North Dakota enacts nation's first law shielding Roundup's maker from some cancer lawsuits

A caller first-of-its-kind instrumentality enacted successful North Dakota could shield agrochemical shaper Bayer from lawsuits claiming it failed to pass customers that its fashionable weedkiller Roundup could origin cancer.

Though the contiguous effect whitethorn beryllium small, fixed that North Dakota is among the slightest populated U.S. states, Bayer is hopeful that occurrence determination could pb to akin laws being passed astir the country. The institution faces an onslaught of lawsuits seeking billions of dollars for alleged harm from Roundup. The adjacent authorities to travel North Dakota could beryllium Georgia, wherever a akin measure is pending earlier Gov. Brian Kemp.

Bayer, based successful Germany, acquired Roundup with the 2018 acquisition of St. Louis-based Monsanto. It contends glyphosate, an progressive constituent successful Roundup, has for decades provided a harmless and businesslike mode to power weeds with little tilling, which helps forestall ungraded erosion. For crops specified arsenic corn, soybeans and cotton, Roundup is designed to enactment with genetically modified seeds that defy glyphosate’s deadly effect.

“Without harvest extortion tools, America’s consumers could look higher costs to supply for their families and enactment nutrient connected the table,” Brian Naber, Bayer’s president of harvest subject for North America, Australia and New Zealand, said successful a connection praising the North Dakota law.

North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong declined to remark Thursday astir the legislation, which helium signed without fanfare a time earlier.

Bayer has been deed with astir 181,000 ineligible claims alleging that Roundup’s cardinal ingredient, glyphosate, causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Though immoderate studies subordinate glyphosate with cancer, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said it is not apt to beryllium carcinogenic to humans erstwhile utilized arsenic directed.

Bayer, which disputes the crab claims, has teamed with a conjugation of cultivation groups to backmost authorities successful astatine slightest 11 states this twelvemonth seeking to undercut the main statement made successful the lawsuits. The bills state that a federally approved statement connected pesticides is capable to fulfill immoderate work nether authorities instrumentality to pass customers. Bayer besides has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to artifact the ineligible claims.

Many cultivation manufacture groups contend glyphosate is an indispensable instrumentality for farmers. They're acrophobic that mounting ineligible costs could pb Bayer to propulsion the merchandise from the U.S. market.

The North Dakota law, which volition instrumentality effect Aug. 1, “is a resounding triumph for farmers” and “sets the modular for states crossed America to walk legislation," said Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, enforcement manager of the Modern Ag Alliance, which Bayer helps finance.

Though prompted by lawsuits against Bayer, the North Dakota authorities would use much broadly to different pesticides with federally approved labels.

“Ultimately, this sets a atrocious precedent,” said Sam Wagner, an agriculture and nutrient organizer for the Dakota Research Council, which opposed the measure. "It volition arguably marque it highly pugnacious for anyone to triumph a case” filed successful North Dakota against a pesticide manufacturer.

As President Donald Trump's administration seeks to rollback national regulations, caller authorities laws that bounds tribunal claims could permission immoderate radical without immoderate avenue to question compensation for their injuries and losses, said Jay Feldman, enforcement manager of Beyond Pesticides, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for an extremity to toxic pesticides.

“The chemic companies should not beryllium capable to fell down a anemic regulatory system," Feldman said.

___

Associated Press newsman Jack Dura contributed to this report.

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.