatory burdens.”

Earlier this month, Trump slammed New York Governor Kathy Hochul for imposing the nation’s first state-wide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers.

But communities are fighting back. There are at least 430 local Facebook groups — totaling over 525,000 members — in the US opposing data centers, according to Data Center Opposition Report, which tracks data center opposition in the US.

In Kansas, a bill passed in 2025 allows for a 20-year state and local tax exemption for certain data center projects. Many point to Senate Bill 98 as a key reason the state has seen an unprecedented data center boom, with six active proposals in the state, according to data from Cleanview, which tracks U.S. power infrastructure and data center development. It’s why residents in Douglas County believe there will be more.

“If you don’t have an active application filed in your community yet, you probably will, so get ready for it now, and let them know before they get here that they are not wanted,” Thellman said she read in a guidebook written by organizers in the nearby city of De Soto, Kansas, who are mobilizing against a 2.9 million square-foot data center.

“We see those little communities all around us, really in the midst of the fight of their lives now,” Thellman said.

Lessons from nearby communities

Around 30 minutes northeast of Douglas County, a national developer is proposing one of the biggest data centers in the country. If approved, Cloverleaf’s Project Bluestem would take up nearly 1,000 acres of land in Leavenworth County, Kansas. That’s roughly the size of 750 football fields.

Project Bluestem would be located just south of Tonganoxie. In May, Leavenworth County commissioners passed a 90-day moratorium on data centers, pushed for by the Tongie Data Center WatchDog Group.

“It would destroy the community of Tonganoxie as it is today,” said Jim Karleskint, an organizer with the Tongie Data Center WatchDog Group and former member in the Kansas House of Representatives. He’s particularly concerned about the noise that would disturb nearby schools and nursing homes. “The tone noise from this data center would hurt the people in ways that we can only imagine,” he said.

Jim’s wife Dee is particularly concerned with the impact the noise might have on wildlife.

A University of Michigan study found that noise pollution can affect birds’ behavior, physiology and even reproduction. While the study doesn’t mention data centers specifically, lead author Natalie Madden, a policy analyst at the Defenders of Wildlife, said the impacts are similar. “The noise from data centers could absolutely have impacts on birds and other wildlife in a similar way that any other industrial source would,” Madden said in an email.

Jim and Dee Karleskint have attended meetings in Douglas County, and invited others like Thellman to theirs. “We learn from each other, and that’s the key, because when you’re fighting multi-billion dollar conglomerates, we don’t have the resources they have, and so we have to stick together to glean as much knowledge, support, and information as we can from one another,” Karleskint said.

Nearby in De Soto, Kansas, construction is already underway for a 2.9 million square-foot data center. When the multi-building facility by Beale Infrastructure was first presented last August, it was proposed as a 1.14 million square foot project. Its scope has nearly doubled since then, leaving some residents frustrated.

“I understand why residents have questions when they hear the development is larger than early conceptual illustrations. Those are reasonable questions, and it’s important to distinguish between what was presented conceptually last year and what was actually approved by the City Council,” said De Soto mayor Rick Walker in an email.

Walker said what Beale presented last year was “a preliminary concept,” adding that “the development agreement was not a site plan approval, nor did it establish a maximum building square footage,” he wrote.

Walker also wrote that the project’s “planned electrical capacity remains approximately 600 megawatts, and that capacity has not changed.”

According to the city of De Soto, the project is expected to generate more than $300 million in municipal revenue over a 25-year period through a combination of payments in lieu of taxes, electric franchise fees, local sales taxes on electricity purchases, and property taxes following the expiration of tax abatements.

In an email, a Beale Infrastructure spokesperson said “the project will generate thousands of construction jobs during build out and approximately 50 full-time, on-site roles for each phase, with an average salary expected to exceed $75,000 annually.”

Still, some aren’t convinced the benefits outweigh the risks. “Where are the reports? Where is the information? Where is the data on what these things could potentially do to our community?” Dally Holloway said she’s asked lawmakers during city council meetings in De Soto. Holloway runs the growing national Facebook group “Say NO to data centers,” but is based in De Soto.

Holloway has been organizing against data centers on the municipal, state, and federal level. Her Facebook group has some 175,000 members.

The group started as a way for Holloway to share information with her community. It soon gained traction across the country. “I was hoping it would be a way my community could get involved, but what ended up happening is all of these people from all over the country were like, ‘Dally, I need help. Dally, have you encountered this? Dally, have you done that?’ so I just started listening.”

Dally has created guidebooks, pocketbooks, and even a zine to help others around the country fight data centers. One of Holloway’s guides, “Getting Started: A Quick Guide to Community Coalition Building” breaks down steps to take to build a coalition. “Check minutes, agendas, etc of local zoning and development meetings as well as city councils and mayoral announcements” it reads. “Consider dropping in to a local attorney, introducing yourself, and explaining your group’s goals.” It’s a tip the Tonganoxie group picked up, having held a fundraiser earlier this month to hire an attorney.

Holloway is still focused on her home state, with Kansas holding a governor’s race this November. Holloway’s group wants candidates to sign a pledge, asking them to commit to “ensuring that communities have meaningful input and that appropriate safeguards are in place before projects with significant long term impacts are approved.”

Weighing economic incentives

Thellman acknowledges the potential economic benefits of data centers. “There’s some rural towns that are really struggling.”

“It feels like a lot of these downsides can be mitigated with good regulation and negotiations, and it could bring substantial benefits to the area.” said Yue of Georgia Tech.

Yue said data centers can create jobs through construction and opportunities for electrical and mechanical engineers to keep the computers running, which in some cases can be hired locally.

Residents like Jim Karleskint in Tonganoxie are still skeptical that the 20-something jobs actually required by Senate Bill 98 will be enough. “The construction jobs, there could be some of those, there’ll be very few full-time jobs,” he said, calling it “a joke.”

When asked about the project, Cloverleaf Infrastructure Chief Development Officer Aaron Bilyeu pointed to publicly available numbers on the project’s website, which states that Project Bluestem is “expected to create more than 1,200 construction and permanent jobs over the next three years.”

Yue said many places have spun up training programs aimed at boosting jobs. For example, Microsoft has established several data center academies, partnering with local community colleges — such as Glendale Community College in Arizona and Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, Texas — near their physical data center hubs.

Momentum on moratoriums

Last week, city commissioners in Lawrence approved a two-year moratorium on large-scale data centers.

Previously, land development code in Lawrence allowed data centers in certain industrial areas by right, meaning a proposed project could move forward quickly without public input. Now, any data center development in Lawrence must go through a public process.

The Douglas Data Center Watchdogs believe their fight is still far from over, since there is currently no moratorium in place for Douglas County, meaning a data center could still theoretically be built outside city-limits.

Along with pushing for a moratorium in Douglas County, Thellman said her group is also advocating for a state-wide moratorium such as the one in place in New York, and repealing Senate Bill 98. “Maybe they thought they were doing their states a favor with this kind of aggressive economic development attitude on data centers, but it just really was shortsighted in terms of the kind of downstream effect of it on local communities,” Thellman said.

Thellman, Karleskint and Holloway are fighting their separate battles. Still, Thellman said they continue to keep in touch and support each other, finding more things in common than they had expected. “I know more about other communities across the nation than I ever thought I would, and I feel like I’m bonded with them at the heart and at the pocketbook.”

Four environmental and food advocacy groups sued Oregon regulators last week alleging that the state’s new water quality permits for large-scale animal farms fail to protect waterways and do not include adequate monitoring.

The groups — the Willamette Riverkeeper, Food & Water Watch, Center for Food Safety and Animal Legal Defense Fund — say that the new regulations do not meet national standards under the Clean Water Act and will allow concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, to release excessive manure and associated nutrients and pollutants into rivers. CAFO manure contains nitrogen that can convert into cancer-causing nitrates in water, as well as ammonia, phosphorus, and pathogens like E. coli.

The state’s new permitting, which passed in May and establishes requirements for hundreds of CAFOs in the state for the next five years, establishes how the state will regulate the farms under the federal Clean Water Act. There were 328 CAFOs registered under the previous permit.

The new general permit “does not comply with state and federal laws, regulations, and standards designed to protect water quality and beneficial uses like drinking water, recreation, and wildlife habitat,” the groups wrote in the lawsuit.

“State regulators have capitulated to Big Ag and pushed through a permit that allows factory farms to continue to pollute our waters with far too little oversight,” said Food & Water Watch legal director Tarah Heinzen in a statement.

The new permits mostly prohibit any CAFO discharges to waterways with limited exceptions, and limit manure application when the ground is frozen, which will prevent excess runoff. However, the lawsuit alleges the permits only require monitoring after a violation has taken place, do not include any groundwater monitoring requirements, and do not regulate airborne pollutants at all.

“Because the permit fails to address aerial deposition, it violates the Clean Water Act and Oregon’s water quality protection laws,” the lawsuit says.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture told The New Lede that it cannot respond to ongoing litigation. However, prior to passing the new rules, the state opened up the changes to public comment and received thousands of comments. In its response to concerns over monitoring, the state wrote, “The Department cannot accommodate the requests for monitoring at discharge points because the proposed general permit does not allow facilities to operate with direct discharge points and accordingly, there is no location to monitor.”

The state also defended the exclusion of groundwater monitoring, saying the permit is drafted to comply with all state requirements, including groundwater protection rules.

Critics of the permits say the state needs to crack down on nitrate contamination. The Lower Umatilla Basin in the northeast part of the state has been the epicenter of nitrate contamination for decades. A 2025 state report found that around 40% of the more than 30 tested wells exceeded the federal drinking water standard for nitrates, with CAFO waste, along with fertilizer and wastewater, as the likely causes.

More than 700 US veterinarians are asking Congress to leave out an industry-backed provision from the Farm Bill that would preempt states from having stricter animal welfare laws than other states.

The provision — often referred to as the “Save Our Bacon Act” — was included in the House draft Farm Bill released in May, but was omitted in the Senate draft released last month.The Farm Bill is a massive piece of legislation renewed roughly every five years that guides the federal government’s food and farm policy. The House provision that preempted those state laws has garnered broad support from meat industry associations that argue such state laws increase consumer costs and hurt farmers.

The measure specifically targets two state laws — California’s Proposition 12 and Massachusetts’ Question 3. Both require that hogs, calves and chickens that are on confined farms or sold in the states are raised with adequate room to turn around, lie down and extend their limbs.

The letter, sent Monday to Senate and House leaders and Agricultural Committee chairs in both chambers, urges members to reject any Save Our Bacon Act language in the final Farm Bill text. The Senate is expected to mark up the bill prior to its August recess.

“This harmful legislation would strip states and localities of their rights to pass a wide range of measures protecting animal welfare and public health,” they wrote. “While the debate over Prop 12 is misleadingly being framed as California vs. the Heartland, states across the country, including Arizona, Ohio, Michigan and Florida have also banned the extreme confinement of female pigs.”

The veterinarians specifically pointed to the use of gestation crates by some hog farmers. The metal cages are often so tight around the animal that they cannot turn around or move much.

“Gestation crates severely harm female pigs. As pigs grow during pregnancy, the crate bars press against their bodies, which can lead to sores, injuries, prolapse, and infections,” they wrote, adding that the animals can also suffer muscle weakening, compromised cardiovascular health and mental distress from the cages.

Leave a comment

Industry groups have pushed the Senate to include some form of the Save Our Bacon Act in the final bill. The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) — which has led opposition to California’s Proposition 12, including spearheading a legal challenge that landed at the Supreme Court that upheld the legality of Proposition 12 — said in a statement released after the Senate Farm Bill draft that such state laws create “a patchwork of state animal housing laws that hurts small farmers the hardest,” and increase the cost of food.

“America’s pork producers will continue to advocate for a Prop. 12 fix in the formal farm bill like our livelihood depends on it — because it does,” said NPPC president Rob Brenneman in a statement.

Some veterinarians disagree

Not all veterinarians agree with the letter sent Monday. The American Association of Swine Veterinarians, for example, have also pushed Congress to include provisions in the Farm Bill that will preempt Proposition 12 and Massachusetts’ Question 3. In an April statement, the group said that there’s no single housing system that is optimal in all situations, adding that “scientific literature consistently shows that both individual stalls and group housing can support positive animal welfare outcomes when managed appropriately.”

The veterinarians that sent a letter to lawmakers, however, say the state laws not only improve animal health and welfare but help reduce food safety threats and zoonotic diseases.

“For all of the reasons above, the “Save Our Bacon Act” and any measure like it should be rejected and not included in the Farm Bill or any other legislative package,” they wrote.

The letter comes a week after a US district judge allowed a meatpacking company’s lawsuit against California over Proposition 12 to proceed on the ground that it violates the federal Commerce Clause.

A global shift to mostly plant-based diets with minimal processed foods and red meat, coupled with a large decrease in food waste, would decrease greenhouse gas emissions by more than 85% by 2050 compared to 2020 agricultural emissions, according to a new study.

The study, published Wednesday in Nature, calculated the economic and environmental impacts of people across the world adopting a diet that mostly consists of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts and legumes, with a massive decrease in red meat, ultra-processed foods, dairy and added sugars, along with a halving of global food waste. They found that such changes would slash greenhouse gas emissions and spur an estimated 6% decrease in farmland and a 17% decrease in farm production over the next 25 years when compared to the current trajectory.

The emission decreases are largely due to the estimated reduction in animal agriculture, which accounts for about twice the greenhouse gas emissions compared to crops.

The study assumes global acceptance of the diet shift, but such changes face many obstacles. In the US, for example, health officials have prioritized meat consumption, which is at all-time high levels, and ultra-processed foods still make up a sizable chunk of many people’s diets.

However, the authors say drastic measures are needed for the health of humans and the planet.

“We should consider these scenarios not as a forecast of what will happen, but as a useful early guide,” said Daniel Mason-D’Croz, a co-author of the study and senior research associate at Cornell University, in a statement. He added that such modeling “is a valuable tool to inform actions today for more sustainable, healthy, and just food systems tomorrow.”

Planetary Health Diet

The researchers made their predictions using the “Planetary Health Diet,” which was developed by international researchers who say it is the optimal diet for people’s health, with the side benefit of being more sustainable and healthy for the planet. Last year, a study from the group that developed the diet found that, if adopted, it could prevent 15 million premature deaths each year, mostly by reducing heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.

In the new study, they shifted the focus to the diet’s impact on global agriculture. The dietary shift would decrease the money generated by US farms by about 21% by 2050 compared to 2020. While money generated from livestock farms would decrease by 73%, the production value from crops would go up 20%. US farms — livestock and crops combined — currently generate an estimated $573 billion annually, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

“Transforming food systems … [would lead] to fundamental changes to global agriculture and affect the lives of millions of farmers and food producers,” said Matt Gibson, lead author of the study and a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, in a statement.

“This means confronting powerful groups that profit from the status quo and a global food system that currently fails both those who produce our food and those who should be nourished by it,” he added.

Meat and ultra-processed foods in the US

The study comes as people in the US are eating more meat than ever. An annual Food Industry Association survey released in March showed that the vast majority of Americans view meat as part of a healthy diet and that meat sales hit a record high in 2025, reaching $112 billion

Meat featured prominently in the new US dietary guidelines released in January that emphasized protein from animal products. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the guidelines would “revolutionize” the nation’s food culture. Meat eating has been central to the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement — a slogan and coalition promoted and kickstarted by Kennedy, a carnivore diet adherent himself.

Leave a comment

Americans also get a large percentage of calories from ultra-processed foods. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study examining food consumption from 2021-2023 and found that about 55% of total calories consumed by Americans came from ultra-processed foods. For children, it was nearly 62%.

Sandwiches, sweet bakery products, savory snacks, and sweetened beverages were among the top sources, according to the study.

Unlike meat, Trump administration officials have pushed for a reduction in ultra-processed foods in Americans’ diets. The new dietary guidelines called for “dramatically” reducing highly processed foods.

Editorial intern Julie Zenderoudi explains.

The number of large, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Iowa increased 13% over the past six years, according to a new report. It’s a mounting problem in a state that generates more than 100 million tons of manure annually, contributing to persistent water pollution and health problems.

The report, a mapping project from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), finds that Iowa has roughly 15,309 livestock farms that generate 107 million tons of manure each year — but more than one in four of the farms remain unmonitored by the state. A widely cited previous estimate of manure from Iowa’s largest farms using 2022 US Department of Agriculture data put the total at 55 million tons annually. However, EWG’s estimate included manure from smaller farms and as well as the increase in farms since the previous estimate, said Anne Schechinger, senior director for agriculture and climate research at EWG and co-author of the analysis.

Schechinger believes the report’s findings are significant because Iowa has been grappling with water quality issues and disproportionately high cancer rates, the second highest in the country.

“We know that nitrogen is in manure, Iowa has really serious nitrate issues in drinking water, and nitrate increases the risk of cancer,” she said.

Using aerial and satellite data to map out the facilities, Schechinger and colleague Ethan Bahe, a senior GIS analyst at EWG, also found that the largest CAFO farms — those holding 1,000 or more animal units — increased from 3,936 to 4,444 farms from 2019 to 2025. Animal units are used by regulators to convert animals into equivalent units. While 1,000 animal units equals 1,000 beef cattle, for hogs, 2,500 animals would equal 1,000 animal units.

Those CAFOs, the majority of which are hog farms, account for 29% of Iowa’s animal farms but 60% of its manure.

Chris Jones, a Democrat running for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, said he was somewhat surprised to see how much the hog CAFO number has grown over the past few years, especially as he’s increasingly seen “more concern and dissatisfaction” with pollution from large farms.

“There are people in agriculture that would agree with that, there are people in Republican politics that would agree with that,” said Jones, an author and retired University of Iowa researcher who spent much of his career monitoring and studying water quality in the state.

“People are really feeling like this system that we have here in place when it comes to CAFOs is not delivering beneficial outcomes for everyone,” he said.

Pollution and cancer rates

The report comes as several waterways in the state continue to have elevated levels of nitrates, a cancer-causing byproduct of manure or some fertilizers being discharged or washing out into rivers and streams. A separate EWG report in April found 146 community water systems in Iowa had elevated levels of nitrate at least once between 2021 and 2023. Iowa’s Des Moines and Raccoon rivers are in the top 1% of rivers nationwide for nitrate concentration with 80% of the contamination coming from agriculture.

Just last month, Central Iowa Water Works (CIWW) put water restrictions in place for hundreds of thousands of customers when the utility could not keep up with elevated nitrate levels in the water.

“Conditions have reached a point where mandatory conservation is necessary to protect reliable water service for more than 600,000 people across central Iowa,” said CIWW Executive Director Tami Madsen in a statement.

In addition, Iowa continues to struggle with elevated cancer rates that are driven, at least in part, by nitrates from CAFOs, according to researchers. Iowa has the second-highest rate of cancer in the nation and is only one of three states where cancer is rising, according to the National Institutes of Health.

For many types of cancer, the state’s numbers dwarf national averages. For example, Iowa’s rate of prostate cancer is 129 people per 100,000, compared to the US average of 116 people. The state’s breast cancer rate is 137 people per 100,000, compared to the US average of 131 people. The state’s overall cancer rate is 498 people per 100,000 — 10% higher than the national rate.

“It’s not just the fact that phosphorus from manure is creating algae blooms, which is really bad for recreation, but this manure is a problem that’s contributing to Iowa’s status as a high cancer risk state,” Schechinger said.

Some experts say there is a clear disconnect between public anxiety over Iowa’s rising cancer rates and the actions of state policymakers. “That concern is obviously not being matched by state government and regulatory agencies,” said Silvia Secchi, a researcher and professor at the University of Iowa who studies the environmental impacts of agriculture.

“These are not outsiders or environmentalists wanting answers about CAFOs, these are people who live there who cannot open their windows … people who see their property values decline because they’re next to these operations,” she said. “These are members of the community suffering and not being afforded the kind of protections they should be.”

County level oversight

The EWG analysis found 3,276 livestock operations in Iowa have between 950 and 999 animal units, which puts them just under the 1,000 animal-unit threshold that requires National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) federal water permits and manure management plans.

“Some of these facilities are so close to each other and that proximity is so important on the water quality side,” Bahe said. “If you have two facilities that are just under the large (1,000 animal unit) designation, but they’re considered separate facilities, they don’t need NPDES permits.”

NPDES permits are issued by state regulatory agencies, and each state varies in its CAFO NPDES permitting. Iowa has issued NPDES permits for about 4% of the large CAFO facilities, according to federal estimates.

Researchers and advocates have for decades said that Iowa regulators are vastly undercounting and inadequately regulating CAFOs, Secchi explained. In 2013 the state entered into an agreement with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that, in part, required the state’s Department of Natural Resources, which regulates CAFO pollution, to conduct a statewide survey of CAFOs. In 2017, the state reported back that satellite imagery showed 5,000 additional operations that were previously undetected and unregulated.

“This new report tells me that they still have not learned any lessons,” Secchi said. “This is why we have so many CAFOs in Iowa, because the DNR is not doing their job.”

The Iowa DNR did not return requests for comment on CAFO regulation and permitting.

Jones said the lax enforcement is likely not a “deliberate omission,” by the DNR, but rather “that there just aren’t enough resources within the DNR to track these facilities effectively.”

Schechinger said one policy to address this is for Iowa to shift decision-making and regulation of CAFOs and other livestock farms to the county level.

“Right now, any facility that has over 500 animal units in the state has to have a manure management plan, but the number of inspections done by Iowa DNR for those facilities is very small,” she said. “If the regulation went to the counties, you would actually be seeing more inspections, more checking of those manure management plans, and more enforcement.”

“That’s one idea that I think would have bipartisan support and could make a big difference for the water quality issue,” she added.

Jones agreed. “We absolutely need the counties to have authority over the zoning for these things for new construction, and to have some authority over expansion of existing facilities,” he said.

A US district judge this week allowed one argument in a meatpacking company’s lawsuit against California over the state’s animal welfare law to proceed, while dismissing other aspects of the company’s argument.

The ruling preserves a narrow path for the meat industry to challenge the law. Matt England, president and CEO of Triumph Foods, called the ruling "a win for the pork industry" in a statement. But animal rights groups expressed optimism over the judge's rejection of certain arguments.

The US District Court for the Central District of California ruled on Tuesday that Triumph Foods, a large meatpacking company based in Missouri, could proceed with its challenge to California’s Proposition 12 over allegations that the law violates the federal Commerce Clause. Proposition 12, passed in 2018, requires that hogs, calves and chickens that are on confined farms or sold in the state are raised with adequate room to turn around, lie down and extend their limbs. In the argument allowed to proceed, Triumph Foods alleges that the law allows for some sales of non-compliant meat to be sold at federally inspected California slaughterhouses, which violates the Constitution’s Commerce Clause and puts out of state slaughterhouses at a market disadvantage.

Triumph Foods said this has, in part, led to a “sharp decline in pork volume sales in California and a 2-3% decline in California’s share of national fresh pork sales.”

The defendants — including state Attorney General Rob Bonta — have two weeks to file an answer against the Commerce Clause claim. In their initial filing they argued that Triumph Foods had failed to show the existence of any sales of non-compliant meat in California.

Since the law passed, several meat industry groups have challenged it, along with a similar rule in Massachusetts known as Question 3. They argue such state laws increase consumer costs and hurt farmers. Earlier this month the US Supreme Court denied a separate petition from Triumph Foods in which the company asked the high court to rule on whether federal law preempts the rules imposed under Massachusetts’ Question 3.

Public health, animal rights and environmental groups have long defended Proposition 12 as offering basic protections for farm animals, and that this is a states’ rights issue. Ralph Henry, senior director of litigation at Humane World for Animals, an intervenor in the California case, was optimistic about the district court’s ruling this week.

“We’re basically down to litigating one inconsequential exception in the law and, even if that exception were to go away, it would have minimal effect and would not undermine the intent and value of the statute,” Henry said.

Henry said the remaining argument that the judge said can move forward applies to a provision that non-compliant pork processed at a federally inspected slaughterhouse could be sold from that slaughterhouse. “But if you’re a restaurant buying that non-compliant pork or a distributor buying that non-compliant pork, you can’t further sell it to anybody,” he said, adding that the plaintiffs have not identified that any such sales have happened.

“This is an animal welfare and public health measure … and so no aspect of the law, even this one narrow provision about it not applying to sales that might happen at less than three dozen federally inspected slaughterhouses in California, undermines those animal welfare and public health values,” Henry said.

England, however, said the court found Triumph Foods “raised valid claims regarding the constitutional limits of state regulation.”

“This ruling represents an important step forward and marks the first time a court has allowed any challenge against Proposition 12 to proceed,” he said.

Farm Bill implications

The California ruling this week comes as the future of Proposition 12 has featured prominently in ongoing Farm Bill discussions in Congress. The Farm Bill is a massive piece of legislation renewed roughly every five years that guides the federal government’s food and farm policy.

The House draft version of the Farm Bill, released in May, contained a provision commonly referred to as the “Save Our Bacon Act” that specifically targeted Proposition 12 and would bar state or local governments from having protections for animals at farms or those sold within the state that differ from other states’ rules.

“Producers of covered livestock have a federal right to raise and market their covered livestock in interstate commerce,” the House Farm Bill draft reads.

The Senate draft, however, did not contain such a provision. The Senate is expected to mark up the bill prior to its August recess.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last week it aims to rescind a series of Biden-era rules that were designed to protect farmers from any unfair practices by the large meat companies that dominate the market.

Supporters of the rules say they helped protect farmers from retaliatory and discriminatory practices and bolstered transparency in contracts and payments. Removing the rules will prioritize corporate interests over the financial well-being and treatment of farmers, critics said.

The primary beneficiaries of the rules rollback would be just four meat companies — Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef. The four control an estimated 85% of the beef market and 67% of the pork market.

The plan to rescind the rules against “illegal abuse from meat packers and chicken companies is a real slap in the face to hard-working people who have for years put up with unfair, deceptive and retaliatory practices that pervade livestock and poultry markets,” said Emily Miller, a staff attorney at Food & Water Watch, which has advocated on behalf of the rules against challenges from the meat industry.

The three rules flagged by the USDA to rescind are all specific to poultry and livestock farmers. The Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity rule “prohibited practices relating to discrimination, retaliation and deception in contracting” and also protected farmers’ rights to participate in co-ops and other business relationships. The Transparency in Poultry Grower Contracting and Tournaments rule required that chicken companies disclose information to contract farmers before and during the duration of contracts.

And the Poultry Grower Payment Systems and Capital Improvement Systems rule sought to prevent chicken companies from engaging in unfair or deceptive practices against farmers. Meat companies use a “tournament” or ranking system in contracting and setting up payment with poultry farmers. Miller said it’s often a “system that pits farmers against each other.”

“It rewards those who perform above average with extra pay docked from the paychecks of those who perform below average,” she said, adding that the rule sought to prevent such practices.

The three rules fall under the Packers and Stockyards Act that was passed more than a century ago and addressed discrimination and antitrust issues. The USDA and other federal agencies, however, have used the Packers and Stockyards Act in recent years to pursue antitrust cases.

Leave a comment

In one high-profile case, the US Department of Justice brought a complaint against Cargill over allegations that its subsidiary company Wayne Sanderson Farms “engaged in a conspiracy with other poultry processors to share sensitive compensation information for processing plant workers.” In a 2024 settlement, Wayne Sanderson Farms was barred from using or sharing “competitively sensitive information about compensation for poultry processing workers.”

Miller said, however, the new rules were needed as the original Act had become largely ineffective. When announcing the new rules, the Biden administration said they would “modernize” the Packers and Stockyards Act with “clearer” standards.

“It has become very difficult for farmers and ranchers to actually vindicate their rights under this law,” she said. “The goal of these regulatory efforts was to clarify express regulation of what is and what is not allowed under federal law.”

Meat companies’ opposition

Meat company interests have long fought the rules that are now proposed to be scrapped, saying they were unlawful and created unnecessary and burdensome requirements for companies.

The National Chicken Council, Meat Institute, Southwest Meat Association, and the Texas Broiler Council previously sued the USDA to overturn the Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity rule, for example.

The groups argued the rule would cost meat companies billions of dollars to comply, increase meat costs for consumers and would exceed the USDA’s authority to regulate the market.

The Meat Institute did not return requests for comment on the USDA’s proposal to remove the rules. The National Chicken Council referred The New Lede to past statements on the rules, including from past council president Mike Brown, who called the Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity rule “absurd” when it was put forth in 2024. Brown said at the time that the rule was driven by “far-left activists, anecdotes from a handful of disgruntled growers, and trial attorneys who are seeking to shape the regulatory environment to line their own pockets.”

A USDA spokesperson said the agency is “reviewing these rules and conducting thorough analyses” to examine if the rules are consistent with the Trump administration’s 2025 Executive Order on “Unleashing Prosperity through Deregulation.”

In addition, a court filing in February from USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins indicated the agency was revising the Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity rule because it may not comply with President Trump’s executive orders that restrict Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs across the federal government.

The proposed changes were listed in the Office of Management and Budget’s USDA rule list and the changes will next go to a public comment period.

Bill Bullard, CEO of R-Calf, a cattle producer trade organization that has advocated for the rules on the chopping block, said it wasn’t clear yet if the USDA intends to “revert back to the hands-off era and let the packers continually exert abusive market power to harm producers … [or] write a better rule.”

“On the surface, it looks like the former,” he said. “All the money the USDA is making available to smaller packers will be for naught if USDA doesn’t simultaneously rein in the abuse market power of the dominant packers.”

Large concentrated hog farms that send manure contamination into local waterways not only impact human health but threaten the existence of more than a dozen endangered species, according to a new study.

Researchers examined the overlap between endangered species and hog concentrated animal feeding operations, CAFOs, in the three highest hog-producing states — Iowa, Minnesota and North Carolina — and found that 17 aquatic species that are endangered, threatened, or under review for listing share watersheds with hog CAFOs. For 10 of these species, the shared watersheds are listed as “critical habitat,” meaning areas that are essential to the species’ survival.

The researchers say CAFO manure leaching into waterways further threatens these species given the increased nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen that CAFOs can discharge into water, which can slow species’ development and growth, impair feeding and spawning areas, and kill species by reducing oxygen and spurring algal blooms.

They allege that lax federal oversight means regulators in charge of protecting these species are not able to fully account for CAFO pollution, which can also harm human health via excessive nitrates in waterways and air pollution.

“Increased transparency and reporting from CAFOs regarding their locations, manure management practices, and pollution discharges will be critical for improved protection of sensitive species,” the authors wrote.

“Haphazard and limited” regulation

The researchers used a mix of state and federal data to estimate the CAFO overlap with endangered or threatened species. The 17 aquatic species included nine freshwater mussels, six fish, a snail and an amphibian. Eleven species are federally endangered, four are threatened, one is proposed as threatened, and another is under review. They found six of the species have more than 100 hog CAFOs within their habitat ranges.

Kemp Burdette, executive director and riverkeeper for Cape Fear River Watch, said “of course long-term increases in bacteria, nutrients and other pollutants from CAFOs being continually discharged into a watershed are going to impact every species — certainly endangered species.”

Burdette added that the study is likely underestimating CAFO-driven pollution in North Carolina since it is only looking at hog waste. “North Carolina is now the leading producer of poultry in the United States … so, in addition to the hog farms, that’s more nutrients, more bacteria, more heavy metals, more antibiotics, and all of the things that could impact endangered species.”

Mustafa Saifuddin, lead author of the new study and a staff scientist with the Sustainable Food and Farming Program at Earthjustice, said it’s important to examine CAFOs near endangered species because the facilities are not all regulated.

According to the most recent US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data from 2024, only 32% of US CAFOs have National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits, which are required by the Clean Water Act for facilities that discharge water pollution.

“The regulation of water pollution from CAFOs is haphazard and limited and many are able to discharge water pollutants without getting federal permits,” Saifuddin said.

NPDES permits are issued by state regulatory agencies. Each state varies in its CAFO NPDES permitting. For example, Iowa, which has the most CAFOs of any state, has issued NPDES permits for about 4% of the facilities, according to federal estimates.

The EPA acknowledged this lack of oversight in a 2022 report. “While many waters are affected by pollutants from CAFOs, many CAFOs often claim that they do not discharge, and EPA and state permitting agencies lack the resources to regularly inspect these facilities to assess these claims, particularly since discharges often only occur during certain weather conditions,” the report said.

Federal CAFO subcommittee stopped meeting

Saifuddin said the study was prompted by a petition from dozens of environmental and health groups in 2022 urging the EPA to increase oversight of CAFOs. It was well-established that “these facilities are contributing to water, air pollution, and climate change after decades of studies and concerns raised by frontline communities, we don’t need more analysis there,” Saifuddin said, adding that there was little data on CAFO pollution and endangered or threatened species.

In response to the petition, the agency created a federal advisory committee to give recommendations for addressing CAFO water pollution.

Alexis Andiman, a senior attorney at Earthjustice who was on the committee along with other representatives from other environmental groups, industry state agencies, said they “met a number of times but have not met since the Trump administration took office.” The EPA lists the committee as “inactive.”

“EPA and state agencies just don’t have the resources necessary to ensure that each discharging CAFO has the required permit, which is why we urged the EPA to shift the burden so CAFOs would have to either obtain a permit or explain that they don’t require one rather than EPA and state agencies having to go out and prove that CAFOs are discharging,” Andiman said.

US Fish and Wildlife acknowledges some threats

Despite a lack of federal monitoring and regulation for a vast majority of CAFOs, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which oversees endangered and threatened species, had already enlisted CAFOs as threats to two of the threatened species in the new study — the Neuse River waterdog and Atlantic pigtoe — and two of the endangered species — dwarf wedgemussel and Carolina madtom.

An FWS spokesperson said in an email that it doesn’t comment on research authored outside the agency.

Saifuddin and colleagues recommended that, in addition to federal agencies more tightly regulating and monitoring CAFOs, operations could reduce the amount of animals they hold and bolster their manure storage.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should require cancer warnings on all pesticide products containing ingredients the agency has found show evidence of carcinogenicity, according to an emergency petition filed Wednesday by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental health advocacy group.

The petition comes after the Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety earlier this year released analyzes of federal data revealing that the EPA has only required cancer warnings on less than 2% of thousands of pesticide products that contain an active ingredient the agency has found are linked to cancer.

“It’s more important than ever for the EPA to finally start requiring pesticide companies to put cancer warnings on products the agency itself has linked to cancer,” Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement. “We’re asking for something ridiculously easy. Just warn the public of the serious health risks the EPA already knows about. In other words, do your job.”

The petition, addressed to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and three other top EPA officials, requests that the agency initiate rulemaking actions to require cancer warnings on labels for all pesticide products that contain an active ingredient that is determined to be a probable, likely or possible carcinogen, or has suggestive evidence of carcinogenicity for humans.

The petition notes that many studies over several decades have linked pesticide exposure to cancers, including a 2024 study demonstrating an association between pesticide use and increased incidence of leukemia; non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; bladder, colon, lung, and pancreatic cancer.

The petition states that as of 2024, the EPA has concluded that 199 pesticide active ingredients have at least some evidence of carcinogenicity and 124 of these active ingredients are still registered for use in over 4,000 end-use products. Despite the links to cancer, the EPA-approved labels has required cancer warnings for only six active ingredients, the petition states.

When asked about the petition, the EPA said only that it would evaluate the petition as it does all others.

The EPA has long been accused of lax regulation of pesticides, which are commonly used in agriculture to produce food as well as in household and commercial settings to control bugs, weeds and other pests. But under the Trump administration, the pesticide industry has found particular favor, critics say.

The administration earlier this year issued an executive order protecting the production of glyphosate, a weedkiller classified as a probable human carcinogen by cancer experts of the World Health Organization. The administration urged the US Supreme Court to rule that pesticide companies are protected from “failure-to-warn” consumer lawsuits, which the court did last month. And last week, the agency approved multiple new pesticides that come with an array of health concerns.

Featured image by Getty Images for Unsplash+.

This year’s Fourth of July celebrations were marked by extremes, as communities across the country commemorated America’s 250th independence day with fireworks, parades, and lookalike contests. The holiday weekend was also marked by record-setting temperatures and event cancellations due to extreme heat.

Cities along the nation’s northeast corridor such as Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York saw temperatures upwards of 100 degrees.

Washington experienced its hottest Fourth of July on record, with temperatures reaching 102 degrees. Philadelphia saw three consecutive days above 101 degrees for the first time on record, and Atlantic City, New Jersey tied its all-time hottest temperature of 106 degrees over the weekend.

In New Jersey, officials said at least 29 people died from heat-related illnesses. The Fourth of July heatwave comes after weeks of record-breaking heat in Europe, which caused over 2,000 excess deaths in France alone.

Now, a group of scientists say such temperatures would have been unheard of in a pre-industrial world, before the advent of fossil fuels.

“On America’s 250th birthday, our study gives a clear reality check,” Theodore Keeping, study co-author and extreme weather researcher at Imperial College London, said in a press release.

“The climate the country has today is fundamentally different to the one it had when the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence,” Keeping added.

“The climate the country has today is fundamentally different to the one it had when the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.” — Theodore Keeping, Imperial College London

A study released by World Weather Attribution analyzed a 5-day window around the Fourth of July weekend. Researchers used historical records dating back to 1950, real-time data, and weather forecasts.

The authors determined that in a preindustrial world, “temperatures as high as those forecast in early July 2026 would have been so extreme as to be virtually impossible,” the report stated.

In attribution studies such as this one, researchers compare models consistent with present observations versus those that simulate an earth without human activities — in other words, “Planet B,” said Baylor Fox-Kemper, professor of earth, environmental, and planetary Sciences at Brown University.

“It’s more and more clear from the data that we couldn’t be seeing these extreme temperatures that we’re seeing today unless we had this change in background with climate change,” said David Keellings, professor of geography at the University of Florida.

Urban heat island affect

In big cities, extreme heat tends to be particularly dangerous due to the urban heat island effect. It’s a phenomenon where buildings and roads trap heat and reduce nighttime cooling.

“The city’s always going to be hotter because of all those man-made materials, the steel, the asphalt, the glass, the buildings — everything radiates heat,” explained Keellings, whose research focuses on climate extremes.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the urban heat island effect is only bound to get worse in coming years.

It’s a fact that doesn’t surprise Keellings. The urban heat island effect compounded with climate change increases the probability of extreme temperatures. “When you put all of that together, it just means that cities in the US are going to be hotter and hotter and hotter,” he said.

The study also noted that historically redlined neighborhoods — communities that were systematically denied mortgages and insurance due to racial discrimination — are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat events. The authors cited findings which showed that redlined communities, which tend to be low income, can experience temperatures up to 7°C hotter than non-redlined neighborhoods.

“If you look at big cities in the US, there is a huge amount of inequality, both in terms of wealth, but also just in terms of the geography of where people live,” said Keellings. “It does make a big difference to how many people are dying and who’s dying,” he said.

Keellings is skeptical about whether this report and others like it will have an impact on policy. “Science is not really driving policy in terms of climate change,” he said. Still, he’s hopeful of its impact on public perception around extreme weather events.

Fox-Kemper from Brown agrees, viewing weather attribution studies as a valuable communication tool for the public.

“From a public perception we notice big events, we notice huge snowstorms, we notice summer heat waves, we notice flooding events,” he said. “Connecting those pieces together to the extent that we can with the accurate scientific justification is an important part of communicating what it means when the statistics change.”

Featured Image: Fujiphilm For Unsplash+

Expansion at California dairy farms that tap into state and federal incentives to build digesters that turn manure into gas wipes out an estimated 9% of the farms’ purported greenhouse gas reductions, according to a new pre-print study.

The study, which is in pre-print form and is not yet published, adds to evidence that anaerobic digesters increasingly used to turn loads of manure from large-scale dairy farms and other concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) across the US into usable gas incentivize expansion at already large and concentrated farms, and lead to more of the climate-warming emissions the digesters aim to mitigate.

It also comes as the US Department of Agriculture has issued a moratorium on loan guarantees for anaerobic digesters — many of which are issued for manure digesters — through the end of 2026 due to “persistent and escalating concerns” about performance and financial solvency.

The researchers used federal, state and satellite data to analyze barn size and herd expansion at California dairy farms that received financial incentives to build a manure digester over the past decade. They found that within three years of when farms anticipated or started digester construction, barn sizes grew an average of 19,644 square feet, which means each farm could house an estimated 243 additional mature dairy cows.

Varun Magesh, lead author of the study and a nonresident affiliate with Stanford’s RegLab and a student at Harvard Law School, stressed that the study does not really measure the number of new cows at farms but the number of cows the new facilities could hold. “And we’re taking that as a proxy for how many cows a facility is processing each year,” he said.

The study adds to evidence that the addition of a digester creates a “skewed economic incentive,” said Brent Kim, an assistant scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies digesters but was not involved in the new study.

“The value of the manure starts to compete with the value of the milk. So if you’re a producer, that is going to push the logic that if there’s additional kickbacks for manure, and they made this big investment, they’re going to get bigger,” he said.

Magesh said California’s dairy farms, like most farms nationwide, are increasingly consolidating.

“The largest farms get larger, the smallest farms shrink and go away,” he said. “This is hard to untangle from the effect of digesters because the large farms adding digesters are also the most profitable.”

State officials, however, said that California herd sizes fluctuate for a variety of reasons and that the addition of manure digesters across the state has reduced the industry’s methane emissions.

“Decisions about herd size are made by individual dairy producers based on a wide range of market and economic factors that are outside [of state authority],” said Jay Van Rein, a spokesperson for the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Van Rein said manure digesters remain an “important tool for reducing methane emissions from California’s dairy sector.”

Manure digester incentives

There are an estimated 394 manure-based digesters operating in the US, with more than 70 under construction, representing a 55% increase over the past decade. California leads the nation in manure digesters — it has an estimated 123 dairy farm waste digesters alone — in large part because of two incentive programs.

The state’s Dairy Digester Research and Development Program, run by the California Department of Food & Agriculture, provides grants for dairy farms to install manure digesters. In addition California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) gives credits to digesters in California and beyond for captured methane.

Proponents of manure digesters point to reductions in climate-warming emissions — especially methane — from animal waste. Manure digesters reduced greenhouse gases by more than 13 million metric tons in 2023, according to the most recent data available from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In California, researchers estimate manure digesters decrease methane emissions by 80% over farms that use open air lagoons and storage pits. The California Department of Food and Agriculture estimates that dairy digester projects that the agency has helped fund reduce total methane emissions from manure management in California by nearly 30% — which is more than 8% percent of the state’s total agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.

Digesters “also generate renewable energy — such as biogas, renewable natural gas, and hydrogen — that can displace diesel and other fossil fuels, contributing to cleaner air in the Central Valley and statewide,” Van Rein said.

Magesh, however, said the study shows the state may be miscalculating the emissions savings from manure digesters and underperforming on the LCFS policy goal. Herd expansion increases the amount of methane — a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide — from farms. Methane is often converted to a “carbon dioxide equivalent” to measure its climate impact. Magesh and colleagues estimate the additional cows that would fill the new barn space would lead to approximately 1,658 additional metric tons of CO2-equivalent methane emissions per year at each farm.

California’s Dairy Digester Research & Development Program estimates the average emissions reductions from manure digesters is 17,563 metric CO2-equivalent methane emissions per year, meaning the expanded herd size could wipe out approximately 9% of claimed emissions reductions.

“Industry can argue all they want about how digesters are going to solve all of these problems but many of these problems stem from the core problem of having thousands of animals concentrated in one place,” Kim said.

“So if it’s making these operations bigger — and the evidence certainly seems to suggest it is — that’s going to exacerbate all of the potential public health concerns of living next to these farms,” he added.

Methane leaks

In addition to expanded herds, manure digester leaks can wipe out methane emission reductions, according to a separate study published by University of California, Riverside researchers in March. They used satellite and airborne observations of 98 manure digesters in the state and tracked emissions.

They saw some leaks that were emitting methane at 10 times higher rates than open manure lagoons.

“For the most part, the digesters are working well,” Alyssa Valdez, a University of California, Riverside climate scientist and lead study author, said in a statement. “But the few leaks that happen, they make a huge impact.”

A federal judge overseeing nationwide litigation involving allegations that exposure to paraquat weed killing products causes Parkinson’s disease is applying pressure to plaintiffs who are not accepting settlement agreements proposed by paraquat maker Syngenta.

US District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel has ordered plaintiffs who do not agree to the terms of Syngenta’s settlement plan to meet with a “special master” by mid-July to ensure that they are “making a fully informed decision not to participate.” Additionally, the judge has required that many plaintiffs choosing to opt out of the settlement undergo depositions by early August, along with “narrow third-party discovery” related to their use of paraquat.

The judge noted that a significant number of plaintiffs choosing not to participate in the settlement come from just a few law firms. The judge cited as an example the Nachawati Law Group, noting that out of 217 of the firm’s paraquat clients, 183 had opted out of the settlement.

“The Court would like to gain a better understanding of the possible reasons for this high number of opt-out cases,” Rosenstengel wrote in a recent order.

The judge selected a portion of each law firm’s plaintiffs for a “full work-up.”

The actions by Rosenstengel are unusual in such cases, according to several lawyers who declined to comment on the record but said without attribution that they see the tactics as undue pressure on plaintiffs, many who are advanced in age and suffering from the debilitating conditions that come with Parkinson’s.

The moves by the judge come roughly a year after Syngenta signed a master settlement agreement seeking to end the litigation that has spawned more than 8,000 cases around the US. Judge Rosenstengel has blocked cases from moving forward to trial since the settlement effort was announced, ordering repeated stays “to allow the settlement process to unfold.”

Judge Rosenstengel declined to comment. But three attorneys selected by the judge as co-lead counsel in the paraquat litigation issued a statement applauding the moves by Judge Rosenstengel.

“Our focus remains on securing fair compensation for all those afflicted by Parkinson’s disease due to their exposure to paraquat. We appreciate Judge Rosenstengel’s efforts to ensure all plaintiffs are fully informed of the benefits they may be eligible for under the settlement program,” attorneys Khaldoun Baghdadi, Sarah Shoemake Doles, and Peter Flowers said in the statement.

Last year, Judge Rosenstengel threatened to sanction one attorney who was raising questions about the fairness of the settlement plan. In an October hearing over the issue of sanctioning attorney Aimee Wagstaff, Judge Rosenstengel said Wagstaff appeared to be trying to “subvert” the settlement process and said “a lot of work went into this settlement and I want to see it move forward without people trying to attack it.”

Judge Rosenstengel is overseeing what is known as multidistrict litigation (MDL) for paraquat cases. In her orders, she has cited the “broad authority” granted to her by federal rules to facilitate “just, speedy and inexpensive disposition” of actions before her.

Each of the lawsuits alleges that Syngenta failed to warn plaintiffs of evidence that exposure to its paraquat products could cause Parkinson’s disease, an incurable and progressive brain disease that commonly comes with life-threatening complications.

Many cases have been set for trial in courts around the country over the course of the last few years, but none has gone to trial as the company prioritized settling outside of court. (In 2022 and 2023, The New Lede and The Guardian revealed a trove of internal corporate documents showing the company was aware of – and concerned about – science connecting paraquat to Parkinson’s decades ago, but worked to invalidate that research instead of warning users.)

The master settlement, the terms of which have not been made public, has not proven popular with many plaintiffs, some lawyers said, because the financial payouts being offered to individual plaintiffs are low and would leave little compensation after deductions for medical liens and attorney’s fees.

Some attorneys pegged the average payouts around $100,000 or less per plaintiff. Drugwatch, an advocacy and analysis arm of the Wilson Firm, reported that the paraquat settlements “could range from $20,000 to $1.5 million.”

Parkinson’s affects nerve cells in the brain, leading in advanced cases to severe physical debilitation and often dementia. Many Parkinson’s experts say the disease can be caused by a range of factors, including exposure to pesticides such as paraquat, as well as other chemicals.

Syngenta has always maintained that the evidence linking paraquat to Parkinson’s disease is “fragmentary” and “inconclusive.” But numerous scientific studies have found that paraquat damages cells in the brain in ways that can lead to Parkinson’s.

Paraquat was introduced in the 1960s by a predecessor to Syngenta, which is based in Switzerland but is a Chinese-owned entity. Paraquat is commonly used by farmers to control weeds before planting their crops and to dry out crops for harvest. In the United States, the chemical is used in orchards, wheat fields, pastures where livestock graze, cotton fields and elsewhere.

Syngenta said earlier this year it will stop making paraquat.

Last month, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that limits the claims plaintiffs can make against pesticide companies, which may influence how plaintiffs evaluate settlement offers.

Plans by the Trump administration to roll back regulations on chemical facility safety will allow for the continued rise in industrial chemical accidents, which are already up by 50% since 2021, a watchdog group warned this week.

The administration is making an “appalling” divestment in chemical safety, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), and the risk is heightened by the country’s aging industrial infrastructure.

“There doesn’t appear to be any concerted federal effort to either help industry or to monitor what’s going on,” said Jeff Ruch, senior counsel to PEER.

There were 131 industrial accidents resulting in chemical releases last year, up from 83 in 2021, according to reports filed with the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB).

Further, accidents involving injuries or fatalities rose from 60 incidents to 89 during the same period, and were up more than 20% in the last year. The statistics were gathered after a lawsuit filed by PEER and others forced the federal government to implement a mandatory reporting system for industrial chemical disasters.

According to the nonprofit Coming Clean, which helps track chemical incidents in the US, there have been at least 1,463 hazardous chemical incidents since January 2021, an average of approximately five incidents every week.

The warning from PEER comes after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in February proposed the Common Sense Approach to Chemical Accident Prevention rule. The rule aims to reverse previously adopted EPA safety requirements, such as a third-party audit after a serious chemical incident.

The rule also proposes to remove or modify many of the provisions currently in place to make facility information more publicly available.

The EPA’s website states the proposed amendments seek to improve chemical process safety by “avoiding duplicative requirements,” realigning program requirements with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Process Safety Management requirements, and eliminating unnecessary burdens.

But some observers say that OSHA requirements aren’t as stringent as the EPA’s.

“It’s very common in this administration. They talk about realigning with OSHA requirements. Well, the OSHA requirements are always weaker than the EPA requirements,” said Adam Finkel, an environmental health sciences professor at the University of Michigan, who was the director of health standards for OSHA from 1995 to 2000.

“Under the guise of harmonization, it’s always in the direction of ‘let’s pick the weaker one and make the stronger agency do worse,’” Finkel said.

Ruch agreed. “The idea that OSHA provides a meaningful safeguard is somewhat fanciful,” he said.

More high-profile incidents

Advocates at PEER point to recent high-profile incidents as another reason not to further repeal current chemical safety regulations.

In May, a chemical tank at a GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove, California overheated and risked exploding, forcing thousands of residents to flee their homes. That same week, a chemical tank rupture at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging mill in Longview, Washington, killed 11 people.

“Not all these incidents make the national news,” said Ruch. “In the case of Washington, 11 workers died, so those situations where occupational safety and health remains sort of … unexplored territory, and that nobody’s paying attention to it in an affirmative way,” he said.

“Not all these incidents make the national news.” – Jeff Ruch, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility

In the face of federal rollbacks, some experts said individual states also play a role when it comes to safety.

“It’s true there might be rollbacks at the federal level, but that doesn’t mean the state of New York and the state of New Jersey, or whatever state across the country, doesn’t have its own rules and regulations on handling toxic chemicals,” said Jeffrey Laskin, professor of environmental & occupational health at Rutgers University. “It’s not like everything is abandoned. Much of it falls upon the states, which often have very strong regulations.”

According to the EPA, the proposed rule would result in annualized cost savings of between $234.7 million to 241.9 million.

However, observers say cost is only part of the equation. “There’s no question every time you have federal regulation, in particular, but state, too, that there’s a cost to it, and there’s always a balance between, is it really going to be harmful? Versus how expensive it might be,” Laskin said.

“Usually in the past it’s erred on the side of trying to protect the worker as well as the local community as much as possible,” he said.

In a statement, the EPA said it’s “reviewing and considering comments submitted during the public comment period,” adding that “EPA continues to work towards completing the final rule in late 2026.”

Photo by Getty Images For Unsplash+

Amid a flurry of high-profile US Supreme Court rulings, a case that the high court refused to take up has animal welfare advocates claiming a big win.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a petition to review the case of Triumph Foods, LLC v. Campbell, which sought to override a Massachusetts’ animal welfare law known as Question 3. Petitioners wanted the high court to find that the federal law preempts the rules imposed by Massachusetts. The law — which is similar to California’s Proposition 12 law — requires that hogs, calves and chickens that are on confined farms or sold in the state are raised with adequate room to turn around, lie down and extend their limbs.

A brief submitted to the Supreme Court by 24 states in support of Triumph Foods said Question 3 “appears only to regulate sales of pork that occur in Massachusetts. But its reach is much broader.” The state law “denies market access to out-of-state pork farmers and processors unless their practices comply with Massachusetts’s mandates,” the brief said, adding that Question 3 would raise the estimated cost to raise a sow from between $1,600 and $2,500 up to $3,400.

Triumph Foods cited the court’s June 25 ruling in favor of the former Monsanto pesticide company as a precedent that should apply in its case, arguing that state laws cannot preempt federal regulation. In the Monsanto case, the Supreme Court ruled that a federal law regulating pesticides bars states from enforcing claims related to labeling.

In an opposition brief, Massachusetts’ Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, the named defendant in the case, argued that “petitioners have provided no evidence to support the dire predictions within their complaint of ‘enormous costs on pork farmers.’”

The Supreme Court’s decision not to take up the case comes after the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued an opinion in 2025 that upheld Question 3.

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court declined to review one more tedious pork industry challenge to a voter-approved state farm animal welfare law,” said Rebecca Cary, managing attorney at Humane World for Animals. “The law has now been upheld at every level of the federal judiciary, confirming that Question 3 is constitutional and not preempted by federal law.”

Triumph Foods did not return a request for comment on the petition denial.

The petition comes as challenges to California’s and Massachusetts’ laws are also playing out in federal policy discussions, as industry groups have pushed Congress to include a provision — often referred to as the “Save Our Bacon Act” — in the upcoming Farm Bill. The House draft included such a provision, while the Senate version, released last week, did not.

Rob Brenneman, president of the National Pork Producers Council, which has led Save Our Bacon Act advocacy and spearheaded the Proposition 12 legal challenge that landed at the Supreme Court, said in a statement that “America’s pork producers will continue to advocate for a Prop. 12 fix in the formal farm bill like our livelihood depends on it — because it does.”

However, the Save Our Bacon Act faces an uphill battle. Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, tweeted his opposition to any form of a Save Our Bacon Act making it into the Senate Farm Bill and vowed he “will fight to keep it out.”

“Leader Schumer’s opposition to the Save Our Bacon Act is a major blow to Big Pork’s campaign to erase animal welfare laws and override the will of voters,” said Matthew Dominguez, executive director of the farmed animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming. “The Senate Farm Bill’s exclusion of this dangerous provision shows that Congress is hearing the growing opposition to this industry power grab.”

US regulators will hold a forum this summer to explore safety concerns surrounding paraquat weed killer, a pesticide used for decades in farm fields that has been linked to health risks that include Parkinson’s disease.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Tuesday that it will host a roundtable to hear from scientists, farmworkers, community advocates, and others to discuss the “documented safety challenges associated with the chemical,” and explore “potential solutions and alternatives.”

The agency did not specify a date or location, but said details would be announced later. An EPA spokesperson said the agency could not yet say if the event will be open to the public.

The use of paraquat in agriculture and elsewhere has been under scrutiny for the last few years, largely due to mounting scientific research connecting chronic exposure to harm to the brain. As well, litigation brought by Parkinson’s sufferers uncovered internal corporate records showing paraquat maker Syngenta and former paraquat distributor Chevron had concerns about chronic health harms that began decades ago, but the companies never warned users and instead worked to hide the risks.

The EPA has not confirmed a connection between paraquat and Parkinson’s disease, but has expressed concerns about the use of the pesticide. In November, the agency said that fresh data raised questions about paraquat’s ability to volatize and move beyond areas where it is sprayed, potentially causing “non-occupational bystander inhalation exposure.”

The EPA roundtable is expected to address the “the state of the science informing EPA’s ongoing reassessment,” and the “range of possible protective measures and alternative approaches,” the agency said.

“When new science raises questions, we will not look the other way. We are requiring manufacturers to prove that current uses are safe under real-world conditions, and if they cannot meet that standard, decisive action will follow,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement.

Amid the scrutiny, Syngenta announced in March that it will stop making its paraquat weed killer products and will stop selling herbicides made with paraquat by the end of June. Generic supplies of paraquat from other suppliers are not impacted.

The company is also trying to bring the litigation to an end with a class action settlement plan, though many plaintiffs have been unwilling to accept the terms.

Paraquat has been used in the United States since 1964 as a tool to kill broadleaf weeds and grasses. Though banned in several countries, Syngenta’s paraquat-based Gramoxone herbicide brand has remained popular with US farmers for use in growing soybeans, cotton, and corn as well as in growing grapes, pistachios, peanuts and many other crops.

The research connecting it to Parkinson’s has prompted widespread calls for bans across the US, including by many state and federal lawmakers. Vermont became the first state to ban the pesticide in May.

Some US lawmakers are rushing to introduce legislation to reverse the impact of a US Supreme Court ruling handed down last week that overturned years of precedent by limiting consumer lawsuits against pesticide companies.

US Rep Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine, and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, on Monday introduced an amendment to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) – the key law for regulating pesticides – to clarify that the law does not limit claims made in tens of thousands of lawsuits pending now against agrochemical giants Bayer and Syngenta.

Under their proposed amendment to FIFRA, people who are exposed to pesticides they blame for causing health problems would once again be able to sue companies for failing to warn them of health risks. The Supreme Court’s decision most immediately benefitted Bayer and Syngenta, global agrochemical companies that are currently facing thousands of lawsuits brought by users of their weed killing products.

“People are so angry,” Pingree said in an interview. “People want to see us take action. And I no longer want to just sit on the sidelines and say, ‘oh, well, you can’t beat the chemical companies,’ … I think people expect more of us than that.”

The amendment, called the People Over Poison Act, states that language within FIFRA “shall not be construed to prohibit or otherwise limit a claim related to the labeling or packaging of pesticides or devices under the tort law of any State.”

It comes alongside a promise made last week by Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, to introduce an amendment to the Farm Bill, which is currently pending in the Senate, that would similarly undo the impact of the Supreme Court decision.

US Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican also said last week she would be introducing a bill to strip pesticides companies of liability protections.

The Supreme Court decision came in an appeal brought by Bayer, the owner of Monsanto and the maker of glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup. More than 100,000 people have sued Monsanto alleging the weed killers cause cancer, and Bayer has paid more than $11 billion in settlements and jury verdict awards since buying Monsanto in 2018.

Bayer asked the Supreme Court to rule that language within FIFRA preempts one key claim contained in the lawsuits, which is that the company failed to warn users of the risk of cancer. Bayer maintains that research linking its products to cancer is not valid, and argued to the Supreme Court that under FIFRA, only the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can require a cancer warning on a product label. Because the EPA has not required such a warning, the company cannot be held liable for failing to issue that warning, Bayer maintains. The Supreme Court agreed in a 7-2 ruling, effectively barring those types of claims in current and future lawsuits.

Also impacted is Syngenta, currently facing thousands of lawsuits alleging it failed to warn users of a risk of Parkinson’s disease associated in scientific research with exposure to paraquat weed killers, such as Syngenta’s Gramoxone, and other products.

The Trump administration supported Bayer before the Supreme Court, arguing side-by-side with the Bayer attorney before the justices in an April hearing. The court’s ruling marked a new interpretation of the language within FIFRA, contrasting with a prior Supreme Court decision on the issue and numerous lower court and appellate court findings.

In introducing the new legislation, Pingree noted that the Supreme Court decision would protect the makers of thousands of types of pesticides from the failure-to-warn claims associated with pesticides that are widely used in farm fields, public parks and playgrounds, golf courses and elsewhere.

“There’s just a broad concern that there’s a lack of regulation in this administration and people are giving the chemical companies a free for all, and … you’ve got more and more Americans worrying about the … high incidents of cancer or just what toxics are in our food,” Pingree said.

It is unclear how much support she can garner for the amendment, but Pingree said she’ll be looking to the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement for backing.

MAHA leaders have expressed outrage over the Supreme Court ruling, and have called on Congress to take action.

“If federal law is now being interpreted to shield manufacturers from accountability when their products harm people, then Congress must fix the law immediately. This is one of the most consequential moments for corporate accountability in a generation,” said Vani Hari, a food activist, a food activist, author and one of the grass roots leaders of the MAHA coalition.

“If Congress fails to act, it will send a message that powerful corporations can avoid responsibility while Americans get sick from their harmful chemicals. That’s unacceptable,” Hari said. “Congress must move swiftly to restore the rights that people believed they had and ensure accountability under the law.”

Kelly Ryerson, another prominent voice in the MAHA movement, said the coalition will fight for changes in the law.

“The grassroots behind MAHA is geared up to support all legislation to undo the SCOTUS decision. We are not accepting this outrageous decision from the court, and will put full weight behind making sure it does not stick,” she said.

Featured image by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash.

A day after landmark ruling from the US Supreme Court stripped consumers of a key pathway for suing pesticide companies, legal experts said while the decision is a blow for people who blame injuries on pesticide exposure, it’s not a knock-out punch.

Even as Bayer and other pesticide makers celebrated the ruling in the case of Monsanto v. Durnell, plaintiffs’ lawyers, state and federal lawmakers and public health advocates were vowing to keep fighting for what they describe as corporate accountability for dangerous products.

On the one hand, lawsuits can and will continue alleging Bayer’s glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup cause cancer, just as will cases alleging Syngenta’s paraquat weed killers cause Parkinson’s disease, many lawyers said.

At the same time, legislators from both parties said they would introduce measures to reverse the impact of the Supreme Court decision. And consumer advocacy and watchdog groups said they would be ramping up pressure on regulators to be more diligent in overseeing pesticide products.

“The war is far from over,” said George Kimbrell, legal director and co-executive director of the Center for Food Safety, which has sued the EPA over pesticide assessments. The court decision, he said, is a “galvanizing call to continued action.”

A common thread

In the court’s 7-2 ruling, a majority of the justices found that federal law protects pesticide companies from lawsuits accusing them of failing to warn of risks allegedly associated with their products if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not required such a warning.

Failure-to-warn claims have been a common thread in lawsuits brought against Bayer and Syngenta, costing Bayer over $11 billion in settlements and jury awards and costing Syngenta well more than $100 million so far.

Bayer, which sought the ruling from the Supreme Court as a means to end the litigation it inherited in its 2018 purchase of Monsanto, said the decision should lead to the dismissal of current failure-to-warn lawsuits and head off future litigation.

But several leading lawyers and analysts noted the ruling was narrow and left the door open for several other types of claims that already are being pursued.

“There is no question that failure-to-warn claims based on the EPA-approved label are over. However, the Court’s ruling was limited to just those claims,” said Brent Wisner, a leading plaintiffs’ attorney who helped win the first Roundup trial to take place against Monsanto.

“Cases will become even more difficult against pesticide manufacturers. But if they claim this is the silver bullet to end all litigation, they are just blowing sunshine,” Wisner said.

Robin Greenwald, another prominent mass torts plaintiffs’ attorney involved in the Roundup litigation since its inception more than a decade ago, agreed.

“There should be no reason that you wouldn’t do these cases,” Greenwald said. “Monsanto’s conduct is so much deeper than what they might do with a label. They mislead the public in numerous ways. I don’t think at all that this is the end of Roundup litigation.”

Gibbs Henderson, another plaintiffs’ attorney active in the pesticide litigation said the lawsuits will continue “unabated.”

“The language of the decision makes clear that its scope is limited to failure to warn claims,” Henderson said. Other types of claims will continue to provide a “strong mechanism to hold Monsanto accountable,” he said.

Many plaintiffs’ attorneys acknowledged, however, that the failure-to-warn claim has been a key element of swaying juries to find in favor of plaintiffs, and with the restriction against making that claim, some mass tort attorneys pay be reluctant to take cases to trial. Several plaintiffs’ firms have spent the last few months directing their clients to agree to settlements with Bayer in advance of the Supreme Court ruling in fear of a decision favoring the company.

A “narrow scope”

In addition to the failure-to-warn claims, typical lawsuits brought against Monsanto also claim “negligence,” alleging that the company had a duty to assure users would not suffer from unreasonable and dangerous effects due to exposure to the company’s glyphosate herbicides.

The also include a product liability claim of “design defect”, in which plaintiffs allege the company’s herbicides were defective in their formulation because they were more dangerous than a consumer would expect, posing a “grave risk of cancer”.

Another claim common to the thousands of lawsuits is “breach of implied warranties”. Plaintiffs allege that the company falsely represented that its herbicides were safe, misleading users about risks of exposure.

Juries presented with all of the claims have in some Roundup trials awarded hefty punitive damages, including jury awards for hundreds of millions of dollars in multiple cases, and some awards totaling over $1 billion.

Bayer and Syngenta have been pushing to settle all outstanding claims, with both currently offering mass settlements to plaintiffs. Bayer faces a July 9 hearing on its proposed $7.25 billion class action settlement proposal. Syngenta likewise is trying to entice plaintiffs to settle but a large number have been opting out.

Both will benefit if plaintiffs decide settlements are more advantageous than taking lawsuits to trial with limited claims. But it remains to be seen if the Supreme Court ruling acts as a lever to increase settlement participation.

“I do not believe that we shall see mass settlements in the Roundup litigation, because a critical facet of the SCOTUS ruling is its narrow scope,” said Carl Tobias, William Chair in Law at the University of Richmond School of Law. “The decision only applies to warning defect cases. The opinion does not apply to thousands of pending lawsuits or future litigation that proceeds on other grounds.”

“These other theories of recovery mean that many mass tort lawyers will continue pursuing thousands of these cases and taking a significant number to trial,” Tobias said.

Will Congress act?

Critics of the Supreme Court ruling noted that the decision was based entirely on an interpretation of certain language within FIFRA that deals with labeling authority held by the EPA, and does not address the weight of science connecting pesticides such as glyphosate and paraquat to health harms.

Litigation against corporations over product safety has helped uncover a history of misconduct and hidden product dangers with pesticides and other chemicals, and ensuring that can continue requires congressional action, some lawmakers said.

US Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat, said on Thursday that the Supreme Court has a history of “unjust” decisions and the “power of the people” is needed to overcome its ruling in the Monsanto case.

“I’m going to lead an amendment to strip away this preemptive authority and return it to the people. We now need to rally around both sides of the of the aisle … to undo what the Supreme Court did,” Booker said.

Similarly, US Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican, said she would be introducing a bill to strip pesticides companies of liability protections.

“These companies purposefully omit labeling information knowing their products cause cancer and other health problems,” she wrote in a post on the social media platform X. “It is time they are held accountable. Enough is enough.”

Featured image of protesters outside the US Supreme Court, April 27, 2026, by Carey Gillam.