"Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork processor, said on Sunday it will shut a U.S. plant indefinitely due to a rash of coronavirus cases among employees and warned the country was moving “perilously close to the edge” in supplies for grocers."
"The long-standing practice of spreading treated sewage sludge and septage on farm fields has contaminated groundwater in some areas with PFAS, recent sampling shows."
"An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response."
"This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that soybean farmers in 25 states are now able to spray a pesticide that the agency has determined is likely to cause cancer and drift hundreds of feet from where it is applied."
"OPEC and its allies locked in a historic oil supply accord Sunday after Saudi Arabia, under pressure from the US, agreed to give Mexico a looser production quota, ending a four-day stalemate that threatened to escalate a price war in the midst of the coronavirus crisis."
"Threatened and endangered animals may become additional casualties of the pandemic."
"Scientists say the Trump administration’s proposed program to cut down trees to gain an upper hand over wildfire and protect the sage-grouse bird may in fact do the opposite: increase the wildfire threat and risk ecosystem “collapse.”"
"After the fossil fuel industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars undermining climate science, it’s easy to see how epidemiology came next."
"The destruction of forests into fragmented patches is increasing the likelihood that viruses and other pathogens will jump from wild animals to humans, according to a study from Stanford University published this month."
"The Trump administration has been rushing to finalize environmental rules by mid-May to bulletproof them from future Democratic overturn, but the COVID-19 pandemic may throw off that schedule."
