Unyielding is a College of Missouri Faculty of Journalism undertaking for Examine Midwest.
With billions of {dollars} at stake, Bayer has gone on the offensive.
Billboards alongside main highways. A social media offensive.
Tens of hundreds of {dollars} in marketing campaign donations in Missouri alone.
And a serious push in a minimum of 11 states to vary pesticide labeling legal guidelines.
Such efforts by the agricultural biotech firm and others are tied to a chemical that, for years, was discovered on storage cabinets all through America and remains to be being utilized to commercially-grown crops all through the nation.
The battle over Roundup and glyphosate, the controversial chemical it accommodates, is a case research in how regulation, politics and large enterprise are intertwined within the agricultural trade.
When Germany’s Bayer AG purchased Monsanto in 2018, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology firm put aside over $16 billion to cowl litigation legal responsibility related to hundreds of U.S. lawsuits alleging its glyphosate-based weed-killer Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma most cancers. The lawsuits typically hinge on whether or not Roundup ought to have a warning label.
After shedding instances to most cancers victims, Bayer mentioned in 2020 that it might pay greater than $10 billion to deal with, by a mixture of rulings and settlements, roughly 125,000 claims. The chemical big additionally mentioned that by 2023, it might exchange its glyphosate-based merchandise within the U.S. residential market with new formulations utilizing various substances. Bayer Crop Science’s head of communications, Jess Christiansen, mentioned the transfer was made completely to handle litigation danger, as most authorized claims have come from residential customers, and never due to any security issues with glyphosate.
Roundup, with glyphosate as its predominant lively ingredient, remains to be obtainable for industrial buy.
Bayer has been concerned in 181,000 Roundup instances in complete, with 67,000 nonetheless open, a Bayer spokesperson mentioned.
As the price of litigation soared, Bayer ramped up its help to change pesticide labeling in states throughout the nation. Laws and litigation go hand in hand; what’s proposed within the statehouse has a direct influence within the courthouse.
Laws in Missouri and throughout states from Montana to Florida has appeared to deal with pesticide labeling and product legal responsibility.
The payments said that if a pesticide product is permitted by the U.S. Environmental Safety Company, or is per the company’s most cancers classifications, it doesn’t want further most cancers warning labels.
Proponents declare this laws is about defending entry to pesticides, which they are saying are crucial instruments for farmers. Opponents declare it’s a litigation and legal responsibility immunity defend.
The obligation to warn
Whereas a number of related payments had been proposed final 12 months, Bayer and different corporations significantly elevated their lobbying efforts in 2025.
Christiansen mentioned these payments would guarantee any pesticide registered with the EPA — and offered beneath a label per the EPA’s personal determinations — satisfies well being and security warnings. As a result of the EPA has not decided that glyphosate is linked to most cancers, no such warning is required by the company.
By itself and thru varied coalitions, Bayer has supported laws in a couple of dozen states. As of Might, two states have signed pesticide labeling payments into legislation: North Dakota and Georgia, each of which acquired reward from Bayer. Payments have failed in a number of different states, together with Missouri, the place two an identical pesticide payments backed by Bayer died when the session resulted in Might.
Proponents and opponents of those payments cite the commonest declare beneath product legal responsibility for these kind of instances, however at completely different ends of the spectrum: the obligation to warn.
Failure to warn is regularly raised in product legal responsibility lawsuits, resembling these towards Bayer. Plaintiffs generally use this to allege a product producer didn’t present ample warnings or directions a couple of product’s protected use. A plaintiff then must show that the producer should have recognized or might have simply found dangers related to the product however did not warn customers, ensuing within the plaintiff’s damage.
Tort legal responsibility is the obligation that comes from inflicting hurt on account of a wrongful act or omission. Bayer has argued that it doesn’t have tort legal responsibility as a result of the EPA has already assessed glyphosate and decided it’s not a possible carcinogen.
Some argue {that a} most cancers warning is sweet for transparency and right-to-know causes, mentioned Penelope Fenner-Crisp, the previous senior science advisor to the director, EPA Workplace of Pesticide Packages. However including quick statements to labels doesn’t replicate the nuances related to assessing chemical exposures. which is one cause the EPA doesn’t require a most cancers warning, Fenner-Crisp mentioned.
Christiansen mentioned that “if an organization like Bayer goes by this rigorous scientific course of with the EPA, and we label the product how we’re legally required to label it, then we’ve glad the obligation for well being and security warning.”
The stakes are excessive, and never only for Bayer.
Greater than 25,000 lawsuits alleging glyphosate precipitated the plaintiffs’ non-Hodgkin lymphoma and did not warn them about potential hazard are pending in Cole County, Missouri, in line with reporting by the Missouri Unbiased. In 2023, three plaintiffs had been awarded $1.56 billion, which was later lowered to $622 million. After Monsanto appealed, the courtroom upheld the unique ruling in late Might of this 12 months.
And Bayer isn’t the one litigation goal; Syngenta has confronted backlash from the chemical paraquat.
Hundreds are suing chemical big Syngenta, which sells paraquat beneath the product title Gramoxone. Lawsuits allege the weedkiller led to Parkinson’s illness, which destroys motor features.
The corporate has disputed the allegations, stating that there is no such thing as a connection between paraquat and Parkinson’s illness. But information launched in litigation present Syngenta scientists discovered that paraquat had the potential to wreck the mind and nervous system, first reported by The Guardian.
The first federal trial alleging that glyphosate in Roundup precipitated the plaintiff to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma was in Hardeman v. Monsanto, utilizing failure-to-warn claims. The case made all of it the best way to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom, which in 2022 decided there was no must rethink the decrease courts’ rulings in favor of Edwin Hardeman’s declare. Hardeman’s $25.2 million in damages remained intact.
“Our difficulty within the lawsuit was that Monsanto shouldn’t have hid the reality and will have advised customers in regards to the danger of most cancers,” mentioned Jennifer Moore, an lawyer who represented Hardeman.
Legal professional Matt Clement, who represents roughly 100 instances towards Bayer, mentioned his concern with the laws pushed in Missouri and elsewhere is that it might eliminate failure to warn claims. These payments might forestall Missourians from suing chemical producers regarding an absence of health-risk warnings, Clement mentioned. Nevertheless, it’s onerous to find out how the courts would navigate litigation if such payments had been enacted.
The laws backed by Bayer and different corporations “would basically take away the primary declare that these people have in search of compensation for his or her accidents,” Clement mentioned.
Ethan Duke, co-founder of the Missouri River Fowl Observatory, spoke in opposition to Missouri Senate Invoice 14 in a Senate committee listening to in January. He mentioned he’s involved about “defending folks’s skill to face up for themselves” by litigation relatively than safeguarding the chemical producers.
Many testified that the warning labels serve a vital position.
“If you find yourself within the enterprise of promoting an inherently harmful product, product legal responsibility 101 says you have to have a warning label on it, in any other case you’ll be vulnerable to litigation,” mentioned Melissa Vatterott, director of coverage and technique for the Missouri Coalition for the Surroundings. “And so, if agrochemical corporations are uninterested in class motion lawsuits, then they need to put a warning label on the product or change the substances in order that it’s not dangerous.”
Rep. Adrian Plank, D-Columbia, agrees, saying litigation retains firms accountable.
There’s a narrative that multi-billion-dollar firms are too large to fail, however “we’ve got to grasp that there’s obtained to be a stability,” he mentioned.
Whereas no Missouri pesticide labeling payments grew to become legislation within the 2025 session, an an identical invoice, Home Invoice 544, did move the Home. Earlier than that vote, Rep. Doug Clements, D-St. Ann, cautioned towards messing with the judicial course of.
“We’re not speaking about whether or not a chemical causes most cancers or not. That’s not our job. Our job is to legislate. We’ve a complete department of presidency designed to deal with that kind of factor,” Clements mentioned. “So we have to keep out of it.”
Christiansen mentioned that legislative efforts take time and can proceed. Protecting glyphosate-based Roundup in the marketplace received’t be sustainable if litigation continues, she added.
If farmers don’t have entry to instruments resembling pesticide sprays, then the quantity of meals they will produce and the price of manufacturing would have an effect on customers on the grocery retailer, Christiansen mentioned. The laws “is de facto in help of defending entry to merchandise that undergo actually rigorous, scientifically backed processes.”
Firms must be held accountable in the event that they’re doing one thing fallacious, Christiansen mentioned, however Bayer is just not.
“These payments aren’t blanket immunity. Folks ought to nonetheless completely have their day in courtroom in the event that they deserve that,” she mentioned. “It simply is mindless, notably within the case of Roundup, the place it doesn’t trigger most cancers.”
Influencing the talk
Fashionable Ag Alliance’s web site dwelling web page shows a message on the coronary heart of the trade’s push for legislative motion: “Management weeds, not farming.”
The Alliance’s web site lists many advantages of glyphosate:
- Pesticides save the typical household of 4 as much as 48% on their common grocery invoice.
- Glyphosate-based merchandise are Missouri farmers’ greatest device for controlling weeds and utilizing much less land and assets.
- The chemical saves Missouri farmers an estimated $358 million yearly in comparison with “pricier alternate options.”
Fashionable Ag Alliance was based by Bayer.
Residents in districts represented by 9 conservative Missouri state senators who opposed the payments had been despatched politically charged flyers. The marketing campaign warned that chemical substances from Communist China would pour into the state, if the laws had been enacted. Bayer officers mentioned the corporate was not concerned.
The guide “Seed Cash,” written by environmental historian Bart Elmore, examines the affect of Monsanto (the corporate Bayer purchased) over the meals system. His guide suggests a “cozy relationship” between the regulated and regulators — chemical producers and the EPA, respectively.
In his guide, such proof contains when an arm of the World Well being Group decided that glyphosate was in all probability carcinogenic to people in 2015, Monsanto officers s despatched textual content messages to EPA officers. They had been frightened in regards to the CDC’s Company for Poisonous Substances and Illness Registry’s evaluation of glyphosate, and “pushed” the EPA to make sure each U.S. businesses had been aligned in glyphosate assessments.
“The purpose is, it’s a damaged system already, and the confluence of chemical substances which are out there’s the issue,” Elmore mentioned in an interview with Examine Midwest.
John Madras, a Sierra Membership member who testified towards one of many Missouri payments, defined that the negotiation between EPA and the producer generally includes a “give and take” on what the label says. “Reopening dialogue on the label is a mammoth job,” Madras mentioned.
Fenner-Crisp mentioned that it’s applicable to have back-and-forth negotiations between the registrant and the company. If each can discuss registering a chemical and its makes use of being permitted, the registrant can perceive what’s required and the EPA can talk how it might interpret info introduced.
For the reason that 2018 acquisition of Monsanto, Bayer’s political affect has surged. Although Bayer doesn’t make company contributions to political events or politicians, the corporate has a political motion committee. The Bayer PAC and different committees that checklist Bayer because the contributor title spent greater than $151,000 in Missouri through the 2023-2024 election cycle, in line with the Missouri Ethics Fee.
Bayer CEO Invoice Anderson, met with Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe when the legislative session started this 12 months as a “regular course of enterprise,” Christiansen mentioned.
Rep. Dane Diehl, a fifth-generation farmer who sponsored the laws, plans to proceed the trouble within the subsequent legislative session in January 2026.
Bayer officers are pleased with how the laws has progressed this 12 months, Christiansen mentioned, noting that in 2024, when the trouble started in three states, not one of the laws handed.
Vatterott, of the Missouri Coalition for the Surroundings, mentioned lawmakers ought to resist company affect.
“Legislators are voted in by the folks, not firms,” Vatterott mentioned. “They shouldn’t be bending backward for firms.”
Lillian Metzmeier and Ben Koelkebeck contributed to this report.
“Unyielding” was produced by college students on the College of Missouri Faculty of Journalism. The staff included researchers, reporters, knowledge analysts, photographers and graphic designers. The scholars, most of whom had been seniors who graduated in Might 2025, included:
Reporters: Mary McCue Bell, Alex Cox, Jonah Foster, Prajukta Ghosh, Adeleine Halsey, Ben Koelkebeck, Xander Lundblad, Lillian Metzmeier, Kyla Pehr, Seth Schwartzberg, Savvy Sleever and Mayci Wilderman.
Knowledge and graphics: Alex Cox, Yasha Mikolajczak and Mariia Novoselia
Images: Michael Baniewicz
For questions in regards to the undertaking, please contact Mark Horvit, horvitm@missouri.edu.
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