\n<\/p>\n
Every spring, summer,<\/span> and fall, Jimmy Draeger would walk the length of his 11-acre property with a hand sprayer and a tub of Roundup. He\u2019d mist around the flower beds, the patio, the fence line, diluting the concentrated herbicide with water as the label directed.<\/p>\n Nestled deep in the woods of the Missouri Ozarks, Draeger was used to seeing an explosion of weeds and shrubs in the warm months at the home he\u2019s shared with his wife, Brenda, for more than 30 years. He didn\u2019t think much of using Roundup to keep them at bay.<\/p>\n Then he was diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin lymphoma. According to a lawsuit filed by the Draegers in 2022, <\/strong>Jimmy had a chemotherapy port installed in his chest, developed neuropathy in his hands and feet, and lost control of his bowels, coordination, and sexual function. He became clinically depressed, vision-impaired, and unable to bathe without Brenda\u2019s help.<\/p>\n Monsanto, the agrochemical company behind Roundup, was to blame for Jimmy\u2019s lymphoma, the Draegers contended. In November 2023, a jury agreed. Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018, was ordered to pay the Draegers and two other plaintiffs a combined $1.56 billion in damages. (A judge later cut the payout for punitive damages, reducing the total awards to $611 million<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The Draegers\u2019 case is one of more than 160,000 Roundup lawsuits filed against Monsanto or Bayer since 2015, when the World Health Organization\u2019s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate, a key ingredient in Roundup, as \u201cprobably carcinogenic to humans.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the lawsuits hinged on failure-to-warn claims: the allegation that Monsanto, and later Bayer, failed to adequately notify customers of glyphosate\u2019s potential cancer risk. Bayer has paid roughly $11 billion to settle these claims while denying any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n Now, the Environmental Protection Agency is considering a Bayer-backed<\/a> rule that could significantly curtail the lawsuits.<\/p>\n Unlike the WHO, the EPA \u2014 which, headed by Trump appointee Lee Zeldin, has already announced massive regulatory rollbacks \u2014 does not consider glyphosate to be a likely human carcinogen.<\/p>\n \u201cEPA\u2019s cancer classification is consistent with most other international expert panels and regulatory authorities,\u201d EPA Associate Administrator for Public Affairs Molly Vaseliou said in a statement to The Intercept. \u201cEPA does not agree with IARC\u2019s conclusion that glyphosate is \u2018probably carcinogenic to humans.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Last August, 11 industry-friendly red states, led by Nebraska and Iowa, submitted a 436-page petition asking the agency to amend its labeling rules under the Federal Insecticide, Rodenticide, and Fungicide Act, or FIFRA. The proposed rule change would explicitly prohibit states from labeling pesticides and herbicides with warnings about cancer, birth defects, and reproductive harm if those notices contradict the EPA\u2019s risk assessment.<\/p>\n The states made clear that their ultimate goal is to thwart future lawsuits against pesticide manufacturers. Their petition argued that recent court rulings have created a \u201cgap in FIFRA\u2019s regulatory framework\u201d that the proposed rule change would plug.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s telling of the lengths that pesticide manufacturers will go to make sure that nothing interferes with their profit margins.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n In January, in a move initiated by the Biden administration, the EPA took a first step of accepting<\/a> public comment on the rule-making petition, with a deadline of March 24 \u2014 though this step is exploratory and does not mean a new rule will be issued. Still, the EPA\u2019s decision could have disastrous consequences if Donald Trump\u2019s second administration is as friendly<\/a> to the chemical industry as it was in his first<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s telling of the lengths that pesticide manufacturers will go to make sure that nothing interferes with their profit margins,\u201d said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. \u201cThere\u2019s a reality that the industry itself generates much of the data, and they say it\u2019s safe, and then EPA approves that determination.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf we\u2019re not limited to the industry-created data set,\u201d he said, \u201cthey see it as a larger threat to their ability to control the universe of science and data that go into the pesticide regulatory review process.\u201d<\/p>\n The EPA petition follows in the path of other efforts at both the state and federal level to shield Bayer from civil liability.<\/p>\n Last year, state legislatures in Florida<\/a>, Idaho<\/a>, Iowa<\/a>, and Missouri<\/a> introduced bills that would make pesticide manufacturers immune to failure-to-warn lawsuits if their product labels match EPA assessments. And House Republicans introduced similar language in the discussion draft<\/a> of the 2024 Farm Bill.<\/p>\n Though all the bills failed, allies of the chemical industry are expected to redouble their efforts this year. Advocates expect<\/a> at least 21 states to introduce pesticide immunity legislation in 2025. The Florida Senate already has<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bayer itself bankrolled the push, spending nearly $8.5 million<\/a> to lobby the federal government in 2024, including to advocate for the \u201cuniformity of pesticide labeling\u201d under FIFRA.<\/p>\n FIFRA already prohibits the sale of \u201cmisbranded\u201d pesticides, which includes requiring state health warnings to conform with EPA-approved labels.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are very pleased to see the EPA and several state Attorneys General take this step to reinforce that any state labeling requirements inconsistent with EPA\u2019s own findings and conclusions regarding human health, such as a pesticide\u2019s likelihood to cause cancer, constitute misbranding,\u201d Bayer said in a statement to The Intercept. \u201cIt reinforces the urgent need for a solution to this issue created by the litigation industry.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The raft of litigation over Roundup, however, has not always ended badly for Bayer. Federal appeals courts disagree on whether the FIFRA misbranding statute trumps state laws that may require manufacturers to go farther in adequately warning consumers about their products.<\/p>\n The 9th<\/a> and 11th<\/a> U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled in plaintiffs\u2019 favor in recent years, finding that failure-to-warn claims against Bayer in state courts are consistent with FIFRA\u2019s intent; the 3rd Circuit<\/a>, meanwhile, found the opposite. The split could set the stage for a Supreme Court battle.<\/p>\n The EPA rule change proposed in the states\u2019 petition aims to remedy the circuit split by explicitly classifying labels as \u201cmisbranded\u201d if they include health warnings that exceed the EPA\u2019s risk assessment.<\/p>\n The agency\u2019s position on glyphosate has been mired in controversy for decades. In 1991, the EPA mysteriously changed its classification from \u201csuggestive evidence\u201d of glyphosate\u2019s carcinogenic potential to \u201cno evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n Since then, documents released in Roundup litigation have shown<\/a> Monsanto cozying up to EPA regulators, ghostwriting scientific papers on glyphosate\u2019s safety, and actively working to discredit journalists and WHO.<\/p>\n In 2015 \u2014\u00a0the same year the international body\u2019s cancer bureau classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen \u2014 The Intercept reported that the EPA had overwhelmingly used Monsanto\u2019s own research<\/a> to conclude that glyphosate was not an endocrine disruptor.<\/p>\n In 2016, an internal EPA analysis noted an association between glyphosate exposure and an increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in four epidemiological studies, The Intercept reported<\/a>. The EPA analysis was never made public. Instead, the agency drew from industry-backed studies in 2016 to conclude<\/a> that glyphosate was \u201cnot likely to be carcinogenic to humans.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe industry itself generates and pays for much of this data, so that is very different of course than peer-reviewed, hypothesis-based, independent science,\u201d said Hartl, of the Center for Biological Diversity. \u201cThat creates an inherent tension and conflict of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEPA\u2019s long-standing practice is to seek input from a variety of stakeholders and use the best available science,\u201d said Vaseliou, the EPA public affairs official. \u201cEPA evaluates information from all kinds of sources \u2014 pesticide companies, other governments, academia, and the published scientific literature.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2020, during the periodic pesticide review process mandated by FIFRA, the EPA issued an interim decision to reregister<\/a> glyphosate with a risk assessment that did not identify \u201cany human health risks of concern.\u201d But in June 2022, in a separate case from the FIFRA ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the EPA\u2019s assessment, noting the decision had been made without following the agency\u2019s own cancer guidelines, and ordered the EPA to reevaluate its findings.<\/p>\n The new analysis is still forthcoming.<\/p>\n \u201cIn accordance with the court\u2019s decision related to human health, EPA is currently updating its evaluation of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate to better explain its findings and include the current relevant scientific information,\u201d said Vaseliou. \u201cEPA\u2019s underlying scientific findings regarding glyphosate, including its finding that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans, remain the same.\u201d<\/p>\n How the EPA decides to proceed with the glyphosate petition will in many ways be a canary in the coal mine for this administration\u2019s approach to chemical regulation.<\/p>\n While Trump\u2019s first term was marked<\/a> by severe deference<\/a> to industry<\/a>, his recent rhetoric has promoted Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s \u201cMake America Healthy Again,\u201d or MAHA, agenda.<\/p>\n In a February executive order<\/a>, the president pledged to eliminate \u201cundue industry influence\u201d and \u201cestablish a framework for transparency and ethics review in industry-funded projects\u201d \u2014 the same reforms that advocates have long said would strengthen the EPA\u2019s glyphosate review.<\/p>\n Kennedy is a longtime critic of the pesticide industry; in an October YouTube video<\/a>, he railed against the country\u2019s agriculture policy for \u201ctilting the playing field in favor of more chemicals, more herbicides, more insecticides\u201d and promised to \u201cban the worst agricultural chemicals that are already prohibited in other countries.\u201d As a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading nonprofit environmental law group, he took Monsanto to task, helping secure<\/a> a multimillion-dollar settlement in a Roundup cancer lawsuit in 2018.<\/p>\n There are indications, of course, that the MAHA promise is a smokescreen. <\/p>\n <\/p>\nEnter the EPA<\/h2>\n
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Warning Labels<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Trump\u2019s MAHA Promise<\/h2>\n