Stories from the Field
The Hawai'i Resident
Protecting Communities from Experimental Farming
For decades, Hawai’i became one of the world’s largest outdoor laboratories for genetically engineered crop development and pesticide-intensive seed production.
Communities living near these operations often raised concerns about pesticide exposure, environmental contamination, and the lack of transparency surrounding agricultural practices occurring in their neighborhoods.
Center for Food Safety partnered with residents, community organizations, farmers, physicians, and local leaders to bring greater public scrutiny to industrial agricultural practices in Hawaiʻi. Through legal advocacy, public education, and policy campaigns, the organization helped elevate local concerns to national attention.
The work contributed to stronger public awareness, greater transparency around pesticide use, and a broader movement demanding accountability from both government regulators and multinational agricultural corporations.
For many Hawaiʻi residents, the fight was never simply about agriculture.
It was about the right to know what was being sprayed near homes, schools, waterways, and places where families live, work, and raise children.
Impact: Increased public transparency, stronger community engagement, heightened regulatory scrutiny, and a national spotlight on the impacts of industrial agriculture in Hawaiʻi.
The Willamette Valley Farmer
How a Rural Community Stopped a Factory Farm
When a proposed 3.5 million chicken factory farm threatened the drinking water, farmland, and quality of life of residents in Scio, Oregon, local farmers and community members refused to stand by.
The proposed facility would have generated more than 4,500 tons of waste every year in a flood-prone area less than 500 yards from the North Santiam River, a source of drinking water, recreation, and critical habitat for endangered salmon.
For Christina Eastman, a fifth-generation farmer whose family has stewarded the land for generations, the stakes could not have been higher.
Residents organized. Farmers testified. More than 500 public comments were submitted. Community advocates helped secure landmark legislation to strengthen protections against new factory farms. When state agencies attempted to sidestep those protections, Center for Food Safety went to court.
In 2026, an Oregon judge ruled that the state’s permit for the facility was unlawful, revoking the permit and preventing construction of the factory farm at the proposed site.
The victory protected local drinking water, farmland, wildlife habitat, and the North Santiam River. Just as importantly, it established a legal precedent confirming that state agencies must follow the law when reviewing new industrial livestock operations.
What began as a local fight became a statewide victory for clean water, family farmers, and rural communities.
Impact:
- Stopped a 3.5 million bird factory farm from being built.
- Protected drinking water supplies and endangered salmon habitat.
- Upheld landmark Oregon clean water protections.
- Established legal precedent limiting agency attempts to weaken environmental safeguards.
- Demonstrated the power of community advocacy backed by strategic litigation.
Why This Matters
The Oregon victory reflects how Center for Food Safety creates change.
Communities identify threats. Supporters provide resources. Scientists and attorneys build the case. Courts hold agencies accountable. Stronger protections follow.
From rural Oregon to agricultural communities in Hawaiʻi and beyond, Center for Food Safety transforms local concerns into lasting legal protections that benefit people and the environment for generations.
Farmworker Mothers
Protecting Families from Pesticides
For years, farmworker women across the United States shared similar stories.
Stories of cancer diagnoses. Pregnancy complications. Developmental delays. Fertility challenges. Children born with serious health problems.
Many suspected that the pesticides used in the fields where they worked were playing a role. Yet federal regulators had failed to fully evaluate how many pesticides affect the endocrine system, the network of hormones that regulates growth, development, reproduction, metabolism, and immune function.
The women of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, a national alliance representing farmworker women and girls across 20 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, decided they could not wait any longer.
They turned to Center for Food Safety for help.
Working alongside farmworker leaders, CFS filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to implement legally required testing for endocrine-disrupting pesticides. For more than two years, attorneys and advocates worked to hold the agency accountable.
The result was a landmark legal settlement requiring EPA to establish a new screening program to evaluate how pesticides impact the hormone systems of humans and wildlife.
For farmworker communities, the victory represented more than a legal win.
It represented recognition.
Recognition that their health matters. That their experiences matter. And that federal agencies cannot ignore the risks faced by the people who grow America’s food.
Because farmworker women spoke out and Center for Food Safety stood beside them, the federal government is now required to take meaningful steps toward identifying and addressing endocrine-disrupting pesticides.
While much work remains to remove these harmful chemicals from our food system, this victory established a critical new pathway for protecting farmworkers, children, wildlife, and communities nationwide.
Impact:
- Forced EPA to implement long-delayed endocrine disruptor screening requirements.
- Advanced protections for millions of farmworkers and their families.
- Created a framework for evaluating how pesticides affect hormone systems.
- Elevated the voices of farmworker women in federal decision-making.
- Established a foundation for future action to remove dangerous endocrine-disrupting chemicals from use.
Why This Matters
The people most affected by environmental harms are often the least heard.
Center for Food Safety works to change that.
By partnering with communities on the front lines, CFS uses the law to transform lived experience into systemic change. What began with farmworker mothers sharing their stories became a national victory with the potential to protect millions of people from harmful chemical exposures for generations to come.
The Family Farmer
Defending Farms from Pesticide Drift
For many farmers, success depends on a simple promise: if they care for the land, the land will provide.
But for thousands of farmers across the country, that promise was shattered by dicamba.
Marketed as a solution for industrial agriculture, dicamba became one of the most destructive pesticides in modern farming history. Unlike many herbicides, dicamba is highly prone to volatilizing and drifting far beyond where it is sprayed. The result was widespread damage to neighboring farms, orchards, gardens, wildlife habitat, and rural communities.
Farmers who had spent years building healthy operations watched crops curl, wilt, and die through no fault of their own.
One farmer described walking his fields after a nearby dicamba application and realizing that months of work had been destroyed in a matter of days.
Fruit trees were damaged. Vegetable crops failed. Native vegetation showed signs of exposure. The economic and emotional toll was devastating.
Yet when farmers reported the damage, many found that regulators had underestimated the scale of the problem and pesticide manufacturers continued to insist the product could be used safely.
Center for Food Safety worked alongside farmers, scientists, and rural communities to challenge EPA’s approval of dicamba. The organization helped bring forward evidence from across the country showing that pesticide drift was not an isolated accident but an inevitable consequence of the product’s use.
In 2020, a federal court agreed, vacating EPA’s approval of dicamba after finding the agency had substantially understated the risks and harms caused by the pesticide.
The victory represented one of the most significant pesticide accountability decisions in recent history and demonstrated that farmers have the right to protection from chemicals that damage their livelihoods.
For farmers whose fields had been harmed, the decision was about more than a single pesticide.
It was about fairness.
It was about ensuring that one farmer’s choice to spray a dangerous chemical does not destroy a neighboring farmer’s crops, business, or way of life.
Impact:
- Helped secure a landmark court decision vacating EPA’s approval of dicamba.
- Elevated the voices of farmers harmed by pesticide drift.
- Forced federal regulators to account for real-world agricultural impacts.
- Protected farms, orchards, gardens, and wildlife habitat from widespread damage.
- Established important legal precedent requiring EPA to fully consider economic and environmental harms before approving pesticides.
Why This Matters
When industrial agriculture creates harms that fall on neighboring farmers, rural communities, and ecosystems, someone must stand up and demand accountability.
Center for Food Safety helps ensure that the people living with the consequences of these decisions have a voice in the courts and in government.
Because protecting the future of farming means protecting the farmers themselves.
The Coastal Steward
Safeguarding Waters from Industrial Fish Farming
For many coastal communities, the ocean is more than a resource.
It is a source of food, culture, livelihood, recreation, and identity.
When industrial aquaculture companies began pushing to expand large scale fish farming operations into public waters, many residents saw a troubling future taking shape: the privatization of shared oceans, increased plastic pollution, and new threats to already stressed marine ecosystems.
One coastal advocate described the proposal as “turning the ocean into an industrial feedlot.”
Industrial fish farms rely on vast networks of cages, nets, mooring lines, pipes, and plastic infrastructure that can remain in the marine environment for years. Storms, equipment failures, and routine operations can release plastic debris into surrounding waters, contributing to a growing ocean plastics crisis that already threatens marine life worldwide.
At the same time, concentrated fish farming operations can attract predators, alter marine habitats, spread disease and parasites, and create conflicts with protected species including whales, sea turtles, seabirds, and wild fish populations.
For local communities, the concern extended beyond environmental impacts.
Many feared the transformation of public waters into private industrial production zones controlled by large corporations. Areas that had long been valued for fishing, recreation, cultural practices, and wildlife habitat risked becoming industrialized landscapes serving commercial interests.
Center for Food Safety worked alongside fishermen, Indigenous communities, conservation organizations, and coastal residents to challenge efforts to expand industrial aquaculture into public waters. Through litigation, policy advocacy, and public education, CFS helped expose the environmental risks associated with offshore fish farming and defend the principle that oceans should be managed for the public good, not private exploitation.
The fight was never simply about a single fish farm.
It was about protecting the integrity of marine ecosystems and preventing the industrialization of one of the planet’s last shared commons.
Impact:
- Helped stop or delay industrial aquaculture projects in public waters.
- Protected marine habitats from additional plastic pollution and industrial waste.
- Defended whales, sea turtles, wild fish, and other marine species from ecological harm.
- Challenged efforts to privatize and commercialize public ocean resources.
- Strengthened public oversight of industrial aquaculture development.
Why This Matters
Healthy oceans are essential to life on Earth.
They regulate climate, support biodiversity, sustain coastal economies, and provide food for billions of people.
Center for Food Safety believes the ocean is not a commodity to be industrialized for corporate gain. By standing with coastal communities, fishermen, and marine conservation advocates, CFS works to ensure that public waters remain healthy, accessible, and protected for future generations.
Because defending the future of food means defending the oceans that sustain it.
The Pollinator Guardian
Protecting the Species That Make Life Possible
The disappearance of pollinators is one of the clearest warning signs that our food system is out of balance.
Across North America, bee populations are declining, monarch butterflies have suffered catastrophic losses, and bird species that depend on healthy insect populations are disappearing from the landscapes they once filled with color and song.
Scientists increasingly point to industrial agriculture as a major driver of the crisis. Toxic pesticides, habitat destruction, and chemical intensive farming practices are stripping away the plants, insects, and ecosystems that pollinators and wildlife need to survive.
For beekeepers, gardeners, farmers, and nature lovers, the loss is deeply personal.
A beekeeper may open a hive and find thousands of bees dead or disoriented after nearby pesticide applications. A family that once watched monarch caterpillars cover milkweed plants may suddenly find none. Bird enthusiasts notice fewer songbirds returning each spring as insect populations decline.
These individual experiences are part of a much larger ecological crisis.
Center for Food Safety has spent more than a decade at the forefront of the fight to protect pollinators and the ecosystems that sustain them. Through litigation, scientific advocacy, and policy reform, CFS has challenged pesticide approvals, secured protections for imperiled species, and exposed the role industrial agriculture plays in driving biodiversity loss.
The organization’s work helped secure federal protections for the monarch butterfly, advance protections for endangered pollinators like the rusty patched bumble bee and Iowa skipper butterfly, and force stronger scrutiny of pesticides that harm bees, butterflies, birds, and other wildlife.
This work recognizes a fundamental truth:
When pollinators disappear, entire ecosystems begin to unravel.
Bees pollinate crops that feed millions of people. Butterflies help maintain healthy plant communities. Birds disperse seeds, control pests, and serve as indicators of ecosystem health. Together, they form an interconnected web of life that supports both nature and agriculture.
Protecting pollinators means protecting the future of food itself.
Impact:
- Advancing federal protections for monarch butterflies and other imperiled pollinators.
- Challenged pesticide approvals that threaten bees, butterflies, birds, and wildlife.
- Helped protect critical habitat for endangered species.
- Elevated pollinator decline into a national conservation issue.
- Defended biodiversity and ecosystem health across millions of acres of habitat.
Why This Matters
One out of every three bites of food depends on pollinators.
But the importance of pollinators extends far beyond agriculture. Their health reflects the health of the ecosystems that sustain all life.
By defending bees, butterflies, birds, and the habitats they depend upon, Center for Food Safety is helping build a future where both people and nature can thrive together.
Our Litigation
Active Case • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Biodiversity Protection • Pesticides and Toxics
Fighting the Toxic Herbicide Atrazine
Active Case • Food Integrity • Consumer Rights and Protection • Food Safety and Labeling • Genetic Engineering and Novel Food Technology • Right to Know
Securing GE Food Labeling
Active Case • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Pesticides and Toxics
Stopping the Drift-Prone Pesticide Dicamba
Victory • Cases with Impact • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Animal Factories • Factory Farms
Stopping Polluting Dairies in Washington
Center for Food Safety and community groups successfully used federal hazardous waste law to challenge mega-dairy pollution in the Yakima Valley, where mismanaged manure contaminated drinking water and threatened public health. Our landmark victory required major operational changes at several dairies, including safer manure lagoon practices, limits on manure application, groundwater monitoring, and clean drinking water for impacted residents.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Animal Factories • Factory Farms
Defeating Ag-Gag Legislation
Center for Food Safety successfully challenged unconstitutional ag-gag laws that restrict undercover investigations, whistleblowing, and public transparency about factory farming, food safety, worker rights, and environmental violations. We've struck down ag-gag laws in Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Utah, and North Carolina. We've also helped defeat proposed legislation in 20 states. These victories protected free speech, investigative journalism, whistleblower activities, and the public's ability to uncover food safety, environmental, labor, and animal welfare violations.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Healthy Communities • Organic and Beyond
Preserving Organic Compost Standards
Center for Food Safety successfully challenged USDA’s unlawful decision to allow pesticide-contaminated compost in organic production without public participation, protecting organic standards and preserving trust in the regulatory process. In a major victory, a federal court ruled that USDA violated the law and struck down the contaminated compost loophole. The decision restored protections against pesticide contamination in compost used for organic production and reaffirmed the importance of transparency and public participation in organic policymaking.
Cases with Impact • Healthy Communities • Organic and Beyond
Defending the Organic “Sunset” Process
In 2013, Center for Food Safety and a coalition of organic farmers, businesses, certifiers, and consumer organizations challenged USDA’s decision to change the long-standing "sunset" review process without public notice or rulemaking.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Food Integrity • Genetic Engineering and Novel Food Technology • Right to Know
Stopping Genetically Engineered Eucalyptus Trees
Through litigation and over 250,000 submitted public comments in a coalition of over 500 organizations, CFS successfully stopped the commercial approval of ArborGen's GE eucalyptus trees. Because of our work, there is still no GE trees approved for commercial growth in the U.S.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Healthy Communities • Animal Factories • Factory Farms • Organic and Beyond
Defending Animal Welfare in the Organic Standard
Center for Food Safety successfully challenged the Trump administration’s withdrawal of animal welfare protections under the organic standard, helping restore rules that improve the treatment of animals raised under the USDA Organic label. The final rule strengthens protections for millions of organically raised animals and represents a major victory for organic integrity, farmers, consumers, and animal welfare advocates.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Healthy Communities • Farmer and Farmworker Defense • Pesticides and Toxics
Protecting Farmworkers from Endocrine-Disrupting Pesticides
Center for Food Safety, alongside farmworker and environmental health organizations, sued EPA over its decades-long failure to test and regulate endocrine-disrupting pesticides as required by federal law.
In a major victory, EPA agreed to a landmark legal settlement requiring the agency to take concrete steps to assess endocrine-disrupting pesticides and establish timelines for reviewing dozens of chemicals over the coming years.
The agreement marked a major step toward protecting farmworkers, rural communities, and public health after decades of agency inaction.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Animal Factories • Factory Farms
Stopping a Mega Factory Farm (J-S Ranch)
Center for Food Safety, alongside Oregon farmers, river advocates, and community groups, successfully challenged J-S Ranch, a proposed mega-chicken factory farm in Linn County, Oregon. The proposed facility would have housed approximately 3.5 million broiler chickens annually near the North Santiam River and generated thousands of tons of manure and ammonia-laden waste each year.
In a major legal victory, an Oregon circuit court ruled that the permit issued to J-S Ranch was unlawful and revoked the approval for the proposed facility. The ruling halted development of the proposed mega-chicken operation and affirmed stronger protections for Oregon communities, clean water, and family farms.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Food Integrity • Consumer Rights and Protection
Enforcing the Food Safety Modernization Act
Center for Food Safety successfully sued FDA to enforce key food safety protections required by the Food Safety Modernization Act, helping improve food traceability, outbreak response, and consumer protection. The resulting food safety protections won in court from our three successful cases help reduce the risk of widespread outbreaks and strengthen consumer confidence in the safety of the food supply.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Food Integrity • Genetic Engineering and Novel Food Technology • Right to Know
Fighting Roundup Ready Alfalfa
In Geertson Seed Farms v. USDA, Center for Food Safety successfully challenged USDA's approval of Monsanto's genetically engineered Roundup Ready alfalfa, which was designed to withstand glyphosate. The decision affirmed that genetic contamination can constitute environmental and economic harm and established an important precedent for environmental review of genetically engineered crops.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Food Integrity • Genetic Engineering and Novel Food Technology
Fighting Genetically Engineered Sugar Beets
Between 2008-2010, Center for Food Safety successfully challenged USDA's approval of Monsanto's Roundup Ready sugar beets, forcing the agency to conduct a full environmental review of risks to farmers, related crops, and the environment. The case became a landmark victory for oversight of genetically engineered crops and farmer protections.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Food Integrity • Genetic Engineering and Novel Food Technology • Right to Know
Stopping Genetically Engineered Salmon
Center for Food Safety successfully challenged FDA's approval of genetically engineered salmon, the first GE animal approved for food, arguing the agency failed to assess risks to wild salmon, fisheries, consumers, and the environment. Because of our work, no genetically engineered food animals have been approved for human consumption.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Biodiversity Protection • Extinction Crisis
Ensuring EPA Regulates Greenhouse Gases (Massachusetts v. EPA)
In a landmark 2007 ruling, the Supreme Court held that greenhouse gases are pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act and that EPA must determine whether those emissions endanger public health and welfare.
The decision fundamentally changed federal climate policy and remains one of the most influential environmental rulings in American history.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Pesticides and Toxics • Pollinator Protection
Stopping Sulfoxaflor
Center for Food Safety challenged EPA's approval of sulfoxaflor due to risks posed to pollinators, endangered species, and the environment. The litigation continues CFS's long-standing work to ensure pesticide approvals comply with federal environmental laws and adequately protect vulnerable species. In 2022, a Federal Court found that the EPA's decision to allow new uses of sulfoxaflor on more than 200 million acres of pollinator-attractive crops was a violation of the Endangered Species Act.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Biodiversity Protection • Pesticides and Toxics • Pollinator Protection
Stopping Neonicotinoid Pesticides
Center for Food Safety has successfully challenged EPA’s approval of bee-toxic neonicotinoid pesticides, securing major victories for pollinators, endangered species, and the environment. Our legal work secured victories cancelling 12 neonicotinoid pesticide products as well as set out requirements for EPA to evaluate the impacts of major neonicotinoids on endangered species and implement additional safeguards.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Biodiversity Protection • Genetic Engineering and Novel Food Technology
Halting GE Crops and Toxic Pesticide Use on National Wildlife Refuges
Center for Food Safety successfully challenged the planting of genetically engineered crops and use of harmful pesticides on National Wildlife Refuges. These victories helped end GE crop planting across multiple refuge regions and established important protections for wildlife habitat, biodiversity, and public lands.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Food Integrity • Genetic Engineering and Novel Food Technology
Protecting Hawaii from GE Crop Field Trials
Center for Food Safety challenged secrecy around GE crop field tests in Hawaiʻi and helped defend Hawaiʻi County protections limiting new GE crop cultivation and open-air testing from chemical industry attacks. Our legal advocacy and community engagement work helped spotlight the need for stronger oversight of GE crop testing and greater public accountability in Hawaiʻi.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Animal Factories • Industrial Aquaculture
Stopping Industrial Aquaculture Pollution of Our Oceans (NWP56)
Center for Food Safety successfully challenged Nationwide Permit 56, a federal permit that would have authorized industrial offshore fish farming in U.S. ocean waters without adequate environmental review or protections for marine ecosystems. The decisions prevented the nationwide expansion of industrial offshore fish farming through NWP 56 and reaffirmed that federal agencies must comply with environmental laws before authorizing new industries in public waters.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Food Integrity • Genetic Engineering and Novel Food Technology
Fighting Roundup Ready Bentgrass
Center for Food Safety and allies challenged USDA’s handling of genetically engineered Roundup Ready bentgrass for more than a decade. In 2007, CFS won a legal victory declaring the GE creeping bentgrass field trials unlawful.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Food Integrity • Genetic Engineering and Novel Food Technology
Enforcing Regulations on Genetically Engineered Organisms (Part 340)
In National Family Farm Coalition, et al. v. Vilsack, Center for Food Safety opposed USDA's revised Part 340 regulations governing genetically engineered (GE) organisms because the rules significantly reduced federal oversight and allowed many genetically engineered crops to enter the marketplace without meaningful review. A federal court ruled in our favor in 2024 in a critical win for farmers and scientific integrity. The ruling restored basic protections for family farmers, consumers, and the environment against a seed and pesticide market increasingly dominated by a handful of agrochemical companies.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Animal Factories • Industrial Aquaculture
Fighting Industrial Aquaculture in the Gulf of Mexico
CFS successfully challenged the government's attempt to authorize industrial fish farming in the Gulf of Mexico, securing landmark court victories that prevented the creation of a new aquaculture industry in U.S. federal waters for the first time. This work established a landmark legal victory protecting our oceans and fishing communities.
Cases with Impact • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Animal Factories • Industrial Aquaculture
Stopping Industrial Shellfish Aquaculture in Washington
Center for Food Safety challenges industrial shellfish aquaculture operations that threaten water quality, sensitive coastal habitat, endangered species, and public access to clean shorelines. Our work has secured multiple landmark victories protecting Washington's sensitive shorelines and wildlife habitat from this expanding industry.
This litigation supports CFS’s broader campaign to ensure industrial aquaculture expansion does not come at the cost of ecological integrity, Tribal sovereignty, public shorelines, or clean water.