MAHA Report Will ‘Respect’ Glyphosate Safety, EPA Official Says

By Ryan Hanrahan
Published August 7, 2025 on Farm Policy News

Progressive Farmer’s Jerry Hagstrom reported that “the initial Make America Healthy Again Commission report said glyphosate and other pesticides may have a negative impact on children’s health, but the upcoming MAHA report on recommendations for action will ‘continue to respect regulatory frameworks’ that have found glyphosate is safe, a high-ranking Environmental Protection Agency official said here Tuesday at the American Sugar Alliance’s International Sweetener Symposium."

“The MAHA Commission is chaired by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has said for years that crop protection tools damage children’s health. However, Nancy Beck, the EPA deputy administrator in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Protection, noted that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins are members of the commission, Hagstrom reported. The cane and beet growers, who make up the American Sugar Alliance, and other farmers have been worried the MAHA Commission might recommend banning glyphosate or at least restricting its use.

“Beck, a political appointee with long experience in government and the private sector, said that she could not share the contents of the report, which is expected to come out shortly, but ‘we know pesticides are vital tools. We are going to get you those tools at the same time we protect children’s health,'” Hagstrom reported. “Farm leaders criticized the first MAHA report for not including input from producers, but Beck noted that the White House held meetings with farm leaders prior to the writing of the second report.”

“‘The science is still telling us that glyphosate is safe,’ Beck said, and EPA will continue to say that glyphosate is safe ‘until the weight of scientific evidence shifts,'” Hagstrom reported.

Deputy Ag Secretary Says Ag Will be Reflected in Report

Agri-Pulse’s Oliver Ward and Steve Davies reported that “Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden said Monday that U.S. ag will see its voice reflected in the second Make America Healthy Again Commission report, slated for release later this month.”

“‘I think that you will see when the second commission report is issued that you were heard and that you influenced the result,’ Vaden said during the American Sugar Alliance’s International Sweetener Symposium in Traverse City, Michigan,” Ward and Davies reported. “The team was intentional on engaging stakeholders from across the agricultural value chain,’ he said.

“Above all, Vaden stressed that the administration wants to see more U.S.-grown products on Americans’ plates,” Ward and Davies reported. “‘We have the most efficient, the most sustainable and the safest food supply the world has ever seen,’ Vaden said. ‘So making America healthy begins with making what’s on America’s plate American again.'”

White House Has Previously Stressed no Limiting of Pesticide Use

Politico Pro’s Grace Yarrow and Rachel Shin reported earlier in July that “Trump administration officials say the White House has no plans to crack down on pesticides in farming, despite a report led by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that called crop protection chemicals a danger to people’s health.”

“Agriculture industry lobbyists have been pushing back in meetings with White House officials against the Make America Healthy Again report, which linked pesticides to cancer and other diseases and slammed the chemical industry’s influence on toxicology studies,” Yarrow and Shin reported. “A plan for acting on that report, due in August, will not include new policy around pesticide use, a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told POLITICO.”

“The White House has conveyed a similar message to farm groups, according to the official and two other people familiar with the conversations, who were also granted anonymity to discuss details,” Yarrow and Shin reported. “The promise signals the White House’s eagerness to smooth over tensions with farm groups that have traditionally allied with President Donald Trump but felt alienated by Kennedy’s plans to overhaul the nation’s food supply.”

Ryan Hanrahan is the Farm Policy News editor and social media director for the farmdoc project at the University of Illinois.

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How Do Anti-Pesticide Medical Researchers Determine It Was Glyphosate-Related Rather Than Any Other Medical Concern That Caused Their Cancer?

By Peter Hobbs, Cornell University agronomist
Emailed to No-Till Farmer Editor Frank Lessiter on August 11, 2025

One issue about the glyphosate article No-Till Farmer published recently in its “In the Weeds” series concerns the number of wheat varieties grown by farmers in the U.S. have been genetically modified to be herbicide tolerant, especially for glyphosate?

There are herbicide tolerant lines of corn and soybeans, but a few years back it was decided not to insert these genes in wheat because of export issues. If the wheat varieties grown by farmers do not have herbicide tolerant genes, then if they are treated with glyphosate the wheat would be killed and not produce any grain!

One of the issues that need to be clarified is whether the people who have supposedly contracted cancer read the glyphosate label instructions and protected themselves when spraying and did they spray at the correct concentration. Also, are there people that get the same cancer who have never been in contact with glyphosate?

I am not a farmer but have used glyphosate for more than 50 years without any symptoms. Note also that the new formulation of Roundup has no glyphosate in it, but instead three other herbicides that are much more toxic than glyphosate!

Peter Hobbs is a crop scientist and agronomist with 30 years of experience with IRRI and CIMMYT, two CG centers working mainly on rice and wheat systems and conservation agriculture in South Asia. He is presently an adjunct Professor in CSS and also an international professor teaching various courses on international agriculture systems, agroforestry and GMO`s. in August 2010, he became the associate director for IP-CALS for academic and professional studies.

Bayer ‘Turning Over Every Stone’ to ‘Significantly Contain’ Glyphosate Litigation by End of 2026

By Jennifer Marston
Published August 7, 2025 on AgFunderNews

Bayer will “significantly contain” glyphosate litigation by the end of 2026, CEO Bill Anderson said this week during the company’s second-quarter 2025 earnings call.

“Every decision we make has the goal of positioning the company to move past our litigation woes.”

The company has repeatedly said this litigation—which has been ongoing since Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018—is “a huge burden” on company financials thanks to payouts to plaintiffs alleging that the weed killer caused them to develop cancer.

Thus far, Bayer has settled 17,000 cases “at a low cost per case,” Anderson said on the call, adding that “just recently, we’ve taken thousands of cases off the table through confidential settlements on a low cost per case average in the glyphosate litigation.”

“I don’t want to get into whether this is a turning point,” he said of the settled cases. “I would simply say that we are turning over every stone to make sure that we’re executing on all of the various approaches that that we’ve called out in the past, and we remain committed to substantially containing this litigation threat to the company by the end of next year.”

Bayer has another 61,000 cases to go on glyphosate litigation, for which it just allocated an additional $1.37 billion on top of the more than $10 billion it has already spent.

It also faces significant litigation around polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemical compounds that Monsanto stopped producing in 1977 and which the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned in 1979.

SCOTUS ruling expected ‘by summer of next year’

Bayer has repeatedly said it stands behind “the safety and non-carcinogenicity” of glyphosate.

The company is currently awaiting word from the Solicitor General as to whether the supreme court will take up the case—in which the plaintiff sued after attributing his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma to Roundup exposure—around an appeal of a lower court’s $1.25 million verdict in a Missouri state court.

Bayer argues that since the EPA has approved glyphosate-based product labels without requiring a cancer warning, plaintiffs should not be able to sue under state law for a failure to include warnings.

“We welcome this step, and we expect a recommendation in the coming weeks or months,” Anderson said of SCOTUS asking for input from the Solicitor General.

“This decision keeps intact the broader timeline of having a SCOTUS ruling by summer of next year.”

“But,” he added, “Our strategy is multipronged, and we’re not dependent on a singular milestone like a positive SCOTUS decision. We also remain active outside of the courtroom. We welcome legislation at the state and federal level that reaffirms the authority of the US EPA.”

“Beyond these measures, we continue to examine additional options to protect the company, and everything remains on the table. We remain acutely aware of the threat of this issue for US farmers, US consumers, and our company. This is an important time with numerous prongs of our strategy advancing toward important junctures. As we move forward, we’re making each decision with one broader goal in mind, narrowing the overall threat and bringing our company closer to containment.”

‘Optimistic’ around Dicamba registration

Bayer’s Crop Science division sales increased by 2.2% during the quarter compared to the previous year, CFO Wolfgang Nickl said on the call.

Core business grew by 3% versus the prior year with seeds and traits up 11% for the quarter. Corn sales rose by 30% in Q2 based on global price increases and acreage expansion.

“This growth was amplified by the expected volume phasing from the first quarter following the strategic adjustment of our distribution network,” he said.

Soy and cotton sales declined by 18% adn 26%, respectively, due mostly to the Dicamba vacatur, when a US federal court halted use of Dicamba in 2024.

In 2025, the EPA proposed its decision to approve registration for new uses of Dicamba, for which it “has not identified any human health or dietary risks of concern.”

“With the recent proposal of the EPA to approve dicamba, we are optimistic in regaining registration for the next season, which could also help in soy and cotton pricing going forward,” Anderson said on the call.

As a final Q2 milestone, Anderson also highlighted Bayer’s “blockbuster herbicide” icafolin-methyl, for which it has submitted registration applications in the US, Brazil, Canada, and the EU. The company is targeting an initial launch of the herbicide in Brazil.

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An Opinion From Pesticide Detractors: 80 Eighty Pesticides Detected in the Air of Rural Ag Areas in Spain

Published August 8, 2025 on Beyond Pesticides

In a study published in Environmental Pollution, researchers have detected eighty pesticides (35 insecticides, 29 fungicides and 11 herbicides/metabolites) in the ambient air of a rural region of Spain (Valencia) between 2007 and 2024. Despite these dramatic findings, the authors conclude that there is “no [observable] cancer risk,” “no inhalation risk for adults,” and only one pesticide concentration (the insecticide chlorpyrifos) showing “a potential risk to toddlers.” 

However, the authors did not conduct an aggregate risk assessment that would typically consider all routes of exposure to the individual pesticides detected, including through water, food, and landscapes.

Not considered by the authors are the potential effects of pesticide mixtures and full pesticide product formulations (with all potentially toxic ingredients), and also a deficiency in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registration of pesticides under federal law. Of concern, as well, are other contaminants in pesticide products, including but not limited to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), heavy metals and plastics (including microplastics), which contribute to chronic diseases and health risks, and adverse effects to ecosystem stability exacerbated by the climate crisis.

Background and Methodology

“This work aims to conduct a further study on the situation of pesticides in ambient air of a rural Mediterranean Region, describing spatial and temporal variations in pesticide uses, as well as a human health risk assessment based on pesticide inhalation exposure,” according to the study authors. 

They gathered 717 air samples at 12 locations in the rural agricultural region of Valencia, with nine sites considered “rural/agricultural,” two “urban” sites, and one remote site that serves as a control for this experiment. The researchers used three different sampling protocols over the 18-year-long study. 

The authors are based at the CEAM Foundation, a research, development and technological innovation center for the improvement of the environment in the Mediterranean area at the Research Institute for Pesticides and Water at Jaume I University, and Foundation for the Promotion of Health and Biomedical Research in the Valencia Region. 

Discussion and Results

The researchers targeted 120 pesticides in this study, with 35 different insecticides, 29 fungicides, 11 herbicides and 5 acaricides/ metabolites detected. Among the ten most frequently detected pesticides was glyphosate at 65%.

There are various limitations to this study, including that there was no risk assessment included for subgroups that face disproportionate risks, including pregnant individuals. As mentioned earlier, this study was also not comprehensive in that it did not detect potential contamination or exposure via soil, water (surface or groundwater), dietary intake and bioaccumulation. That being said, it is significant in that it is considered the first long-term (more than 15 years) regional study of pesticide air monitoring in the Mediterranean.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides staff members.

Read the original article on Beyond Pesticides »

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