JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri – After failing in several U.S. states this year, global chemical maker Bayer said Tuesday it plans to expand efforts to create a legal shield against a proliferation of lawsuits alleging it failed to warn that its popular herbicide could cause cancer.
Bayer, which disputes cancer claims, has been the target of about 170,000 lawsuits involving its herbicide Roundup and has set aside $16 billion to settle cases. But the company says the legal fight is “not sustainable” and is hoping for help from state lawmakers.
Bayer lobbied for legislation that could have blocked a central legal argument this year in Missouri, Iowa and Idaho — home, respectively, to its North American agricultural science division, a Roundup production facility and where its main ingredient comes from. Although the bills passed at least one chamber in Iowa and Missouri, they ultimately failed in all three states.
But Bayer plans a renewed push during next year’s legislative sessions and could expand efforts elsewhere.
“This is bigger than just these states and it’s bigger than just Bayer,” said Jess Christiansen, head of agricultural science and sustainability communications at Bayer. “It’s really about the crop protection tools that farmers need to ensure production.”
Many U.S. farmers rely on Roundup, which was introduced 50 years ago as a more efficient way to control weeds and reduce tillage and soil erosion. For crops like corn, soybeans and cotton, it’s designed to work with genetically modified seeds that resist Roundup’s deadly effect.
The lawsuits allege that Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, causes a cancer called non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Although some studies link glyphosate to cancer, the US Environmental Protection Agency has stated that it is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans when used as directed.
Bayer-backed legislation would protect pesticide companies from claims that they failed to warn that their products could cause cancer if their labels met EPA regulations.
Some lawmakers have raised concerns that if the lawsuits persist, Bayer could pull Roundup from the U.S. market, forcing farmers to turn to alternatives from China.
Christiansen said Bayer hasn’t made any decisions about Roundup’s future, but “it will eventually have to do something different if we don’t get some consistency and some path forward in the litigation space.”
Bayer’s most recent quarterly report shows it has laid off more than 1,500 employees, reducing its worldwide employment to about 98,000. Bayer notified Iowa that 28 people would be laid off starting Wednesday at its Muscatine facility.
The Iowa layoffs are not a direct result of the failure of protective legislation, Christiansen said, but are part of a global restructuring amid “multiple headwinds” that include litigation.
Bayer funded a new coalition of agricultural groups that ran ads on television, radio, newspapers and billboards supporting protective legislation for pesticide producers. The campaign particularly targeted Missouri, where most of the approximately 57,000 active lawsuits are still pending. Missouri was the headquarters of Roundup’s original manufacturer, Monsanto, which Bayer acquired in 2018.
Legal experts say the protective legislation is unlikely to affect existing court processes. But that could limit future claims.
The annual deadline to pass legislation in Missouri passed last Friday. Although a Bayer-backed bill passed the Republican-led House and a Senate committee, it was never debated by the full GOP-led Senate, which was mired in unrelated tensions.
If the legislation is revived next year, it could face resistance from senators concerned about limiting people’s constitutional right to a jury trial to resolve disputes.
“I support farmers, but I also think they need due process,” said Republican state Sen. Jill Carter, who voted against the legislation this year in the Senate agriculture committee.
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