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By: Jeff Beach
BISMARCK, N.D. (North Dakota Monitor) – The North Dakota Senate on Monday passed a bill that backers say ensures farmers in the state will have access to needed ag chemicals, while protesters outside the Capitol lobbied against legal protections for pesticide manufacturers.
House Bill 1318, which is similar to legislation being considered in several other states, passed on a vote of 29-18. The bill was amended and will return to the House, which had previously given the bill unanimous approval.
Much of the discussion on the bill has centered on the product Roundup, produced by the German company Bayer. Bayer has been hit with several lawsuits alleging that Roundup causes cancer even though the Environmental Protection Agency has not determined that the herbicide causes cancer.
Sen. Janne Myrdal, R-Edinburg, said the bill confirms that “the label is the law” and that a court ruling can’t lead to the product being pulled from the market. A California case threatened to temporarily pull Roundup from the market in some western states.
The bill says that the EPA label provides adequate warning to the hazards of the product and shields manufacturers from lawsuits if the product is labeled and manufactured property.
Myrdal and other supporters referred to “frivolous lawsuits.”
Bayer has been ordered to pay billions of dollars to people who have successfully filed lawsuits claiming they have been harmed by Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate.
Sen. Tim Mathern, D-Fargo, one of the opponents of the bill, said he understands farmers want to use pesticides, but he feared they will regret the bill should a product later be found to cause health problems.
“Farmers themselves are giving up some protection,” Mathern said. “Don’t give it away.”
The bill spurred a small protest in front of the Capitol before the vote.
Sam Wagner, who focuses on ag issues for the Dakota Resource Council and helped organize the protest, said the group wanted to make sure North Dakota citizens have a “fair shot” if they challenge prominent pesticide makers in court.
“(The bill) isn’t going to stop them from filing a lawsuit,” Wagner said. “It’s just going to make the bar so high.”
He said the national group Modern Ag Alliance is trying to get similar bills passed in other states to insulate ag chemical companies from liability.
Charlene Nelson of Casselton said the bill would strip away a fundamental right of people to use the court system if they feel wronged.
“If this passes, it will be almost impossible for someone to win a case,” Nelson said.
While the focus of discussion has been on Roundup, she noted that there are about 16,000 different chemicals registered for use with the North Dakota Department of Agriculture.
“We don’t know what the full effects of all of those are,” Nelson said. “What if five, six, 10 years down the road, we find out that they really are dangerous? We will have no way to recover the losses or the damages that those incur.”
Other arguments in favor of the bill included helping ensure that Bayer and other manufacturers would not pull out of the U.S. market because of the product liability claim, and that it would encourage further research and development of ag chemicals.
Sen. Terry Wanzek, R-Jamestown, said without protections for the chemical industry, “any new investment would be chilled.”
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