Does the House GOP Have Something Against Farmers?

Now the ruling party in Congress is going after farmers’ health. On July 14, Republicans on the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee released new text for their fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill, which sets the budget for the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Tucked away in their bill is a policy rider that will muzzle the science on PFAS-contaminated food grown on fields spread with sewage sludge, a toxic byproduct of wastewater treatment.

The bill includes a provision (Section 507) that would permanently prohibit the EPA from finalizing, implementing or enforcing its Draft Risk Assessment for PFOA and PFOS in Sewage Sludge (January 2025). That’s right—permanently. Not just for 2026, but for any year, with any budget. This comes on the heels of the Trump administration’s decision to “rescind” and “reconsider” regulatory limits on four of the six types of PFAS in public drinking water systems covered by the EPA’s first-ever limits set by the Biden administration.

The EPA’s risk assessment acknowledges what communities, scientists and farmers have been saying for years: spreading sewage sludge (also known by the industry term “biosolids”) on land contaminates soil, crops, water and livestock with PFAS, also known as forever chemicals. Nevertheless, over 2 million tons of sludge is land applied each year, and it is usually given away to farms with no mention that all of it is poisoned with PFAS, microplastics and other pollutants.

The EPA risk assessment looks at exposure to PFAS from common farm products—eggs, beef, milk and produce—and finds that PFAS build up rapidly in livestock and crops, leading to alarming contamination levels. (No amount of PFAS is safe for human health.) Farmers who eat as few as 1-2 eggs per week from hens foraging on fields spread with sludge may exceed the EPA’s proposed safe exposure levels. Long-term health problems of PFAS exposure include immune system suppression, liver damage, reproductive harm, thyroid disruption and cancer.

Maine’s Chellie Pingree (D) is on the appropriations committee. She told fellow committee members that the policy rider “makes absolutely no sense.” “We know that PFAS remediation is going to be immensely costly. Why wouldn’t we take steps to prevent contamination in the first place?”

The assessment shows that PFAS can persist in soil for decades and continue entering the food chain long after just a single sludge application, highlighting the long-term risks to farm families and local food systems.

In 2022, Maine became the first state in the nation to ban the land application of sewage sludge and sludge-derived fertilizer and compost, spurred by farmers and their families whose health and livelihood was put in jeopardy by PFAS pollution. The state has succeeded in keeping the majority of those farms in business because they also created a fund to assist PFAS-impacted farmers that provides testing, remediation, income support, and technical help. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has sponsored the “Relief for Farmers Hit with PFAS Act” (S.747) to extend this safety net nationally.

Much would be lost if the GOP’s appropriation bill is allowed to move forward as written. The risk assessment, which the bill nullifies, could have finally led to rulemaking by the EPA that would provide long-overdue protection from PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge for American farmland and those living and working the land.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) has sued EPA for not addressing PFAS in sludge. In response to the policy rider, PEER Staff Counsel Laura Dumais said, “Across the country, farms have had to be condemned, and livestock slaughtered due to PFAS pollution from fertilizers. Further delay in preventing more of these needless tragedies would be unconscionable.”

[Update July 22: Chellie Pingree (Maine-D) led the charge in the House Appropriations Committee to strike the policy rider about the draft risk assessment, but the rider stayed without changes by a vote along party lines of 33-28. The bill will head to the full House for markup.]

Resources

Just Zero’s Action Alert: Protect Our Farms and Food: Hands off the EPA’s risk report

House Appropriations Committee:

• Tel. 202-225-2771
• Chair: Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.)
• Ranking member: Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)
• Interior & Environment Subcommittee: Chair Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), Ranking Member Chellie Pingree (D-Maine)

Contact your Congressional Representative

PEER’s Press Release on the appropriations ban, July 15, 2025

Laura OrlandoMore by this author →