Fake Colors vs Poison Seeds

By Marilyn Kunce

The other day, I scrolled past a headline that made me stop: “Walmart plans to cut synthetic dyes and additives from its store brands.”

Boxes of the most known brand cereals lined the photo. And beneath it, the news that one of the world’s largest corporations is bowing to political and consumer pressure: no more Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1, or the cocktail of artificial dyes parents and scientists have warned about for years.

Artificial food dyes are linked to behavioral difficulties in children and harm to memory and learning, allergies, and even potential carcinogenic effects under certain conditions. And there are plenty of foods we’d never suspect contain artificial food dyes but actually do, including some seemingly healthy foods. Here is a good source to read more on this, I found a few items I actually wasn’t aware of their use of dyes.

So I was surprised to see Wal Mart moving in the right direction on this.

Although I really shouldn’t have been. Corporations are all afraid of the MAGA+MAHA movement right now and the writing has been on the wall for food dyes since RFK came in. So Wal-Mart was really just doing what many corporations are doing right now: identifying and then doing the smallest things they can in order to fend off MAGA ire, while completely ignoring even larger public health issues that MAGA funders have quietly told political people not to worry about anymore.

Because here’s the bitter irony: while our breakfast bowls are being cleaned up of fake colors, the very seeds that make our food remain coated in toxic chemicals that most of us never see, never consented to, and that RFK used to call poison— until he joined an administration that was owned by the poison vendors, of course.

I guess for him selling out to big chemical companies is a small price to pay for the opportunity to potential eliminate vaccine regimes that save millions of American lives every year…

But I think we all need to know about these seed companies and chemicals regardless of who funds the folks in power, so I want to share with you what is happening there.

In short, the seed-industry has adopted a widespread practice of coating most of the seeds it sells with toxic chemicals, particularly a type known as Neonicotinoids. Just like with artificial colors, most of us don’t know about this. And why would we? Mounting evidence shows that neonic seed treatments often deliver little or no yield benefit in many cropping systems, so it’s not like its some sort of broad societal success that we would have heard about. It’s only real success, in fact, is that it’s profitable and allows seed companies to charge more for their seeds by claiming that each kernel is an all-inclusive product.

It’s the same story as food dyes. The food-industry slipped synthetic dyes into breakfast cereals under the radar because “kids like bright colors” the same way that the ag-industry slipped neonic coating into every kernel because “farmers need protection.” The chemicals slipped into our daily lives, not because we demanded them, but because it was profitable to sell them that way. They exist because of the culture of sale.

Here in the Midwest, seeds don’t come plain anymore. Corn, soy, and even vegetables are all coated in these neonics and fungicides before they ever hit the soil. And the coatings are supposed to provide invisible “protections” come at a steep cost: bees and pollinators are collapsing, waterways are contaminated, soils degrade, farmworkers inhale dust, and farm families are exposed during planting.

If one of America’s biggest corporations is finally acknowledging that yes, we deserve food without hidden chemicals and is getting Red 40 out of cereal, why can’t we get neonics out of seeds?

When I read the Walmart story, I remembered the work a colleague of mine at NRDC is working on, and decided to reach out to learn more about this issue. She’s been working on sustainable ag, soil health, and seed reform on Colorado’s fields, and by extension, what that might mean for the Midwest.

She explained exactly what these chemicals are.

Neonics are a class of synthetic, neurotoxic-active insecticides developed in the mid-1990s. They’re now among the most widely used insecticides in the U.S. agricultural system.

They are systemic chemicals. Once applied, they travel through the plant’s tissues, so leaves, pollen, and nectar, even dew, all bear traces of them.

In insects, neonics bind to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nerve-cell channels) and effectively lock them into over-drive. The insect’s nerves fire continuously until the system collapses: tremors, paralysis, death. Because the binding is strong and not readily reversible in the insect nervous system, the harm is effectively permanent for that individual.

They are indiscriminate killers. pollinators and beneficial insects cannot avoid exposure simply by “staying away from sprayed fields.” Neonics travel easily through soil and water, contaminating plants and waterways throughout agricultural areas. And even in tiny, “sublethal” doses, neonics interfere with insect learning, reproduction, navigation, and immunity.

In 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey study found neonic pollution in more than half of the streams it sampled nationwide, from agricultural regions to urban creeks. That was a decade ago. Given that use of treated seed has exploded since then, it’s reasonable to assume the contamination footprint is even larger today.

Zoom in from the national picture to a single field, and the story gets even more revealing.

If you follow the trail of the science, it tells a simple story: most of the neonics we coat on seeds never actually reach the pest they’re meant to control. Instead they stay behind in the soil, in the dust, and in the water.

Research following neonics through irrigated fields has found that residues persist in groundwater months after planting. Instead of vanishing up through the plant and into insects, much of the insecticides migrate downward and outward, and move through the ecosystem like runoff from an oil slick, one layer deeper with every rain.

Even inside the plant itself, most of the chemical doesn’t stay for long. Tests on corn and cotton show that the concentration of neonics is almost 100 times higher in tiny seedlings than it is by the time the plant reaches maturity. In other words, the seed is drenched with insecticide at the very start of life, when pests aren’t even a major threat, and by the time the plant might actually need protection, most of that chemical has already faded or washed away. What remains lingers not in the crop, but in the soil and the water, far from the parts of the plant that need protection, but directly in the line of fire for beneficial insects and others. a

And here’s the part we rarely think about, what happens next? Those chemicals don’t just disappear when they fade from the plant. From there, they work their way into the food chain, touching everything that feeds, drinks, or nests nearby.

Neonics don’t stop with the bug they’re meant to kill. They spread through the food chain—into the bodies of birds, fish, and pollinators—rippling through entire ecosystems. Studies tie their use to dramatic bird losses and fishery collapses, and in 2023 the EPA warned that neonics are now pushing over 200 already-threatened species toward extinction.

For a Midwest farm, when you plant treated seed, you’re introducing into the soil more than just germinating kernel and nutrients. You’re introducing a chemical load that lives in the seed, transfers into the plant, drifts or leaches into the environment, and affects non-target insects (pollinators, beneficials), soil health, water bodies animals and even humans.

Here is a video that explains further the toxic truth about neonics.

What it means for American families

When we shift from the field to the dinner table, the story of neonics becomes personal. This isn’t just about farm policy or environmental science. It’s about what ends up in our bodies and our children.

Neonics were designed to act like nicotine, mimicking it inside an insect’s nervous system. But that same mechanism affects mammalian brains and nerves, including our own. And these systems in animals and people are critical for healthy brain development, growth, and function.

Research has found that neonic exposures during pregnancy are linked to heart and brain defects, autism-like symptoms, and reduced cognitive abilities in children. In adults, the effects are no less alarming: lower testosterone and sperm counts, altered insulin regulation, and changes to fat metabolism have all been observed in populations exposed to neonics.

Today, neonics are measurable in roughly half of the U.S. population at any given time. Biomonitoring studies of pregnant women have detected neonics in over 95 percent of participants, and those levels are still rising.

And exposure isn’t just from standing in a treated field. Neonics regularly pollute drinking water, where chlorination often fails to remove them and may even make the water more toxic. They also show up in the food we eat. Residues have been found in 86 percent of U.S. honey, and in fruits and vegetables, including many children’s favorites like apples, cherries, strawberries, potatoes, and leafy greens. Because neonics are systemic, and come from the very seed the food comes from, they don’t just sit on the surface; they’re inside the fruit itself. You can’t wash them off or peel them away.

While Europe has banned outdoor uses of the major neonic chemicals since 2018, and Canada has moved to significantly restrict some of their most widespread uses, little has changed in the United States. Several states are demanding to ban these pesticides, the latest in the list is Colorado, with their campaign for “The Seed We Need”. (Their website includes more info on how to make this change possible, make sure to visit it!)

And yet, because the chemical industry is a political powerhouse in America, strong enough to silence RFK, of all people, nothing changes here, no one talks about it, and we continue to unwittingly ingest poison while celebrating Wal-Mart doing something it was already going to have to do.

I’m writing this because I’m tired of the way that these big industries seem to silence their critics so easily and I want people to know. We all deserve better

Marilyn Kunce