Bayer's sneak attack: the company's 6 pronged effort to avoid pesticide liability, after making a bad bet to take on Monsanto's culpability for injuries

That 1986 liability shield got us cheap, safe vaccines, right? What could go wrong if a similar law applied to all pesticides? Consider calling your elected officials!!!

Bayer, a part of I.G. Farben’s conglomerate, became a spin-off of I.G. Farben after World War 2. (I. G. Farben, which used slave labor and even ran its own concentration camp during WW2 to assist Hitler’s war machine) has long known that getting help from government can make you extremely rich.

Look what Bayer admits to on its own website: Its personal concentration camp was responsible for at least 25,000 deaths just in the construction of the camp, and its slave laborers died after an average of only 4 months of being worked to death.

In 2018, Bayer acquired Monsanto, despite Monsanto starting to lose legal cases in which Roundup was alleged to have caused cancer. It must have looked like a clever deal to them, with the litigation reducing Monsanto’s price. But Bayer did not foresee that the Roundup litigation could get out of hand.

Gene therapy! This is a company that likes taking risks. But it also has deep experience in using governments for its own ends.

Here are the 6 ways Bayer is fighting back against Roundup (and other pesticide) lawsuits, which have already cost $10 Billion. The global glyphosate market in 2023 is estimated at $8.7 Billion. Glyphosate the the world’s most used herbicide. Bayer claims it has spent $10 Billion on claims and litigation expenses already, and so it could put a large nest egg aside to fight additional losses. (Just imagine what $billions can buy in lobbying.) Bayer’s CEO has said that dealing with glyphosate litigation is top of his to-do list. So there is a 6-pronged strategy, to be certain Bayer can get out from under future risks.

1. Bayer’s CEO warned in April that the company might stop producing Roundup—this sounds like an attempt to get farmers who use the stuff to do unpaid lobbying to retain it on the market. Was Bayer hoping to get the Senators from Soybean land riled up about it?

2. Bayer is fighting as hard as possible against every loss in court, even appealing to the Supreme Court to find against lower courts that have given awards to plaintiffs who alleged injuries due to glyphosate, especially Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma patients.

   The Associated Press’ David A. Lieb reported at the beginning of April that “global agrochemical manufacturer Bayer has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether federal law preempts thousands of state lawsuits alleging it failed to warn people that its popular weedkiller could cause cancer.”

   “Bayer’s new request to the nation’s highest court comes as it is simultaneously pursing legislation in several states seeking to erect a legal shield against lawsuits targeting Roundup, a commonly used weedkiller for both farms and homes,” Lieb reported. “Bayer disputes the cancer claims but has set aside $16 billion to settle cases and asserted Monday that the future of American agriculture is at stake.”

   “In a court filing Friday, Bayer urged the Supreme Court to take up a Missouri case that awarded $1.25 million to a man who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after spraying Roundup on a community garden in St. Louis,” Lieb reported. “The federally approved label for Roundup includes no warning of cancer. Bayer contends federal pesticide laws preempt states from adopting additional labeling for products and thus prohibits failure-to-warn lawsuits brought under state laws.”

   “The Supreme Court in 2022 declined to hear a similar claim from Bayer in a California case that awarded more than $86 million to a married couple,” Lieb reported. “But Germany-based Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto in 2018, contends the Supreme Court should intervene now because lower courts have issued conflicting rulings.”

   The Supreme Court has just asked the DOJ to provide information to help it determine whether to hear Bayer’s appeal.

3. Bayer has had its lackeys in state legislatures introduce legislation that provides a liability shield for pesticides in general. This has already passed in Georgia and South Dakota, has been defeated in several states, and is in play in several other states.

4. Bayer has had its surrogates in Congress try to add a pesticide liability shield to existing bills—there has been discussion about sneaking it in to various bills, and by doing so other members of Congress might only have 24 hours before a committee vote on such an amendment. So far, we don’t know where it will appear. Last year, it briefly appeared in the Farm Bill, then was removed.

5. The Bayer CEO said the company would be working to develop 5 new pesticides—presumably by the times we have learned how one harms us, it will move on to the next pesticide. How utterly ruthless.

6. Bayer has hinted at spinning off part of itself, with the spun-off segment declaring bankruptcy so there will be little left to pay claims.

We expect to see some form of pesticide liability shield show up in a federal bill sometime soon, so be forewarned.

Readers, please call or write your Congressmembers (and state legislators if your state is one with a liability shield bill pending) and tell them this bill would be a LOSE LOSE for everyone except pesticide manufacturers and the recipients of Bayer’s lobbying largesse. We can’t give you a bill number or name because the way Bayer is running this effort is through stealth. Just tell them no pesticide liability shield, no matter what bill it gets tucked into. Spread the word, please!

And in case you needed evidence about glyphosate’s toxicity, this new paper provides it:

https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-025-01187-2

Abstract

Background

Glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs) are the world’s most widely used weed control agents. Public health concerns have increased since the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015. To further investigate the health effects of glyphosate and GBHs, the Ramazzini Institute launched the Global Glyphosate Study (GGS), which is designed to test a wide range of toxicological outcomes. Reported here are the results of the carcinogenicity arm of the GGS.

Methods

Glyphosate and two GBHs, Roundup Bioflow used in the European Union (EU) and RangerPro used in the U.S., were administered to male and female Sprague–Dawley (SD) rats, beginning at gestational day 6 (via maternal exposure) through 104 weeks of age. Glyphosate was administered through drinking water at three doses: the EU acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 0.5 mg/kg body weight/day, 5 mg/kg body weight/day and the EU no-observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) of 50 mg/kg body weight/day. The two GBH formulations were administered at the same glyphosate-equivalent doses.

Results

In all 3 treatment groups, statistically significant dose-related increased trends or increased incidences of benign and malignant tumors at multiple anatomic sites were observed compared to historical and concurrent controls. These tumors arose in haemolymphoreticular tissues (leukemia), skin, liver, thyroid, nervous system, ovary, mammary gland, adrenal glands, kidney, urinary bladder, bone, endocrine pancreas, uterus and spleen (hemangiosarcoma). Increased incidences occurred in both sexes. Most of these involved tumors that are rare in SD rats (background incidence < 1%) with 40% of leukemias deaths in the treated groups occurring before 52 weeks of age and increased early deaths were also observed for other solid tumors.

Conclusions

Glyphosate and GBHs at exposure levels corresponding to the EU ADI and the EU NOAEL caused dose-related increases in incidence of multiple benign and malignant tumors in SD rats of both sexes. Early-life onset and mortality were observed for multiple tumors. These results provide robust evidence supporting IARC’s conclusion that there is “sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity [of glyphosate] in experimental animals”. Furthermore, our data are consistent with epidemiological evidence on the carcinogenicity of glyphosate and GBHs.