The Kansas legislation is one of about a dozen Bayer-supported bills introduced in state legislatures. It comes just weeks after the company announced a proposed $7.25 billion (C$9.85 billion) settlement that would resolve most of approximately 65,000 outstanding lawsuits related to Roundup.

Bayer acquired Roundup as part of its $63 billion purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto in ​2018, and with it an avalanche of litigation from people who say the product caused them to develop cancer. The company is supporting state and federal legislative efforts to try to head off further Roundup-related litigation, a company spokesperson said.

WHY IT MATTERS: Glyphosate is a key crop protection product for Canadian farmers. Glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup has been the subject of thousands of lawsuits in the U.S. and in Canada related to claims it causes cancer.

So far Bayer has had mixed success. Two bills have passed in North Dakota and Georgia; the outlook for the Kansas bill is uncertain.

Opponents of the Kansas bill distrust the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s assessment that glyphosate pesticides such as Bayer’s Roundup product are not likely to cause cancer, while proponents fear that the widely used pesticide will be made more expensive or pulled from the market, negatively affecting many businesses in the heavily agricultural state.

“I’ll wake up and I’ll have over 400 emails and half of them are saying yes, half of them are saying no,” said Democratic state senator Silas Miller, who sits on the agriculture committee. He had not decided how to vote when he spoke to Reuters.

Kenny Titus, a Republican senator on the committee, said he was also inundated with emails both for and against the bill, but planned to oppose it.

In an earnings call on March 4, the company reported a fourth-quarter net loss of about 3.76 billion euros (C$5.93 billion), attributed in part to the cost of litigation. Bayer is also the defendant in a case before the Supreme Court, which is set to hear arguments in April on whether the company had a duty to warn customers that glyphosate could cause cancer.

In Washington, the House Agriculture Committee on Thursday morning advanced a draft farm bill also supported by Bayer requiring uniform pesticide labels nationwide. If passed, it would bar local governments from requiring chemical companies to put health warnings on the labels of pesticide products that differ from language used by the EPA.

In February, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order to encourage more domestic production of glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup.

MAHA blowback

The move has generated blowback from the so-called MAHA coalition, many of whom supported Trump in the 2024 election, and whose advocates are now in the administration — including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Just as the large MAHA base begins to consider what to do at midterms, the President issued an Executive Order to expand domestic glyphosate production. The very same carcinogenic pesticide that MAHA cares about most,” MAHA-affiliated pesticide activist Kelly Ryerson wrote on social media after the order was announced.

Titus, who said many of his goals overlap with the MAHA movement, said that for his Republican colleagues, the split on pesticides among conservatives had put them in “an interesting position.”

A Missouri state court judge last week preliminarily approved Bayer’s proposed $7.25 billion settlement of a nationwide class-action lawsuit brought by people who say Roundup caused them to contract non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The judge said he will hear objections from people affected before deciding in July whether to grant final approval.

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In a filing in a state court in St. Louis that was made public on Wednesday, the firms said the accord should not be fast-tracked for possible preliminary approval on March 4, just 15 days after the proposed settlement was announced.

The request is the first major organized pushback against Bayer’s attempt to resolve most of the 65,000 remaining Roundup claims in state and federal courts.

In a statement, a company spokesperson said Bayer remained confident that the proposed settlement was “fair to all claimants, and warrants approval by the court.”

“We fully expect a robust debate about the class settlement and are not surprised by either the support or opposition from plaintiff firms over recent days,” the spokesperson said.

A nationwide settlement

Plaintiffs say that Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, causes cancer, and they developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other forms of the disease after using the weedkiller at home or on the job.

Bayer acquired Roundup as part of its purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018. It has said decades of studies have shown Roundup and glyphosate are safe and do not cause cancer.

The German company announced on February 17 that it had negotiated with a group of plaintiffs’ attorneys to strike a nationwide settlement resolving nearly all the Roundup lawsuits it is facing by creating a new class action covering claims across the country.

The settlement would establish a program to pay claimants over 21 years, allowing not only people with existing claims to participate but those who were exposed to the pesticide before the deal was struck and diagnosed with cancer in the future.

In the filing on Wednesday, the law firms asking for the delay said they first received the more than 600-page settlement package the day it was announced, and cannot effectively analyze it quickly. In contrast, they said Bayer and the firms it negotiated with spent two years putting the deal together.

Bayer said the settlement would achieve “legal certainty” by ending years of costly litigation over Roundup while compensating current and future cancer claimants.

Company expects majority to participate

The deal, which requires a judge’s approval, does not require Bayer to admit liability or wrongdoing, and the company can back out if too many plaintiffs decline to participate.

Bayer Chief Executive Bill Anderson said on a call with investors last week that the company requires the “vast majority” of the plaintiffs to participate, and he expects that will happen.

The law firms behind Wednesday’s filing said a judge’s initial approval of the settlement would trigger a broad stay of all Roundup litigation, including cases stretching back nearly a decade, and unfairly prejudice sick plaintiffs who have waited long enough to go to trial.

They also questioned whether the settlement treats plaintiffs fairly. They asked for a delay of the approval hearing by at least 60 days to review the terms.

A group of plaintiffs’ attorneys who negotiated the deal with Bayer said in a statement on Wednesday that they hope the court will not delay the preliminary approval hearing.

The lawyers seeking to delay the settlement “are hopefully working as hard to communicate its terms to their clients as they are trying to delay compensation for the tens of thousands of Roundup victims who have waited a decade for justice,” they said in the statement.

Some lawyers representing Roundup plaintiffs who were not part of the settlement negotiations have also expressed support for the deal.

St. Louis City Circuit Court Judge Timothy Boyer, who is overseeing the class action, has not yet scheduled a hearing in the case.

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The order underscores U.S. farmers’ needs to have access to the herbicide, Bayer said on Thursday, adding the move would not lead to shortages of glyphosate in other countries.

WHY IT MATTERS: Glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup are key crop protection products for Canadian farmers, but they’ve been the object of lawsuits on both sides of the border.

Bayer said last August that it could be forced to stop U.S. production of the widely-used farming weedkiller unless regulatory changes are made to stave off litigation that has been weighing on the German company.

Bayer is the only company producing glyphosate in the United States but the farming sector there also imports large volumes of generic copies from China.

Bayer, which has been trying for years to fend off contested product liability claims that the weedkiller caused cancer, earlier this week reached an agreement to pay as much as US$7.25 billion to resolve tens of thousands of such lawsuits.

Separately, the German group has persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal that would sharply limit Bayer’s liability in the lawsuits, which have been brought mainly by private gardening users.

The top court’s decision to rule on the matter came after the Trump administration supported Bayer’s view that federal glyphosate regulation, which is mainly in Bayer’s favour, should take precedence over state laws invoked by the plaintiffs.

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The German company said the proposed nationwide settlement, expected to be filed on Tuesday in state court in St. Louis, Missouri, would establish a long-term claims program funded by capped annual payments over up to 21 years.

The company, which acquired Roundup as part of its purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018, is facing claims over Roundup from approximately 65,000 plaintiffs in U.S. state and federal courts.

The plaintiffs say they developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other forms of cancer due to using the weedkiller, either at home or on the job.

Proposed settlement aimed at heading off future lawsuits

The proposed settlement covers the bulk of the lawsuits, but will need a judge’s approval.

It is also designed to head off future lawsuits, and includes a provision that allows people who can prove they have been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and were exposed to Roundup prior to Tuesday to file claims to receive a portion of the settlement for up to 21 years.

Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said on a call with investors and reporters that he is confident the proposed class action settlement will resolve the vast majority of the claims, although he declined to say how many people currently support the deal.

The company said it had separately reached confidential settlements to resolve other Roundup cases with specific law firms, although the company would not name the firms or specify the amount of those deals.

Company paid out US$10 billion to settle previous suits

Roundup is among the most widely used weedkillers in the United States. Bayer has said decades of studies have shown Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, are safe for human use.

The company had previously paid about $10 billion (C$13.6 billion) to settle most of the Roundup lawsuits that were pending as of 2020, but failed to get a settlement then covering future cases.

It has had a mixed record with cases that have gone to trial. It prevailed in a series of Roundup trials, but has been hit with large jury awards in the past few years, including a $2.1 billion (C$2.86 billion) verdict in a case in the U.S. state of Georgia in March.

The verdicts shattered both investor confidence and company hopes that the worst of the Roundup litigation was over, and put pressure on Bayer to find a comprehensive solution to the lawsuits.

Supreme Court to hear appeal

Tuesday’s proposed settlement comes after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in a case that Bayer argues will sharply limit its liability in the litigation.

The company said the Supreme Court case, scheduled for oral arguments at the end of April, remains essential to resolving the Roundup litigation.

A favorable ruling would wipe out several large verdicts that remain on appeal and would also prevent future claims from individuals who choose to opt out of the nationwide settlement.

Bayer expects its provisions and litigation liabilities to rise from 7.8 billion euros (C$12.6 billion) to 11.8 billion euros. It anticipates around 5 billion euros in litigation-related payouts in 2026, and now expects negative free cash flow for the year.

The company has postponed publication of its 2025 results and 2026 guidance to March 4 to reflect the agreements.

— Reporting by Diana Novak Jones and Kirsti Knolle; Additional reporting by Dietrich Knauth

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“Canadian farmers will benefit from opportunities for faster genetic gains — such as increased yield and enhanced agronomic performance,” said Antoine Bernet, Bayer Crop Science Canada’s country division head in a news release.

“It will also accelerate breeding efforts towards superior product performance and support expanded herbicide tolerance and weed control options.”

The facility will house seed development work for canola, camelina and winter canola with a focus on trait integration, yield trial seed processing and seed quality analysis, Bayer said.

Facility design will begin this year with the goal of opening the site by the end of 2028.

Bayer said its Smartpark site in Winnipeg will continue to house early breeding work for canola while its Carman, Man., site will serve as a multi-crop nursery field operation.

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The justices took up Bayer’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling in a case brought by a man who said he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after years of exposure to Roundup. The Missouri Court of Appeals upheld a $1.25 million (C$1.74 million) verdict that a St. Louis jury awarded the plaintiff, John Durnell, over his cancer diagnosis.

Bayer shares jumped almost five per cent on the news that the court would hear the case. The court has yet to announce when it will hear arguments in the dispute.

In a statement, Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said the court’s decision was “an important step in our multi-pronged strategy to significantly contain this litigation.”

“It is time for the U.S. legal system to establish that companies should not be punished under state laws for complying with federal warning label requirements,” Anderson said.

An attorney for the plaintiff did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump administration urged Supreme Court to take appeal

The Missouri Court of Appeals rejected the German pharmaceutical and biotechnology company’s contention that federal law governing pesticides bars lawsuits making claims over pesticides under state laws.

Bayer is facing similar claims from approximately 65,000 plaintiffs in U.S. state and federal courts. Roundup is among the most widely used weedkillers in the United States.

President Donald Trump’s administration in December urged the Supreme Court to take up Bayer’s appeal. In a brief filed at the court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer offered the administration’s view that Bayer is correct in its reading of the law at issue.

Bayer is arguing that consumers should not be able to sue it under state law for failing to warn that Roundup increases cancer risk because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found no such risk and requires no such warning. Bayer argued that federal law does not allow it to add any warning to the product beyond the EPA-approved label.

The company has made the U.S. Supreme Court a key part of its strategy to manage the claims, as a ruling that federal law preempts claims brought under state law would shut down the vast majority of the lawsuits.

Lawyers for Durnell had asked the Supreme Court to turn away Bayer’s appeal. They said Durnell relied on Bayer’s advertising and not just the label when he chose to use Roundup, and the company’s marketing failed to warn consumers of the product’s risks.

Lawsuits continue to pour in

The company has paid about $10 billion (C$13.9 billion) to settle most of the Roundup lawsuits that were pending as of 2020, but failed to get a settlement covering future cases. New lawsuits have continued to pour in since then. Plaintiffs have said they developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other forms of cancer due to using Roundup, either at home or on the job.

Bayer, which acquired Roundup as part of its $63 billion (C$87.7 billion) purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018, has said that decades of studies have shown Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, are safe for human use.

“EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans, and the agency has repeatedly approved Roundup labels that did not contain cancer warnings,” Sauer said in the administration’s brief to the Supreme Court.

The company has had a mixed record at trial in the Roundup lawsuits. Bayer has prevailed in a series of Roundup trials, but it was also hit with large jury awards in the past few years, including a $2.1 billion verdict in a case in the U.S. state of Georgia in 2025.

Bayer has asked the Supreme Court to consider the Roundup litigation before, but was rebuffed in 2022. Since then, one federal appeals court agreed with the company in a split from other appeals courts.

Bayer has threatened to withdraw Roundup from the U.S. market as it fights the litigation. The company replaced glyphosate in U.S. consumer products with different weed-killing substances.

— Additional reporting by Andrew Chung

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The article was initially published in 2000 in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. A retraction notice, published by Elsevier, the company that oversees the journal, cites undisclosed conflicts of interest, unacknowledged contributions from Monsanto employees and reliance on unpublished Monsanto studies. It concludes that the retraction of the study was necessary to maintain the integrity of the journal.

“The scientific concerns … regarding (ghost-) authorship(s) and potential conflicts of interest, none of which have been responded to, are sufficient to warrant this action,” the retraction authors said.

Health Canada said the withdrawal does not affect its current assessment of glyphosate because the review was only one source among many.

“While this review was previously considered in our assessment, it is important to note that the primary data sources were independently evaluated by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA),” the department said. “Therefore, the retraction of this review does not affect our previous review conclusions.”

The department said its 2017 re-evaluation considered more than 1,300 studies and remains consistent with the most recent 2023 review by European regulators. PMRA will continue monitoring international assessments and new scientific research.

Monsanto, whose internal studies and communications were cited in the retraction notice, was acquired by Bayer in 2018. The company has faced continuing lawsuits over glyphosate products, creating uncertainty about Bayer’s long-term commitment to glyphosate.

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In a brief filed at the court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer bolstered Bayer’s effort to limit the lawsuits and potentially avert billions of dollars in damages, saying the company was correct that the federal law governing pesticides preempts lawsuits that make claims over the products under state law.

WHY IT MATTERS: Bayer has told U.S. officials it could exit the Roundup business unless legal protection is strengthened.

The shares had surged 14.9 per cent to €35 (C$56.80) early Tuesday morning.

“We see the Solicitor General’s recommendation as an important step towards containing glyphosate litigation,” JPMorgan analysts said in a note, adding the Supreme Court was likely to rule next year.

The analysts flagged there could be a reduction in provisions for glyphosate litigation, which Bayer has said were $7.6 billion (C$10.6 billion) at the end of September.

Bayer has asked the justices to hear its appeal of a lower court’s decision to uphold a $1.25 million verdict awarded by a St. Louis jury in a Missouri state court case in which a plaintiff named John Durnell sued after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma he attributed to his exposure to Roundup. Bayer is facing more than 67,000 such lawsuits in U.S. state and federal courts.

The German pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, which acquired Roundup as part of its $63 billion purchase of Monsanto in 2018, has said that decades of studies have shown Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, are safe for human use.

Label fight

Sauer told the justices that upholding the lower court’s decision would allow juries to second guess the science-based judgments of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans, and the agency has repeatedly approved Roundup labels that did not contain cancer warnings,” Sauer said in the brief.

“Where, as here, EPA has specified the health warnings that should appear on a particular pesticide’s label, a manufacturer should not be left subject” to state labelling regimes each prescribing different requirements, Sauer said.

The brief comes as the Trump administration — which has aimed to address concerns from agricultural groups about potential restrictions on agrochemicals — must also contend with supporters of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, who have highlighted possible health risks associated with pesticides.

Bayer’s effort has drawn support from pro-business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which said that allowing Bayer to face the liability opens up many corporations that follow federal law to litigation.

Lawyers for Durnell asked the Supreme Court to turn away Bayer’s appeal. They said the plaintiff relied on Bayer’s advertising and not just the label when he chose to use Roundup, and the company’s marketing failed to warn consumers of the product’s risks.

The U.S. Supreme Court asked the Trump administration in June for its views in the case.

Mixed record

Roundup is among the most widely used weedkillers in the United States.

The company has paid about $10 billion to settle most of the Roundup lawsuits that were pending as of 2020, but failed to get a settlement covering future cases. New lawsuits have continued to pour in since then. Plaintiffs have said they developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other forms of cancer due to using Roundup, either at home or on the job.

The company has had a mixed record at trial in the Roundup lawsuits. Bayer has prevailed in a series of Roundup trials, but it was also hit with large jury awards in the past few years, including a $2.1 billion verdict in a case in the U.S. state of Georgia in March.

Bayer settled the Georgia case and three others that had been on appeal in November.

Bayer has threatened to withdraw Roundup from the U.S. market as it fights the litigation. The company replaced glyphosate in U.S. consumer products with different weedkilling substances.

— Additional reporting by Andrew Chung

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In a decision released Wednesday morning, Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency removed the registration to spray dicamba on dicamba tolerant soybeans after the crop starts growing.

Bayer sells corn and soybean seed under the Roundup Ready XTend brand, which is tolerant to both dicamba and glyphosate, allowing Canadian farmers to spray the crop and control weeds during the growing season.

Bayer assessing PMRA proposal

In an email to the Western Producer, Bayer Crop Science Canada said it is still assessing the PMRA’s proposed special review decision and the potential impact on the agriculture industry.

“Bayer stands behind the safety of our products, including dicamba, which is an important herbicide for Canadian farmers,” Bayer said.

“Dicamba complements glyphosate as a critical crop protection tool by controlling certain glyphosate resistant weeds and providing consistent broadleaf residual weed control. Dicamba is a significant tool for growers and was applied to 9.3 million acres of Canadian crop land in 2024 (Source: Ag Data).”

The PMRA has been conducting a special review on the risks of spray drift and volatilization of dicamba. Using Health Canada language, it was looking at the “potential risk to non-target terrestrial plants from the use of commercial dicamba products.”

Impacts on soy, corn

In its proposed special review decision, posted online Sept. 17, Health Canada said its decision will have the following impacts on soybean and corn growers in Canada:

•  Removal of over-the-top applications to dicamba tolerant (DT) soybeans after the crop starts growing (post-emergence). Currently, dicamba products can be applied once before planting or emergence and up to two more times post-emergence.
• Cancellation of its use for DT soybean seed production

New label requirements include:

• Avoid application when temperatures exceed 25 C because warmer temperatures can cause dicamba to volatilize and move off-site.
• Lower the maximum plant height for application on DT field corn crop from 76 centimetres to 50 cm. This will help reduce the chance of pesticide drift to nearby plants and align with the current application height limit for non-DT field corn.
• Update the size of spray buffer zones for crop and non-crop areas, ranging from one to 115 metres for field sprayers and from 45 to 800 metres for aerial application.

Risk of spray drift and volatilization

Health Canada evaluated the risk of spray drift and dicamba volatilization, where the herbicide evaporates from the soil or plant tissue following application.

Agency scientists concluded that “dicamba has the potential to volatilize and move off-site throughout the entire growing season.”

Further, Health Canada studied incidents where dicamba applied to DT crops caused damage to nearby agricultural fields or plants.

From 2015-25, there were 101 reported cases of damage to non-target plants, “89 per cent of which involved just five commercial products with registered uses in DT crops,” Health Canada said.

Some pesticide application experts believe that the risk of volatilization from dicamba is too high and cannot be properly managed. Others say that newer dicamba products are less volatile.

Under the proposed Health Canada decision, soybean growers could still apply dicamba to DT soybeans before seeding or before the crop emerges from the ground.

However, there are no permitted uses in dicamba tolerant soybean seed production.

All uses of dicamba on crops that are not-tolerant of the herbicide, such as cereal crops and lowbush blueberries, are still permitted if the proposed label amendments are implemented.

Health Canada will accept written comments on this proposed decision until Nov. 1.

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Why it matters: Glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup are key crop protection products for Canadian farmers, but they’ve been the object of lawsuits on both sides of the border.

“Unless something changes, we are going to have to stop producing glyphosate … we have to find a solution,” CEO Bill Anderson said in a media call after the release of detailed quarterly results.

The company has previously replaced glyphosate in U.S. consumer products with different weed-killing substances and it earlier this year threatened to withdraw Roundup from the U.S. agriculture markets if lawmakers or courts cannot provide more legal relief.

Glyphosate has been approved for safe use by Canadian and U.S. health authorities.

— Reporting by Ludwig Burger and Patricia Weiss

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