The use of antibiotics in agriculture is a major cause of the increasing number of untreatable infections across our country.

Scientists publishing in Frontiers in Microbiology recently showed that the most common species of multi-drug-resistant bacteria from hospitals are not only resistant to multiple antibiotic classes, but also to high concentrations of the weedkiller glyphosate.

Drug-resistant foodborne illnesses are spreading through meat from factory farms, where medically important antibiotics are routinely fed to healthy animals under the guise of “prevention”, (now that using them for growth-promotion is prohibited).

Antibiotic fungicides and herbicides like glyphosate are making things worse, spawning antimicrobial resistant germs — including deadly yeasts and molds — that contaminate and live on fruits, vegetables, grains, or travel from farm runoff into tap water.

And water treatment won’t save us. It doesn’t kill them.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Farmers in Europe stopped using antimicrobials to boost growth over a decade prior to those in the U.S. They also no longer use antimicrobial animal drugs routinely to prevent disease. Antimicrobials on European farms have dropped by around 43 percent over nine years up to 2020 at which point their use was more than 80 percent lower than in the U.S.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to Pass the Prevention of Antibiotic Resistance Act– and Make Sure It Includes Antibiotic Pesticides like Glyphosate!

LEARN MORE: Superbugs Will Kill More People than Cancer if Big Ag Doesn’t Ditch Antibiotics and Pesticides

Environmental Working Group (EWG):

“Many pesticides, including PFAS pesticides, remain widespread in the nation’s fruit and vegetable supply, consumed by millions of people in the U.S. every day. Yet most of these pesticides are not routinely monitored in the U.S. population, leaving significant gaps in our understanding of exposure and the extent of the resulting health consequences.

These chemicals are used to grow produce, or after it’s harvested, and can remain on items when they’re sold. This includes fungicides like pyrimethanil and fludioxonil, which are linked to hormone disruption. It also includes pyrethroids like permethrin and cypermethrin, which recent studies in people have linked to harm to the developing nervous system.

Consumers have a right to know the types and amounts of pesticides on produce, given the potential health harms from exposure through consumption. Ample numbers of peer-reviewed scientific studies show that connection.”

Ranking the produce with the most and least pesticide residues, EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ EWG’S 2026 CLEAN FIFTEEN and DIRTY DOZEN helps consumers know more about what they buy and eat. 

Editor’s note:
The conventional produce you eat may be doing more harm than you realize — not just because of the chemical residues left on your food, but the use of pesticides and fungicides are fueling a silent epidemic of antibiotic-resistant infections that could soon kill more people than cancer. Organic farming bans the antibiotic pesticides and fungicides driving this crisis. And the damage from conventional farming doesn’t end at your plate — even produce that tests residue-free was grown with chemicals that poison our waterways, deplete our soil, and silently devastate wildlife along the way. The organic food you purchase or grow isn’t just a personal health choice, it’s a vote for and a contribution to a food system that doesn’t gamble with humanity’s most critical medicines — or the health of the planet we all share.

Fleur Britten, The Guardian:

“Anna Kilpatrick doesn’t have a bedroom. Or even a bed. The 52-year-old content creator from East Sussex sleeps on a wide shelf in her hallway so that her two children, 21 and 18, can have their own rooms. And yet, she says, she has ‘enough’. She doesn’t hanker after a bigger house or shinier car. ‘Having fewer things is freedom,’ she says. Kilpatrick, who shares such ideas with her 104K Instagram followers (@not.needing.new), is part of a small but growing community of ‘enough-luencers’. The concept is similar to deinfluencing – where content creators discourage followers from buying into trends – but is also about celebrating already having enough, and, crucially, feeling happier for it.

In her new book, Not Needing New: A Practical Guide to Finding the Joy of Enough, Kilpatrick lists the benefits of living with less: ‘An increased sense of calm, less anxiety through clutter, free time away from maintaining the home, a healthier bank balance and reduced debt, children who are learning how to manage delayed gratification.’

Finding non-material joy doesn’t have to be complicated, says Kilpatrick.”

It could just be training yourself to notice good things – for example, that the days are getting longer, the blossom is coming, or thick warm socks on a grey day.

Jack Thompson, Fodder, Table Newsletter:

“As the war in Iran enters its fourth week, fertilizer supply chain disruptions and food security implications have dominated headlines in the food space. We keep hearing the same statistics and chokepoints; the Straits of Hormuz closure has blocked 35 percent of the world’s urea, the most widely used form of synthetic fertilizer and it has caused the price of natural gas, a key input into synthetic fertilizer, to double. Media outlets issued warnings of ‘food crisis’, ‘food shortages’ and ‘global hunger’. 

There are certainly very real impacts of fertilizer shortages, but it’s interesting there’s been little to no scrutiny of whether agriculture should be so dependent on synthetic fertilizer, given it’s made with natural gas, responsible for 2.5 percent of global emissions, pollutes waterways and underpins a model of agriculture widely understood to be unsustainable, unjust and unhealthy. For more on the connections between our food and fossil fuels, check out our podcast series, Fuel to Fork.   

As I read more about the unfolding consequences of the war for food production, I saw that the CEO of Yara, one of the largest global synthetic fertilizer companies, appears time and time again in the media. He comments not only on fertilizer supply chain disruptions, but also raises its potential impacts on global hunger.”

But who gets to define the problem, and what and whose voices get left out of the conversation? I’m going to unpack the current discourse with four renowned experts.

The two biggest dangers lurking in plain sight on American farms are just not discussed enough, and that is why we need your help. Today, industrial agriculture is quietly fueling two related emergencies. The pesticides and fungicides we’re using to treat our food crops are creating antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” in our soil and water that may soon be beyond the power of modern medicine to defeat.

Meanwhile, nearly all conventionally grown fruits and vegetables are grown with harmful chemicals and contain detectable levels of pesticide residues, including PFAS “forever chemicals,” which are increasingly found to be the most commonly detected pesticides on American produce.

These are no trivial matters. In fact, a study published in the Lancet estimates that antibiotic-resistant disease may kill 8.22 million people every year by 2050, or as many as cancer. The pesticides driving this epidemic are the same ones the majority of Americans are probably ingesting for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Organic Bytes exists to make sure people know. Every issue we publish, every action alert we send, every scientist and farmer we amplify is a step toward a food system that doesn’t gamble with our health or our medicines.

If this work matters to you, please consider making a contribution today. Together we can build the informed, engaged public that this moment desperately needs.

Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Make a tax-deductible donation to Regeneration International, our international sister organization

Have you considered making a grant request from your Donor-Advised Fund?

JR Culpepper & Samantha Romanick, Ph.D., EWG (Environmental Working Group):

“While scientists are still uncovering information about microplastics and their potential to affect human health, one thing is certain: They’re making their way into our bodies. EWG recently reviewed the ways that microplastics are getting consumed through food and we’ve got five tips to cut down on your exposure.

Some of the findings may be surprising: Ultra-processed foods, or UPF, typically contain higher levels of plastics than less processed food.

Microplastics can contaminate food through a range of production, processing, cooking and preparation methods. Think of bits of plastic from conveyor belts, tubes and packaging that could end up in what you eat. Studies also show that food workers’ personal protective equipment, such as hair nets, aprons and gloves, can shed particles that get into food during production. 

Most ingredients in UPF are produced through industrial processes. The more stages of processing food goes through, the more opportunities for microplastics to sneak in.”

The plastics problem isn’t going to be solved overnight. In the meantime, these tips can help lower your exposure to microplastics in food.

Lily Jamali, BBC:

“Silicon Valley is reeling from the seismic verdict delivered by a Los Angeles jury on Wednesday. Tech giants Meta and YouTube were found to be liable for designing their platforms to be addictive, which harmed a 20-year-old’s mental health. The plaintiff at the heart of the case was only known by her first name Kaley – and after nine days of deliberation, the jurors agreed with her on all counts.

The verdict has forced those inside the companies to grapple with the fact that many outsiders do not view them as favorably as they have come to view themselves. ‘It was a clean sweep with respect to liability against both Google and Meta,’ case attorney Jayne Conroy told the BBC after the verdict. ‘It will matter.’ 

TikTok and Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc had been defendants in the case but settled before the trial started. But they are not off the hook yet, as they will be defendants in several upcoming bellwether trials. Those cases will continue to test a new legal theory that social media companies caused personal injuries by designing their products to be addictive in the pursuit of profit.

Meta is also reeling from a separate $375m verdict delivered on Tuesday. New Mexico prosecutors convinced a jury the company enabled child exploitation on its platforms. It’s clear these companies won’t take the ruling lying down. ‘The tech firms spend more on lobbying and more on PR than any other sector in the world,’ Former Twitter executive Bruce Daisley told the BBC’s World Business Express.”

They are very intent on trying to win the soft influence battle to try and persuade politicians to go easy on them.

Angela Huffman, Substack:

“Yesterday, USDA and the White House were all over social media talking about the ‘Product of USA’ meat label. If you just saw that, you’d think this was something the Trump administration just came up with. It’s not.

As of January 1, 2026, corporations can no longer lie to us with fraudulent ‘Product of USA’ labels. For years, imported meat could be brought into the country and sold under a label that made people think they were buying American food when they weren’t.

We spent six years fighting to fix this. Ranchers were getting undercut, shoppers were being misled, and global meatpackers were cashing in. Now, if a company uses a ‘Product of USA’ label, the animal has to be born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in the United States.

The problem is the label is still voluntary. Corporations do not have to use it, and if they don’t, shoppers still have no clear way to know where that meat came from. That’s why this is not the end of the fight.

What we still need is Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling. It requires meat labels to disclose where the animal was born, raised, and slaughtered.”

We have country of origin labeling on all kinds of products, from T-shirts to dog bones. We should have it on meat.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress To Stand up for Local Ranchers, Not Imports!

Michelle Starr, Science Alert:

“Nicotine vaping is likely to cause lung and oral cancers, a comprehensive review of more than 100 studies has concluded. According to the analysis, human and animal studies, as well as cell experiments looking at the effects of chemicals found in vape liquid, all point toward carcinogenicity. Those studies, published since 2017, record ‘increasing concern’, the researchers report.

We don’t have long-term, population-level data yet, so the exact risk cannot be quantified, but the early signs are strong enough that scientists are warning against repeating the mistakes made with cigarettes.

‘Though smoking was once given the benefit of doubt,’ write study co-authors Freddy Sitas and Bernard Stewart of the University of New South Wales in Australia in a related commentary, ‘the same should not now be accorded to vaping given the strength of relevant carcinogenicity data.’”

The new findings, the researchers hope, will help governments as they work to introduce and refine regulations.

Carey Gillam, The New Lede:

“US and European regulators should take urgent action to more tightly regulate glyphosate, the world’s most widely used weed killer, in light of strong scientific evidence that the pesticide can cause cancer and other health problems, a group of international scientists said on Friday. ‘Agencies should act without further delay to limit their use, or eliminate them if legally required, to protect public health,’ the scientists said in their statement.

Glyphosate is not the only chemical in which regulators are failing to follow and act on scientific evidence of harm, though it is a key example, according to the scientists at the symposium. ‘There is a huge contrast, conflict, between the scientific consensus and the regulatory perspective,’ said Lianne Sheppard, symposium organizer and professor in public health sciences at the University of Washington. ‘This [glyphosate] is the starkest example of that.’”

People are really mad that they are getting sicker, their families are getting sicker, and they’re being exposed to toxic chemicals.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Your State Legislators to Ban the Pesticides Behind America’s Rural Cancer Crisis!

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