(NaturalHealth365)  Having pesticides sprayed all over your conventionally raised food is bad enough … isn’t it?

But since the massive mono-crop agricultural industry continues to struggle with pests who can evade and resist even the most toxic pesticides in use today, the American public is now poised to be forcefully exposed to yet another under-tested product – with no small thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

EPA fast-tracks genetically engineered pesticide compound without due safety evaluation, critics argue

Touting it as “novel technology” that “relies on a natural mechanism” to kill a common crop pest, the EPA announced in late September of this year that the agency plans “to register pesticide products containing the new active ingredient ledprona for three years.”  The EPA claims that this three-year onboarding window is “a timeframe that is consistent with EPA’s approach to other novel pesticide products.”

Critics argue, however, that the green light seems woefully premature.

Here’s the concern:

In May 2023, the EPA granted the Massachusetts-based company GreenLight Biosciences – led by a team with close ties to Big Ag companies like Monsanto – an Experimental Use Permit (EUP) to conduct field studies on this new chemical ledprona in ten U.S. states: Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Washington.

Yet after a mere five months of experimentation – during which the agency claims to have conducted a “robust evaluation” into the safety of this new biotechnology – the EPA went ahead and decided to allow the company to register its new product for widespread use.

The EPA claims that there have been no negative reports regarding the safety of this new genetically-tinkered-with compound thus far … that’s right, less than a YEAR after a brand-new gene-based technology was thrust into the environment.

This move eerily echoes the premature “safe and effective” propaganda about the COVID-19 shot, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, GreenLight plans to apply its ledprona-containing pesticide (a product named Calantha) to farming land via ground spray, aerial spray, and even irrigation water – which are all extremely broad and widespread means of environmental exposure.

So, what is ledprona exactly?

The EPA describes ledprona as a “sprayable double-stranded ribonucleic acid (dsRNA)” that kills pests via a new mechanism known as RNA interference (RNAi).

As a dsRNA, Ledprona was developed to interfere with a specific gene found inside the cells of a pest species known as the Colorado Potato Beetle.  When the beetle ingests this chemical by consuming potato leaves sprayed with the pesticide, the targeted gene can no longer produce a specific protein.  This causes cell death and ultimately kills the beetle.

But critics worry that early safety data on the ingredient – as insufficient as it may be – cannot yet rule out several concerning unintended outcomes, such as whether the pesticide will harm other animals and whether the Colorado Potato Beetle will be able to evolve and evade the pesticide anyway.

What do you think: with so many unknowns and hastily-made decisions about the release of this new product in the wild, can we really have confidence that the EPA is not opening the doors to unexpected harms and potentially exposing humans, animals, and the environment to unknown repercussions?

Sources for this article include:

Childrenshealthdefense.org
Beyondpesticides.org
EPA.gov
FDA.gov