The American Sugarbeet Growers Association holds its annual meeting in a warm location, where people who largely live and farm in cold climates can enjoy some sunshine. The meeting is, pound for pound, the best farm gathering I attend when it comes to learning and discussing serious topics in agriculture, so I spend a lot of my time either in conference rooms or in a hotel room writing articles.
This year’s meeting was no exception. I’ve got a list of about 14 stories that I’ve either
am writing or will write for Agweek, AgweekTV and Sugarbeet Grower Magazine in the coming months that came out of the two-day meeting, held this year in Indian Wells, California.
While I love visiting California, the Palm Springs area was a bit too rich for my blood. The closest thing I did to something touristy was a walk in the sunshine.
While trying to determine the best route for my ramble, I went out the back door of the hotel, onto a patio. I found no walking paths that direction and turned around, only to see an ominous warning. I didn’t take a photo of the warning or write down the exact verbiage, but I can summarize it as saying that the patio contained substances known to the state of California to cause cancer.
The warning did not fill me with fear about the dangers lurking on the patio. It did, however, cause me to roll my eyes dangerously hard.
I’m sure you’ve seen the California Proposition 65 warnings on just about everything under the sun (including UV radiation from the sun). The voter-imposed law, passed in 1986, requires businesses to provide warnings for products exposing consumers to chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or reproductive harm.
The word “known” is the most interesting part of the thing, because the
massive list of more than 900 substances
certainly includes things “known” to cause cancer, birth defects or reproductive harm. But it also contains substances with much more tenuous connections to harm.
One that came up, not surprisingly,
at the ASGA meeting was glyphosate.
The widely-used herbicide has not been shown conclusively by any scientific study to cause cancer. Regulators across the globe — including the Environmental Protection Agency — have not found that link. But the International Agency for Research on Cancer — which does not conduct scientific research — decided in 2015 that correlation was enough to declare glyphosate a probable carcinogen, which was enough for California in 2017 to add it to the Prop 65 list. That was also enough for trial lawyers to start hunting for people who have had cancer who may have used Roundup — the brand name of glyphosate developed by Monsanto, which since was bought out by Bayer. The lawyers, of course, weren’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts; they wanted their cut of lawsuit riches.
One of these lawyers, you might not be surprised to hear, was
now the U.S. secretary of health and human services. Zach Clark, vice president of government affairs for ASGA, during the meeting referred to Kennedy as “last and certainly least” of the members of President Donald Trump’s second-term cabinet to be confirmed by Congress. To say folks in the sugarbeet industry — and many in agriculture — dislike Kennedy would be putting it mildly. They see him as a charlatan who rehabbed a poor reputation by making himself out to be an environmental and now health expert to fleece people.
So, what does this all tell us? We need to be acutely aware of who is warning us of what. What do they have to gain? If someone warns you of Substance A, beware that they may be selling Substance B and thus have a vested interest in changing your habits. Or beware that they may be looking to get their portion of the payout when you sue over whatever Substance A supposedly did to you.
I’m not saying to ignore all warnings. We should use science and reason to make our decisions. We can’t let fear-mongering lead the way. I am happy to say, I survived my brief sojourn on a patio in California without injury. May you all have the same luck.
Opinion by
Jenny Schlecht
Jenny Schlecht is the director of ag content for Agweek and serves as editor of Agweek, Sugarbeet Grower and BeanGrower. She lives on a farm and ranch near Medina, North Dakota, with her husband and two daughters. You can reach her at jschlecht@agweek.com or 701-595-0425.