President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday night declaring a new initiative to boost domestic production of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the infamous weedkiller Roundup.
The move has raised alarm bells among interest groups on both sides of the political spectrum, including the base that wants to “Make America Healthy Again” — because of decades of research suggesting glyphosate’s connection to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a group of blood cancers.
MAHA advocates have long praised Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for standing up to Monsanto and its parent company Bayer, the makers of Roundup, and holding the billion-dollar corporation accountable for its production of the cancer-linked herbicide.
In 2018, then-lawyer Kennedy played a pivotal role in winning a $289 million case against Monsanto on this very subject, representing a plaintiff who had been diagnosed with lymphoma after years spent spraying Roundup for his job as a pest control manager in the San Francisco Bay Area.
While running for president, he promised to tackle how “toxic chemicals like glyphosate … are contaminating the US food supply.”
But Trump’s order, which also clears a path for more aggressive phosphorus mining, invokes a 1950s-era law known as the Defense Production Act, which has traditionally been deployed by presidents during emergencies as a means to ramp up the production of materials tied to national security.
In 2021, President Biden invoked the same act to address the pandemic emergency, sending vaccine production into hyper-speed.
Trump’s recent order claims that without widespread access to glyphosate-based herbicides, American agricultural productivity would be “critically” jeopardized, “adding pressure to the domestic food system.”
It also comes just a day after Bayer agreed to a more than $7 billion settlement for tens of thousands of lawsuits linking Roundup to cancer.
In a statement to The Post, Kennedy supported the president’s move.
“Donald Trump’s Executive Order puts America first where it matters most — our defense readiness and our food supply,” he said.
“We must safeguard America’s national security first,” the statement continued, “because all of our priorities depend on it. When hostile actors control critical inputs, they weaken our security. By expanding domestic production, we close that gap and protect American families.”
It’s a far cry from just over a year ago, when Kennedy said he wanted to build an “off-ramp” from America’s reliance on synthetic pesticides and herbicides.
What are the potential risks of glyphosate exposure?
There’s good reason to question the safety of weedkillers like glyphosate, but the science hasn’t always been consistent.
In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans.” But the EPA contradicted those findings two years later, saying that unlikely.
In 2003, after an uptick in non-Hodgkins lymphoma diagnoses was observed in farmers and farmworkers, a study published by Occupational Environmental Medicine found that several pesticides including glyphosate were associated with increased risk.
A 2023 study published in Chemosphere reaffirmed that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen, and provided “biological plausibility for previously reported cancer associations in humans, such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma.”
What are the symptoms of non-Hodgkins lymphoma?
Dewayne Johnson, the plaintiff in Kennedy’s 2018 trial against Monsanto, was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2014 after he developed a bad rash, according to NBC News.
The Mayo Clinic lists other possible symptoms like swollen lymph nodes, belly pain or swelling, chest pain, drenching night sweats or unexplained weight loss, among others.
Treatment can include chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation and other therapies. Though the overall 5-year relative survival rate is 74%, rates decline for patients who are older or who are diagnosed in later stages.
Are there other health risks associated with glyphosate?
In 2024, a study published in the journal Cancer linked four chemicals in Roundup, not including glyphosate, to increased risk of terminal prostate cancer.
Glyphosate, however, has been labeled an endocrine disruptor, which can “alter the development of the female reproductive tract, with consequences on fertility,” according to a 2020 report.
There are also some (largely unsubstantiated) claims that glyphosate could be the culprit behind the spike in celiac disease and gluten intolerance among younger people, because of its potential disruption of healthy gut bacteria.
Gastrointestinal issues may be linked to the proliferation of processed foods and exposure to toxic chemicals, but some scientists have asserted that any connection to glyphosate specifically remains “hypothetical.”
Who is most at risk of glyphosate exposure?
Most experts agree that health concerns tied to glyphosate remain relatively low for the average person.
Farmers, farmworkers, groundskeepers, landscapers and others who regularly spray and are exposed to herbicides like Roundup, however, face the most risk of developing life-threatening diseases linked to the Monsanto product.
Researchers have documented significantly higher amounts of glyphosate in the urine of farmworkers, and even in people who live near farms but aren’t directly spraying the weedkiller themselves.
Cynthia Curl, an environmental health scientist at Boise State University in Idaho, told the New York Times last year that there’s “pretty compelling evidence that people are getting exposed just by living near these fields, and it’s only happening at the times of year when people are spraying glyphosate.”
To minimize glyphosate exposure, experts recommend opting for organic foods when possible. Non-organic foods that may be especially risky include anything made with oats, wheat or beans, which get treated with the herbicide closest to the time of consumption, according to the New York Times.
