Our Take on the Recent Supreme Court Ruling in Favor of Bayer AG
The recent SCOTUS ruling in Monsanto v. Durnell is infuriating but predictable in a system that has allowed a multibillion dollar agrochemical giant to capture all the levers of government. Capture of the highest court, capture of lawmaking bodies from the local to federal level, and capture of our regulatory agencies that have an explicit mandate to protect us from harm.
On June 25th the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bayer AG, the owner of Monsanto in Monsanto v. Durnell. The ruling will impact thousands of pending claims against Bayer related to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. But it also has broader implications for individuals’ ability to sue any pesticide company over claims that the company failed to warn them about health risks.
At the heart of the case is whether Monsanto/Bayer should be held accountable for their failure to warn users of Roundup’s cancer risks in the product labeling. In her dissenting opinion Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson states that the majority misunderstood FIFRA's requirements, saying adding a cancer warning doesn't conflict with the law.
"In accepting Monsanto's argument and holding that Durnell's failure-to-warn claim is preempted, the Court misunderstands FIFRA's requirements, misinterprets the scope of FIFRA's preemption, and ultimately leaves Durnell without a remedy for the significant harms he has suffered," she wrote.
FIFRA stands for the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. It is the primary United States federal law that governs the distribution, sale, and use of all pesticides within the country. FIFRA authorizes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to register and regulate all pesticide products before they can be sold or distributed. The act also requires pesticides to be properly labeled with explicit instructions on safe use and handling to protect applicators, consumers, and the environment.
Essentially the ruling defers to EPA in setting regulations regarding what safety warnings are required on Roundup labeling. But when the EPA itself has been compromised by the industries they are intended to regulate, what recourse do everyday people have? Internal Monsanto industry memos revealed the manufacturer knew of the cancer risks and deliberately covered up the risk and had safety studies ghostwritten to reflect their preferred findings. Medical journals which had originally published the findings have retracted them.
The EPA knew about the ghostwritten studies and did nothing to protect consumers or update the labels to reflect the cancer risk.
Farmers like Durnell bought into Monsanto’s claims that their product was safe, trusted the labels, trusted that our regulators were doing their job to protect and warn consumers of safety risks.
On the frontline are farmworkers and groundskeepers who are routinely exposed as a part of their job. They don’t get to choose which methods of farming or landscaping their employers utilize.
This ruling is a major setback and denial of justice for all those impacted by the false safety claims made by Monsanto and the EPA. But the good news is that there are still ways we can engage locally.
Enacting greater public health protections for residents of Hawaiʻi is possible, our state legislature does have the ability to enact greater protections than those required by FIFRA. Each year HAPA advocates for common sense protections informed by public health research. But we are up against very entrenched and powerful interests.
Will join us in our efforts to fight back against corporate capture of our food system and public health protections?
