The 2026 Farm Bill currently working its way through Congress would severely restrict the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate pesticides. It completely guts the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the law that governs how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates pesticides, with sweeping exemptions to FIFRA and huge changes to EPA reviews, making the EPA’s pesticide authority weak to non-existent.
Farm Bill section 10201 gives the EPA Administrator the power to waive regulation or review for any pesticide whatsoever!
And, it completely exempts so-called “plant biostimulants” and “plant-incorporated protectants” from EPA regulation under FIFRA.
“Plant-incorporated protectants” is the agribusiness companies’ term for genetically modified crops that produce their own insecticides, and by “biostimulants” they mean genetically modified pest-killing microbes and gene-silencing RNAi sprays.
GRAIN calls these so-called “bioinputs” “agribusiness’s new toxic trap.
Case in point: BASF managed to get its Poncho/VOTiVO insecticidal seed treatment registered as a “biostimulant” even though it’s just the combination of a neonicotinoid pesticide that’s toxic to pollinators and a dangerous genetically engineered microbe (Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt).
This Farm Bill section would go even further than what BASF has pulled off so far, completely deregulating these categories, including the diabolical GMOs where food crops are engineered to produce their own pesticides, new gene-silencing RNAi crops and sprays, and genetically engineered microbes that the companies’ own risk reports say could trigger a GMO doomsday.
Monsanto’s GMO Bt Crops – First-Generation “Plant-Incorporated Protectants”
“Plant-incorporated protectants” include Monsanto’s Bt crops, genetically engineered to produce a systemic, genetically engineered version of the Bt insecticide in every cell of the plant.
The insecticide isn’t sprayed on your food–it is your food.
Bt is a naturally occurring soil microorganism, the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, long used by organic farmers for pest control, but it isn’t something you’d want to eat with a spoon. The bacterium produces toxins that kill pests “by creating holes in the walls of their digestive tracts,” as the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT) puts it.
Those toxins that kill intestinal cells were genetically engineered into the GMO Bt crops. The assumption was that this wouldn’t impact humans, but a study on fruit flies, which also should not be sensitive to the toxins, showed that ingestion can trigger the death of intestinal cells.
Natural Bt sprays are allowed in organic farming, but farm workers must take precautions, including wearing protective equipment to prevent skin contact and inhalation during mixing and application. While major allergic reactions are rare, exposure to natural Bt can trigger immune system sensitization or antibody responses. Symptom complaints following aerial spraying include “sleep problems, dizziness, difficulty concentrating, irritated throat, itchy nose, diarrhoea, stomach discomfort, and gas discomfort.”
The GMO Bt expressed in Monsanto’s crops is engineered to be far more toxic. The concentration of Bt in GMO crops is thousands of times what is found in natural sprays. It can’t be washed off and it won’t biodegrade. The Institute for Responsible Technology reports that “people exposed to Bt cotton in the field, to bundles of harvested Bt cotton, and in cotton cleaning facilities, develop allergic and flu-like symptoms.”
The prevalence of Bt crops is why the engineered Cry1Ab Bt toxin is showing up in the blood of 8 out of 10 newborns.
Bayer-Monsanto’s Gene-Silencing RNAi GMOs – Second-Generation “Plant-Incorporated Protectants”
Bt crops were just the first generation of GMO “plant biostimulants” and “plant-incorporated protectants.”
The scariest new GMOs are pesticide-producing crops where the insect-killing action is RNAi. These scary new gene-silencing GMOs include crops like Bayer-Monsanto’s SmartStax corn. This corn isn’t just genetically modified, it’s engineered to genetically modify the insects that feed on it. Who knows what it’s doing to us!
The RNA in “RNAi” refers to living cells’ ribonucleic acid. RNA carries instructions from DNA to ribosomes for protein synthesis. The “i” in RNAi stands for “interfering.” RNAi “plant-incorporated protectants” are engineered to deliver double-stranded RNA to a plant pest to “silence” a target gene in that insect.
In 2023, U.S. farmers started growing SmartStax corn, an RNA interfering corn variety that targets Western corn rootworm by disrupting expression of its Snf7 gene. When the Snf7 gene is blocked, proteins can’t move across cell membranes and the rootworm dies.
The trouble is, RNAi GMOs is that the RNAi doesn’t always just silence the target gene, but can interfere with other genes—not only in the insect, but in other organisms—and scientists don’t know why. They haven’t figured out which RNAi sequences trigger off-targeting.
Looking for off-target effects isn’t something companies like Bayer-Monsanto do. There’s no business reason to explore unintended consequences and the regulatory agencies don’t require them to do so.
Friends of the Earth says that one potential off-target effect that should have been investigated before people started eating these GMOs is how these genetically engineered interfering RNAs interact with the human body.
Scientists are only just now beginning to understand how some of the naturally occurring interfering RNAs in our food regulate our genes. An RNAi found in rice was observed to silence a liver gene involved in cholesterol metabolism, but virtually nothing is known about the untold number of other interfering RNAs that we consume through rice, corn, barley, tomatoes, soybeans, wheat, cabbage, grapes, and carrots. It would have been nice for humanity to get a chance to figure out how what we eat determines which genes are expressed before genetic engineers went messing around with all of this!
We know from research into the use of interfering RNAs as a medical intervention, that RNAi causes immune reactions in the body, triggering dangerous inflammatory responses. RNAi GMOs’ double-stranded RNA structure fits the Pathogen-Associated Molecular Pattern. As Sayer Ji puts it in his article, “The Invisible GMO,” “When the immune system detects a PAMP, it doesn’t pause to sequence it or identify its source. It responds: shutting down protein synthesis, degrading cellular RNA, triggering interferon, and, in severe or sustained cases, initiating cell death.”
The safety assessment for SmartStax corn that Monsanto submitted to the EPA didn’t assess how genetically engineered RNAis in our food might regulate our genes or trigger immunotoxicity via the Pathogen-Associated Molecular Pattern pathway.
The EPA assumed (probably incorrectly) that the human gastrointestinal tract provides barriers to absorption that would prevent double-stranded RNA from reaching the bloodstream, but newborn infants don’t have these gut barriers and gastrointestinal problems can also cause gut permeability in adults. The EPA didn’t require Monsanto to consider these populations.
In addition to dietary exposure, the EPA should have considered the inhalation of double-stranded RNA expressed in corn pollen, which can be carried by the wind up to a half-mile away.
With 20 to 30 percent of the 86 million acres of GMO corn now carrying RNAi traits, our health is already being impacted.
GMO “Biostimulants” – Genetically Engineered Microbes That Their Creators Say Could Trigger a GMO Doomsday
The Farm Bill would completely deregulate what the industry calls “biostimulants,” even through the companies’ own risks reports reveal that contaminating the soil with these rogue GMO microbes could trigger a doomsday for agriculture that would jeopardize not only our ability to grow food, but would imperil life as we know it on this planet.
Bayer is spreading genetically engineered soil microbes (supposedly for use as fertilizers and pesticides) all over our country’s farmland.
The risks report its partner Ginkgo Bioworks filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission makes clear how unleashing Frankenmicrobes into the environment could wreak havoc.
Starting with, “The release of genetically modified organisms or materials, whether inadvertent or purposeful, into uncontrolled environments could have unintended consequences,” it’s like a sci-fi writer’s brainstorm of plots for a disaster movie!
It covers accidents, terrorism, biological weapons and the potential economic harm and human costs of these nightmarish scenarios.
The warnings are reinforced by a chilling true story from Dr. Elaine Ingham:
When Dr. Ingham was an associate professor at Oregon State University, she led a study on a genetically engineered soil bacterium that found it threatened all plant life on Earth!
In the 1990s, a German biotech company was preparing to commercialize a genetically engineered alcohol-producing version of the soil bacterium Klebsiella planticola.
When Dr. Ingham researched it, she discovered that it not only killed all of the plants tested, but had the potential to kill all terrestrial plants. Her findings prevented the genetically altered bacterium from being commercialized.
Ginkgo Bioworks’ main partner is Bayer (Monsanto). According to Friends of the Earth:
“Bayer has amassed a collection of at least 125,000 wild microbial strains and in 2019 created an umbrella branch for related products called Biologicals by Bayer. The company has rapidly expanded their activities in this area via acquisitions.
“Between 2012 and 2014, Bayer acquired three biologicals companies and in 2022 established a strategic partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks, a startup company which has received $15 billion in investment to develop a platform to automate the genetic engineering of thousands of microbes at once.”
New Gene-Silencing GMO Sprays – ICL (Israel Chemicals Ltd)’s RNAi Biostimulants
The only thing that could be worse than unleashing GMOs into the environment, is to take the genetic engineering from the lab and start doing it in the field.
That’s what RNAi biostimulants do. They genetically engineer plants in the open air by spraying them with gene-silencing genetic instructions.
ICL is partnering with PlantArcBio on RNAi biostimulant sprays that they say increase crop yields.
What might gene-silencing RNAi instructions do to a human being who inhales them?
No one knows.
As Friends of the Earth points out, the only place that the health risks of RNAi is being considered is in medical applications:
“Research investigating therapeutic uses of interfering RNAs has been hampered by the observation that they can cause an immune reaction in the body, triggering an unwanted inflammatory response.
“This is thought to be a natural cellular mechanism by which organisms can detect and combat foreign pathogens. The immunostimulatory effect can produce unwanted toxic effects, such as reduced levels of white blood cells in mammals.”
What happens when we eat food from crops that have been genetically engineered by RNAi?
The basic risk is the same as with other GMOs, that unintended and unnoticed changes to levels of toxins or allergens may have occurred during the genetic engineering process. Friends of the Earth writes:
“For example, a recent study that undertook a molecular profile of glyphosate-tolerant ‘Roundup Ready’ corn revealed that the activity of certain genes was increased, leading to the increased production of some compounds that are associated with human toxicity in certain contexts.”
But eating food sprayed with synthetic RNAi could actually silence human genes! Again, from Friends of the Earth:
“Preliminary research suggests that naturally occurring interfering RNAs in our diet play a role in regulating physiological or pathological conditions in our bodies. This suggests the possibility that synthetic RNAi products may also interfere with human gene regulation with unforeseen health implications.
“And while some developers of RNAi products claim that interfering RNAs get broken down during digestion in mammals, thereby eliminating risk of any potential toxic effects, research suggests otherwise.
“One study detected selective uptake of numerous rice interfering RNAs in different mammalian species, where it was found circulating in the blood serum of people, mice, calves, rats, horses, and sheep.
“When the researchers investigated this further in laboratory mice, they found that one of the interfering RNAs silenced a liver gene involved in cholesterol metabolism, leading the authors to speculate whether interfering RNAs had functional significance.
“Another study found that not only do interfering RNAs survive mammalian digestion, they can go on to regulate mammalian genes. Other studies have since confirmed the presence of naturally existing interfering RNAs in humans, including from rice, corn, barley, tomato, soybean, wheat, cabbage, grapes, and carrots. Further research is needed to understand the implications of consuming interfering RNAs.”
TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress Not to Deregulate GMO Pesticide Crops and RNAi Sprays!
