Pesticide cancer claims at issue in bill headed for North Dakota Senate vote

BISMARCK (North Dakota Monitor) – North Dakota legislators have been wrestling with a pesticide bill backed by agricultural groups that would make it harder for people to win cancer liability lawsuits against the farm chemical industry.

House Bill 1318 would shield the maker of Roundup and other farm chemical manufacturers from lawsuits from people who say they were not adequately warned about potential dangers of the chemicals. The bill tries to make clear that the product label approved by the federal Environmental Protection Agency gives consumers sufficient warning about any possible hazards.

Bayer, the parent company of Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, has been hit with lawsuits from people who have cancer and contend they were not adequately warned about exposure to the herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate.

Sarah Hall Lovas, representing the North Dakota Agriculture Consultants Association and the North Dakota Grain Growers Association, says the bill is needed to ensure that farmers have access to farm chemicals such as Roundup.

Opponents of the bill say it provides too much legal protection for the chemical manufacturers.

Jake Schmitz of Fargo said the dangers of chemicals are sometimes not known until decades later. With the EPA being immune to lawsuits and a potential shield in place for manufacturers, the health care costs associated with a hazardous chemical would impact taxpayers, he said.

“It’s going to fall back on Medicaid and Medicare to take care of these people now that they’ve got the cancer diagnosis,” Schmitz said. “So this is going to end up, over time, costing the state of North Dakota a good amount of money.”

The next step for House Bill 1318 is a vote by the North Dakota Senate. The bill passed the House unanimously in January but has been heavily debated in the Senate Agriculture and Veterans Affairs Committee.

Committee chair Sen. Larry Luick, R-Fairmount, said there has been a lot of input from both supporters and opponents on what is seen as a national issue. Luick, who is a farmer, said he understands that farmers need pesticides for crop production but also realizes people have concerns about cancer and what is going into their food.

After about two weeks of deliberations, the committee on Thursday added an amendment to the bill and gave it a do-pass recommendation.

If approved by the Senate, the bill would go back to the House.

While Roundup has been a big part of the discussion, the bill applies to all registered pesticides in North Dakota.

The bill has been the subject of television ads and large newspaper ads from a group called the Modern Ag Alliance that is actively supporting similar bills in multiple states.

The bill also has the support of the North Dakota Ag Coalition, which has more than 45 member organizations. It officially supported only one other bill this legislative session.

Among the members are the North Dakota Farmers Union, the state’s largest ag group, which suggested some of the amended language in the Senate committee.

“It was important to us to ensure that the scope of the bill was specific, and the amendment that the Ag Committee adopted achieves that,” Matt Perdue, policy analyst for the North Dakota Farmers Union said in an interview.

Nancy Johnson, executive director of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association, said the huge payouts that Bayer and other ag chemical companies have made in product liability cases is hindering the ability of those companies to invest in developing new, safer alternatives.

“It really is aimed at keeping tools in the farmer’s tool box,” she said.

In her testimony on the bill, Lovas cites a 2022 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that threatened to end the use of glyphosate. The EPA reviewed the glyphosate label and stuck with its position that the product does not cause cancer.

Germany-based Bayer has been battered by court decisions from consumers who contend the product does cause cancer. A jury last month ordered Bayer to pay more than $2 billion in a Georgia case.

Schmitz is a chiropractor and nutritionist who grew up on a farm near Williston. He said his father and grandfather both died of cancer.

He cited the fact that the International Agency for Research on Cancer has concluded that glyphosate probably does cause cancer as a reason to oppose the shield law.

The Dakota Resource Council, the North Dakota Wildlife Federation and North Dakota Association for Justice are among other opponents of the bill.

Schmitz and Lovas agree that the bill would still allow for lawsuits against a manufacturer for things such as a bad batch of the chemical or other product defects. A property owner could still sue an applicator for an issue such as the product drifting into an unwanted area.

In an article earlier this year, the National Agriculture Law Center said it may be up to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if such shield laws are valid.

Bayer’s website says it is also hopeful for a Supreme Court ruling in favor of laws such as the one proposed in North Dakota.

The National Agriculture Law Center concludes that “Plaintiffs in states with a pesticide liability limitation bill would likely face a more challenging litigation landscape than in states without such a bill. However, the exact impacts will be unclear until such a bill becomes law.”