Bayer’s Push for Legal Immunity Amid Roundup Cancer Claims

Bayer is lobbying state lawmakers to enact legislation that provides blanket immunity from lawsuits based on the EPA’s approval of the pesticide for residential and commercial sales. Pesticide immunity would apply not only to Roundup but also to all pesticides that the EPA has approved. 

So far, the legislation has been presented in Iowa, Missouri, Idaho, and Florida to counter future potential lawsuits. Bayer has settled on about 100,000 cases against Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate, mostly for allegations that the product caused cancer. There are at least 54,000 pending cases with more coming all the time. 

The claim is that if the EPA determines a product is safe, the manufacturer should not be held responsible as long as the proper warnings and instructions are clearly labeled on the packaging. The strongest rebuttal to this point is that the EPA cannot be trusted regarding its safety classification for glyphosate because there have been emails that provide evidence of collusion between EPA officials and Monsanto. Monsanto was bought out by the conglomerate Bayer in 2018, just after the news of the collusion broke. 

Jess Rowland, a former deputy director of EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP), told officials in Monsanto that “if I can kill this, I should get a medal.” Rowland was referring to a review of glyphosate safety data following the World Health Organization’s (WHO) proclamation that glyphosate is a “probable carcinogen.” 

Those actions occurred in 2015, Rowland retired in 2016, and the news about the conflict of interest was released in 2017. Also, in 2015, emails revealed William F. Heydens, a Monsanto executive, suggested that the company ghostwrite a section of the research regarding Exposure Tox & Genetox while the scientists could sign their names to the research. Heydens said this would keep the costs down, which otherwise might approach $250,000 to involve experts that presumably would come to the desired conclusion that Roundup’s key ingredient is not a human carcinogen. 

Ghostwriting is not illegal, and it is fairly common for industry to ghostwrite important sections of research that confirm the safety of the products they sell. However, despite the evidence, Monsanto responded by saying the allegations that they were involved with ghostwriting the research were false. 

The conflicts of interest continue with Bayer in regard to the pesticide immunity legislation. The Iowa Farm Bureau is a very influential organization in the state and is the second highest campaign donor, after the Republican party, to the bill’s author Jeff Edler. He also conveniently wrote an op-ed telling Iowans how support of the legislation is vital to agriculture and the economy of Iowa. 

The Iowa Farm Bureau is a 60% owner of the for-profit FBL Financial Group, which owns stock in Bayer, Cargill, Tyson and other corporate agriculture conglomerates. The insurance company is also responsible for paying the salaries of the corporate executives with the Iowa Farm Bureau. This is a clear and concerning conflict of interest. 

Searching the database of Follow the Money, it is clear that the Senators who voted yes for the pesticide immunity legislation all received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the Iowa Farm Bureau. Those who voted against the measure did not receive any donations from the Farm Bureau. 

The Iowa Senate Appropriations Committee approved the legislation. Senator Bill Dotzler said, “I don’t think that the science is caught up yet with the real effects of some of these pesticides, and the FDA doesn’t necessarily have that good track record when it comes to it.” Edler, the bill’s author, responded that regulatory agencies have deemed the product safe, and it is important to protect companies from “frivolous lawsuits.” 

The Missouri House approved the legislation in a 91-57 vote. Bayer has a crop science division headquarters located in St. Louis. 

In 2022, an appeals court required the EPA to take a new look at the safety of glyphosate. The federal agency is still allowing use of the product based on a 1993 review of the data. The EPA has since missed the review deadline and has received an extension until October 2026 to complete the analysis. Del Bigtree reported on this for The HighWire in a scathing takedown of Monsanto’s agricultural chemical. 

Moms Across America did a study on glyphosate in the food and water supply. 70% of the drinking water supply in the United States detected glyphosate. Testing on the children’s cereal, Trix found extremely high levels of glyphosate. Animal studies have shown that the chemical can cause sex hormone changes and organ damage when .1 ppb of glyphosate is consumed. Trix was found to have levels between 158 and 174 times that threshold. Jackie Schlegel of Moms Across America was a guest on The HighWire to discuss some of the findings and implications. 

Bayer, in response to the claims, has said that glyphosate “is safe to use as directed and does not cause cancer in humans.” Furthermore, they want to share independent studies to prove this conclusion. However, the page only links to the EPA review, the EU renewal (which ultimately didn’t come to a consensus), and a document showing several “world leaders” discussing glyphosate’s importance in agriculture. The EPA review does not link or state any specific studies they used to come to a conclusion and denies primarily basing their review on industry-funded research. 

Bayer, other American pesticide companies, and lobbyist groups all support the legislation that provides a legal shield to any harms from use or exposure to their agricultural chemical. The shield is similar to the protection that vaccine manufacturers have from liability for people who are harmed by the use of their products. ICAN attorney Aaron Siri broke down the vaccine liability concerns in a presentation in front of the Novel Coronavirus Southwestern Intergovernmental Committee in Arizona. 

One of the first key points from Siri’s testimony is that a company should be able to stand behind the use of its product. When there is no concern for litigation when harm is done, then there is no motivation to improve a product or pursue the safest composition of a specific product. 

Supporters of the legislation point to the necessity of glyphosate to obtain the yields farmers need to feed the country and the world. This claim is followed by several sub-claims that the only other way to suppress the weeds is to till the soil. A tractor implement known as a crimper allows farmers to operate an organic, no-till system. 

Roundup and its key ingredient glyphosate are strongly tied to American agriculture. That is why high levels of the chemical are found in mother’s milk, urine, and the water supply. The “we’ve done it this way for 40 years” line is a logical fallacy known as the appeal to tradition. Bayer frequently relies on this justification and the appeal to authority fallacy, stating that farmers on the ground say they need this chemical to do their jobs. 

Bayer is a company that deals with agriculture and pharmaceutical products. The agricultural chemicals are shown to be carcinogenic and cause cancer, as the court system has overwhelmingly recognized during the last several years. The corporate giant also has many chemotherapy products that may be used to treat the various types of cancers that are allegedly caused by Roundup.