Race To End Glyphosate Use Pits American Big Ag Lobby Against MAHA's Public Health Spirit
The early momentum of MAGA/MAHA leadership has now evolved into offshoot battles for the future trajectory of America as we move into the summer months.
“Big Ag” is shorthand for the groups of large corporations that essentially control much of our food system. Household names like General Mills, Kraft, and Tyson Foods, were early MAHA targets. The more obscure companies operate above that supply chain, and include Syngenta and Bayer, which sell the seeds and agrochemicals.
Bayer and its $63B acquisition of Monsanto, called the worst corporate deal in recent memory by the Wall Street Journal, has been on the losing side endless litigation claiming their glyphosate-based herbicide product causes cancer.
Bayer AG and its agrochemical empire is the symbolic flagship for a chemical farming paradigm now seemingly at odds with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his MAHA vision. Both sides now hold substantial power and a showdown is upon us.
Headquartered in Germany, Bayer AG has been strategizing how to avoid bankruptcy. They now face new American leadership and a general public laser focused on children’s health. The warpath against corporate chemicals harming the sensitive developmental windows of American kids is coming into focus as highlighted in the recent White House MAHA report.
Two dynamically moving parts now define the fate of Bayer, its ‘chemical on trial’ glyphosate and an entire chemical farming paradigm in relation to the greater trajectory of children’s health in America.
PART 1: SCIENCE AND CHILDREN’S HEALTH
As with many flagship corporate products and even entire industries, an army of paid scientists and communicators works around the clock to protect the bottom line by gatekeeping the science. Fortunately, a global research community not on the payroll is also having it say.
A newly published rat study is serving as another flashing red light to eliminate these glyphosate products from our lives.
In the study, glyphosate was administered to rats through exposure in their drinking water beginning at gestation (day 6 via maternal exposure) through 104 weeks of age.
The amounts given to the rats were set at two different levels – The European Union’s (EU) acceptable daily intake (ADI) and the EU's no-observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) which is a higher dose than the ADI.
Earlier studies focused (pigeonholed) efforts on the scientific red herring of just glyphosate in a vacuum, however the entire formulation with its co-formulant/accelerant chemicals are the true business end of the concoction used in the real world and distributed in our environment.
This new study accounted for this angle by testing stand-alone glyphosate along with Roundup Bioflow used in the EU and RangerPro used in the U.S. (shockingly Bioflow’s complete co-formulant profile is still currently undisclosed)
The study found:
“…glyphosate and GBHs [glyphosate-based herbicides] at exposure levels corresponding to the EU glyphosate ADI and NOAEL caused statistically significant, dose-related increased trends or increased incidences compared to RI and NTP historical controls, of multiple benign and malignant tumors of blood, skin, liver, thyroid, nervous system, ovary, mammary gland, adrenal glands, kidney, urinary bladder, bone, endocrine pancreas and circulatory system. Most of these increases involved tumors that are rare in SD rats (incidence < 1%).”
Explosive development of rare cancers. An medical oxymoron that sadly is becoming common in our society.
The researchers continued:
“We also observed early onset and early mortality for a number of rare malignant tumors, including leukemia, liver, ovary and nervous system tumors. Notably, approximately half of the deaths from leukemia seen in the glyphosate and GBHs treatment groups occurred at less than one year of age.”
And a final note on the co-formulants/accelerants:
“Our results indicate that, while glyphosate alone is capable of causing a number of benign and malignant tumors, GBHs co-formulants may enhance the carcinogenicity of glyphosate, particularly in the case of leukemia.”
Regarding childhood leukemia, it is important to note that the EPA’s 2017 Children’s Environmental Health Impact Report notes:
“Cancer is the second leading cause of death among children between ages 1 and 14 years old.41 Leukemia, cancer of the white blood cells, is the most common childhood cancer.42 The number of children diagnosed with leukemia has increased by about 35 percent over the past 40 years, especially among Latino children as shown in recent studies in the U.S.”
A 2025 review of the available science from the last 15 years was also published roughly two weeks prior to the rat study in which the researchers concluded:
“Based on published studies, common side effects following GBH applications include the disruption of the microbiome, neurotoxicity, cytotoxicity, reproductive, oncogenic, and teratogenic effects. New modes of action and impacts at several trophic levels continue to be discovered, many driven by the sheer intensity of GBH use.”
Despite court wins and global science pointing continuously to harms, glyphosate formulations are still being used.
A 2020 interim review of glyphosate by the EPA stated:
“The EPA thoroughly assessed risks to humans from exposure to glyphosate from all registered uses and all routes of exposure and did not identify any risks of concern.”
An updated U.S. government health assessment on common herbicides is expected in 2026.
PART 2 POLITICS AND LOBBYING
The White House MAHA report states that in 2024, the chemical-manufacturing lobby spent roughly $77 million on federal influence activities—placing the industry among Washington’s top spenders. In 2023, 60% of chemical-sector lobbyists previously held federal posts. Such influence and conflicts of interest are what keeps the chemical status quo alive in D.C. and beyond.
As a last ditch effort to avoid a paradigm shift moving power away from agrochemical industry monopoly, Bayer’s strategy pivoted to form The Modern Ag Alliance – a coalition group led by Bayer to do one thing only…protect its product line.
The alliance has crafted and pushed bills in several states not to win hearts and minds or even scientific debate but to force cold, hard liability protection for damages caused by their products. An all out effort to stop the legal bleed-out that has nearly destroyed it’s flagship glyphosate product, turned shareholders against them, and proved to be a financial and public embarrassment.
North Carolina is the latest battleground as a Bayer alliance-lobbied farm bill has moved through the senate and now faces the house. The cut and past liability protection, reminiscent of that given to vaccine-makers, reads similar in nearly every state its being tried.
With The Science™ long-captured at the federal level, Bayer’s move to rush through state laws to give their product lines liability protection appears to be their last and only move. Yet an aware public is fighting against such ends in statehouses across the nation.
An ideological divide between MAGA and MAHA (Trump vs. RFK Jr.) in regards to the glyphosate/agrochemical issue is being forced by lobbyist messaging. Bayer is framing detractors of their product lines as threatening American farmers and thus, economic stability and food availability.
Economy or health, farm production or rising childhood chronic disease…empty store shelves or family medical bills.
In reality, alternatives to chemical farming have been here for sometime. The all-or-nothing, fear-based messaging sponsored by Bayer is only meant to falsely narrow the conversation in their favor. Nobody from their camp will acknowledge over a decade of science which shows harms.
For many in the MAHA movement and the public who just want healthier generations of children and families, the choice to end harmful agrochemicals like glyphosate is a clear one.
Will our representatives at the state and federal level execute the will of the people to move towards ending childhood chronic disease? Will they choose American health or the false corporate dialectic of economics over health?