Glyphosate, arguably farmers’ favourite herbicide and the central character in a high-stakes drama now spanning decades, is back in the news for all the wrong reasons.
Just as Bayer was rolling out a new plan in mid-February to settle once and for all thousands of lawsuits claiming the active ingredient in Roundup causes cancer, United States President Donald Trump was declaring the product critical to the nation’s food security.
These are just the latest twists in a plotline that has embroiled regulatory agencies in controversy, and which has now jumped out of courtrooms and the quarterly investor reports to the highest political level.
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Bayer shares jumped and then slumped as the market debated whether the company’s proposed US$7.25 billion settlement plan would end the legal nightmare it inherited with its purchase of Monsanto in 2018. It has reportedly already paid out more than $10 billion to settle claims glyphosate exposure is connected to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
It’s a costly remedy to a problem Bayer says shouldn’t exist. Of the cases that have gone to trial, the company has won more than it has lost, but it’s desperate to cap its exposure.
Bayer has warned that if it can’t find a way out of the legal morass, it will have no option but to quit making and selling glyphosate. That would leave it to generic manufacturers — mostly located in China — to supply the North American market.
However, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to ensure domestic production of glyphosate and phosphorus, deeming them critical to national and food security.
The move angered the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement that has heavily influenced the current Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy’s approach to food regulation and nutritional guidelines. And it forced him to choose between his own track record of condemning the herbicide and his loyalty to Trump. He chose Trump — which is making MAHA even madder.
The Supreme Court of the United States is also expected to weigh in this year on a critical legal question underpinning the outstanding legal claims, which are based on the premise that Roundup’s product labels failed to warn users that glyphosate may cause cancer.
However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (as has Health Canada) has consistently ruled that the herbicide is not a carcinogen, and it has approved the Roundup label without such a warning.
Bayer’s position is that federal labelling laws pre-empt the failure-to-warn claims made under state laws. If a product doesn’t cause cancer, how can the company put a warning on the label saying it does?
Adding more confusion to the hullabaloo, the scientific journal Regulatory and Toxicology Pharmacology, one of the leading peer-reviewed resources on product safety, announced late last year that it was taking the rare step of retracting a 25-year-old study “widely regarded as the hallmark paper” used by regulators to conclude glyphosate is safe.
The journal’s editor said in a statement that three academics whose names appear on the study “Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans” cherry-picked the data, they may have accepted payments from Monsanto, and had help from Monsanto writing the report.
This disclosure in no way proves that glyphosate poses undue risk to human health. However, it makes it harder to support claims that it is unequivocally safe, and it further erodes public trust.
Canada’s own Pest Management Regulatory Agency had one of its approvals for products containing glyphosate thrown out by the Federal Court of Canada last year because it failed to conduct a thorough-enough assessment.
Farmers and the public deserve to have these products regulated rigorously and transparently. Decisions must fully consider the benefits and costs plus there is an onus on users to use appropriate safeguards.
That said, however, farmers, who are more exposed than anyone to whatever risk there is, tend towards pragmatism over the product’s safety relative to the other perils of their job. They, like the rest of us, are surrounded by known carcinogens ranging from exhaust fumes and processed meats to alcohol or too much sun.
Farmers are more worried about losing the herbicide that has played a pivotal role in conservation agriculture and the chill this saga puts on new product investment — which is a valid concern.
Weeds are continuously evolving; there is a growing list of plants that are resistant to herbicides such as glyphosate, yet there are few new modes of action coming to market.
The glyphosate story might make good television drama someday, but it’s a horror flick for investors.
