Who Will Decide Whether Roundup Requires Cancer Warnings? The 9 Toxicologists Of The Supreme Court, Of Course

Since 2018, when it bought the chemical manufacturer Monsanto, the German conglomerate Bayer has set aside billions to settle legal claims that the active ingredient in the company’s weedkiller Roundup has caused cancer and other health issues among its users. More than 100,000 plaintiffs across the U.S. have filed lawsuits alleging a cancer link, and in February, the company agreed to settle a class action lawsuit for $7.25 billion. Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in one case that didn’t reach a settlement. John Durnell first sued Monsanto in 2019, arguing that he developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma because of persistent exposure to glyphosate in Roundup, which he had regularly sprayed throughout his neighborhood for 20 years. In 2023, a Missouri jury found Monsanto liable for failing to warn users of the cancer risk from glyphosate, and awarded Durnell $1.25 million in damages. The company has denied the claims and issued a series of appeals ever since.

Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act — known as FIFRA — the Environmental Protection Agency is authorized to govern the sale and labeling of pesticides. The federal law bars pesticides that are “misbranded,” or lack warnings that may be necessary to protect health and the environment. According to the law, states cannot impose labeling requirements that differ from or go beyond what federal law already mandates for these products. Manufacturers must register pesticides and herbicides with the EPA before selling them, and when a product is registered, the agency signs off on its labels. Durnell’s case rests on a Missouri law that bans the sale of dangerous products without adequate warnings. Monsanto argued those claims should have been preempted by FIFRA, since the company registered its product with the EPA and received approval for its label. The central legal question before the Supreme Court, then, is whether the EPA’s approval of that label overrides the Missouri state law.

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The EPA’s handling of pesticides has been fraught and shapes the stakes of the case considerably. Glyphosate is America’s most-used herbicide on agricultural crops — more than 280 million pounds of the chemical are applied to roughly 300 million acres of farmland every year, according to the EPA. In 2021, the EPA did a biological evaluation on glyphosate and found 1,676 endangered plant and animal species are likely to be harmed by the chemical. J.W. Glass, a senior EPA policy analyst at the conservation nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, which contributed to an amicus brief filed in support of Durnell, said the sheer scale of glyphosate use is the problem, and the ripple effects can show up not only in the environment, but in people’s bodies. Farmworkers face some of the most acute exposure risk, a byproduct of working on farmland where the use of herbicides like Roundup is a routine part of crop production, according to Nezahualcoyotl Xiuhtecutli, a senior grassroots advocacy coordinator at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

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The Durnell case has become a national flashpoint for environmentalists, public health advocates, and Trump voters who consider themselves a part of the Make America Healthy Again movement. Some of that friction can be traced back to last year, when the administration urged the Supreme Court to take up Bayer’s case. Then, in February, the president issued an executive order deeming glyphosate-based herbicides key to national security and calling for more domestic production of the chemical, which was met with serious backlash within the MAHA coalition. Trump’s administration also sent a lawyer to argue last Monday on behalf of the chemical company.

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https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/should-roundup-labels-warn-users-about-the-cancer-risk-its-up-to-the-supreme-court/