Environmental scientists are pushing back on an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, requiring farmers to use the herbicide glyphosate to protect the nation's food supply.
Trump has said farmers must apply the chemical as a matter of national security and buy it from the chemical maker Bayer, which is currently trying to pass an "immunity shield" at the federal level.
The bill, called the "Cancer Gag Act" by critics, would protect the company from lawsuits if glyphosate is found to cause cancer among the people who use it, primarily farmers. Trump's executive order invokes the Defense Production Act, prioritizing high-volume production of glyphosate by treating it as a strategic national defense resource.
Dani Replogle, staff attorney for the advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said the order is an abuse of a law which is only supposed to be invoked when there is a true national emergency.
"This action to increase the production of a pesticide that is already doing incredible harm to public health and to our environment is absurd," Replogle contended. "At any time, there is an extremely large proportion of American crop fields that are already covered in it."
Glyphosate is routinely sprayed on crops in Iowa, often running into ground and surface water. The Environmental Protection Agency has said there is no direct evidence glyphosate is carcinogenic. The immunity shield is part of Section 456 of the federal appropriations bill, which is currently pending in the House.
Despite the state's heavy focus on agriculture, Iowa lawmakers defeated an immunity shield last year, suggesting public sentiment is starting to turn against Bayer, which produces a glyphosate-based herbicide called Roundup. Replogle argued invoking the Defense Production Act to require high volume glyphosate production goes a step further than an immunity shield and suggests the executive order really is not about protecting crops.
"Glyphosate is being used primarily on corn and soy fields," Replogle observed. "Those crops are primarily being used to prop up the ethanol industry and the factory farm industry. It's not like the things being grown on those fields are going on the plates of Americans."
Nitrate-rich manure runoff from factory farms is also known to pollute ground and surface water. Researchers are investigating a potential link between high nitrate levels and the rate of cancer in Iowa, which has the second highest number of new cases in the nation.