VABF joins Union of Concerned Scientists in Seeking to Restore Scientific Integrity in the Next Presidential Term
Throughout the nation’s history, producers have depended on the fruits of sound, unbiased scientific research to meet the ever-evolving challenges of the farming and ranching professions. With today’s double-whammy of pandemic and climate change, farmers in Virginia and across the nation rely more than ever on sound science to stay in the business of feeding their communities while keeping themselves and their families, employees, and customers healthy and safe.
Thus, it is essential that scientists within USDA and other federal government agencies be free to pursue vital and timely research where it leads, and to communicate their results without political manipulation. The government should collect reliable data about agricultural production and sustainability, and public health and environmental threats, and make it publicly available. Our leaders must adopt policy with full consideration of the best available science, based on scientific advice that is robust, independent, and nonpartisan. Agency leaders should be qualified, ethical, and accountable, and those who expose political interference in science should be protected from retaliation.
On June 11, 2020, VABF joined the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS, https://www.ucsusa.org/) and dozens of other environmental, public health, consumer, and human and civil rights organizations in the collective release of Restoring Science, Protecting the Public: 43 Steps for the Next Presidential Term.
The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare how the nation suffers when data is not collected and science is sidelined or eliminated from policy decisions. When CDC guidance is doctored and scientists can’t publicly share their expertise, public confusion increases and more people get sick and die. Similarly, when “climate deniers” at the top of the power structure thwart efforts by EPA and USDA scientists to publish research –based recommendations that could help farmers and landowners build more climate-resilient ecosystems and communities, and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, opportunities to avoid the worst impacts of climate disruption are missed.
To successfully emerge from the pandemic and meet the longer-term economic, food-system, and climate-related challenges, we must rebuild not only the government’s scientific capacity and integrity, but also the public’s trust in government’s ability to provide reliable information and make decisions that protect our health and well-being.
This series of memos provides concrete steps the next administration can take—without significant costs—to make government more effective, efficient, transparent, and accountable, and thereby allow good science to pave the way to recovery and sustainability in the face of today’s dual crisis. The UCS offers recommendations in eight categories:
- Federal advisory committees
- Personnel policy
- Agency scientific independence
- Restoring strength to scientific agencies
- Whistleblower protections
- Scientific communications
- Data collection and dissemination
- Regulatory reform
The Union of Concerned Scientists will share these recommendations with major presidential campaigns and transition teams. We encourage all who have influence over White House and executive branch priorities in 2021 to read these short documents and take them to heart.
