Last week, President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to boost the American supply of glyphosate-based herbicides, declaring the controversial weedkiller essential to national security.
For many in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, the grassroots army of health-conscience voters who helped propel him back into office, it was an utter betrayal.
On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump promised to crack down on pesticides in food. He embraced Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long-running crusade against toxic chemicals like glyphosate and pledged to put him in charge of cleaning up the nation’s food supply.
Kennedy, now secretary of Health and Human Services, has repeatedly warned that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, can cause cancer. As a plaintiffs’ attorney, he was part of the legal team that helped secure multimillion dollar verdicts against Roundup maker Bayer-Monsanto for failing to warn consumers about glyphosate’s dangers.
Who dictates pesticide policy?
Although Kennedy frequently promised to curtail pesticide use when he was supporting Trump’s presidential campaign, he does not control U.S. pesticide policy. That authority rests with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, who is also a member of President Trump’s MAHA commission, which Kennedy chairs. If Kennedy is to deliver on his promises, the administration must take action on pesticides soon or risk revealing his campaign promises as a cynical ploy to convince people to support Trump.
In December 2025, Zeldin promised the EPA would soon unveil its own MAHA agenda.
But months later, that agenda has yet to materialize.
Now many MAHA leaders are openly calling for Zeldin’s removal, saying his policy actions run counter to the movement’s mission. Those actions include rolling back or weakening protections targeting air and water pollution and toxic chemicals, greenlighting at least five pesticides that contain the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, and renewing approval of the herbicide dicamba.
But there is a concrete step that Zeldin – and Kennedy – could take in response to something that’s been moldering in the EPA’s inbox since Trump’s first term.
In 2019, EWG and nearly 20 companies formally petitioned the EPA to drastically lower the allowable “tolerance” – the amount that may remain in food – for glyphosate residues in one particular food: oats. Oat-based foods, from breakfast cereals to granola bars and snack products heavily marketed to children, are among the leading sources of dietary glyphosate exposure in the U.S.
The current federal tolerance stands at 30 parts per million, or ppm. EWG asked the agency to drastically reduce that limit, to 0.1 ppm, arguing that the higher threshold fails to account for the pesticide’s association with cancer risk and the especially high dietary exposure faced by children.
Why oats?
Lowering the tolerance could in turn lead to less glyphosate on food, kids’ exposure and associated health risks.
EWG has found high levels of glyphosate in these foods, compared to other foods, such as bread. Glyphosate is typically applied pre-harvest to control weeds. It’s also applied as a desiccant, a way to dry out the crop more quickly and make it easier to harvest.
Although use of glyphosate as a desiccant for oats isn’t common in the U.S., it is permitted in Canada, a major supplier of oats to American food manufacturers.
That means glyphosate residues can make their way into food sold to U.S. families, with children facing disproportionate exposure.
The petition submitted to the EPA by EWG and other groups calls on the agency to close this loophole and explicitly lower the allowable level of glyphosate in oats grown for the U.S. market.
EPA has the power to act
EWG’s petition lays out in painstaking detail the toxicological data, dietary exposure assessments and cancer risk calculations. Yet it has languished for years at the EPA without resolution, even while the agency received more than 100,000 public comments urging action.
If Zeldin is serious about aligning the EPA with MAHA principles, he could dust off that petition and make it a centerpiece of his long-promised agenda. Lowering the glyphosate tolerance in oats wouldn’t ban the weedkiller, though that’s what Kennedy promised and many in the MAHA movement demanded.
But it would signal that the administration is at least willing to consider risks where the scientific evidence and exposure routes intersect most acutely: foods marketed to children.
Kennedy does not need legal authority over pesticides to wield influence. As a cabinet member and the most prominent face of MAHA, he could publicly urge Zeldin and the EPA to act on the petition’s recommendations.
He could frame it as a targeted, “gold standard” science-based measure to reduce childhood exposure to the herbicide he has long criticized. It’s a golden opportunity to set themselves apart from the Biden administration, which also failed to act on our petition.
Lowering weedkiller levels
An EPA (or HHS) response to EWG’s glyphosate petition might not satisfy every MAHA activist angry over Trump’s action to spur glyphosate production and hand Bayer-Monsanto immunity from litigation. But it would lower the levels of the weedkiller in many popular foods millions of children eat every day.
The petition is already submitted. The science is solid. The real question now is, did MAHA leaders in the administration ever mean to protect public health? Or was it always just a scam to con health-conscience voters into supporting Trump?
Zeldin and Kennedy, here is the glyphosate petition for your review and approval.
