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The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) broke the law when it purged government websites of climate-related information and disabled access to key datasets, making it hard for farmers to access information on climate adaptation strategies and financial assistance, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by a coalition of advocacy groups.
The “vital resources” were stripped from various USDA websites on Jan.30, shortly after President Donald Trump took office, erasing public access to information about climate-smart agriculture, forest conservation, climate change adaptation, investment in clean energy projects and other “essential information about USDA programs and policies,” the lawsuit alleges.
The case against the agency was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York by the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Working Group.
The plaintiffs allege that the USDA broke the law by not providing legally required notice before removing the webpages, violating the Freedom of Information Act, and by not giving “reasoned decision-making” to the harm caused to farmers and others by the removal of the information.
The USDA did not respond to a request for comment, instead referring questions to the US Department of Justice, which declined to comment.
A US company that was secretly profiling hundreds of food and environmental health advocates in a private web portal has halted the operations in the face of widespread backlash after its actions were exposed by The New Lede in collaboration with Lighthouse Reports and other media partners.
The St. Louis, Mo-based company, v-Fluence, is shuttering the service, which it called a “stakeholder wiki”, that featured personal details about more than 500 environmental advocates, scientists, politicians and others seen as opponents of pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops. Among those targeted was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s controversial pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The profiles often provided derogatory information about the industry opponents and included home addresses and phone numbers and details about family members, including children.
The profiles were provided to members of an invite-only web portal where v-Fluence also offered a range of other information to its roster of more than 1,000 members. The membership included staffers of US regulatory and policy agencies, executives from the world’s largest agrochemical companies and their lobbyists, academics and others.
The profiling was part of an effort to downplay pesticide dangers, discredit opponents and undermine international policymaking, according to court records, emails and other documents obtained by the non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports. Lighthouse collaborated with The New Lede, The Guardian, Le Monde, Africa Uncensored, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and other international media partners on the September 2024 publication of the investigation.
News of the profiling and the private web portal sparked outrage and threats of litigation by some of the people and organizations profiled.
London research professor Michael Antoniou, who was profiled on the portal with derogatory information about his personal life and family members, said he fears the actions to take down the profiles may be “too little too late.”
Children are suffering and dying from diseases that emerging scientific research has linked to chemical exposures, findings that require urgent revamping of laws around the world, according to a new paper published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
Authored by more than 20 leading public health researchers, including one from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and another from the United Nations, the paper lays out “a large body of evidence” linking multiple childhood diseases to synthetic chemicals and recommends a series of aggressive actions to try to better protect children.
The paper is a “call to arms” to forge an “actual commitment to the health of our children”, said Linda Birnbaum, a former director of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and a co-author of the paper.