When corporations write the rules, public safety isn’t guaranteed — just ask Monsanto

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

The Supreme Court’s recent 7-2 decision in favor of Monsanto should worry every American who cares about health, food, farming and basic fairness. The ruling does not just affect one chemical or company. It shows how powerful corporations can use government approval to avoid responsibility.

For more than 20 years, John Durnell used Monsanto’s Roundup in parks around his St. Louis neighborhood. Then he developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A jury agreed that Monsanto failed to warn him about cancer risks and awarded him damages.

Now the Supreme Court has sided with Monsanto. Because the Environmental Protection Agency approved Roundup’s label without a cancer warning, the court held that federal law preempts state failure-to-warn claims, which would require a different or additional warning.

That may sound narrow, but it raises a larger question: When a federal agency approves a product, can a corporation use that approval to block people from seeking justice? Monsanto argued yes. The court agreed, shifting power away from juries and states.

The ruling does not prevent every lawsuit against pesticide companies, nor does it eliminate all state authority over pesticides. But it does limit injured people’s recourse under state failure-to-warn claims.

Government agencies should protect the public, but they are compromised by industry pressure and political interference, and often rely on information from the companies they regulate to develop regulatory policy. Powerful companies shape the rules in ways that exempt themselves from liability.

Roundup and similar chemicals are central to growing monoculture corn and soy, often “animal feed and biofuel” crops in the U.S., and factory farming follows a similar pattern. It eludes responsibility for its toxic pollution and other harms, and uses federal authority as a shield against stronger state and local regulations.

Industrial animal agriculture is deeply underregulated in ways that leave workers, animals and communities exposed. Even when industries are technically regulated, there can be impediments to holding them accountable.

For example, in 2008, the Government Accountability Office found that the EPA did not have complete and accurate information about permitted concentrated animal feeding operations across the country. Without that information, the EPA could not effectively regulate them. Laws and regulations without oversight and enforcement can create the appearance of accountability with little real protection.

Executives rarely carry the costs of this system. The price is paid by gardeners, farm workers, rural families, slaughterhouse workers, small farmers, consumers and animals. Farmers should not get the blame. Many work inside a system designed by larger companies that push them toward expensive seeds, chemicals, contracts, debt and markets they do not control.

Legality does not guarantee safety, federal approval does not guarantee justice, and regulation does not guarantee protection. A system can follow the rules and still cause harm.

Food system change requires accountability along with funding, technical assistance and public incentives that help farmers move away from chemical-heavy, confinement-based agriculture and toward systems that nourish everyone, support small and medium-sized farmers, and minimize harm.

Congress should make it clear that federal approval does not create corporate immunity. EPA approval should set a safety floor, and it should not stop states, juries and communities from demanding stronger protection when people suffer harm.

Congress should also reject Big Agriculture’s efforts to erase state animal welfare laws, like California’s Prop 12. When voters choose stronger protections for animals and communities, corporations should not run to Washington and undermine democracy.

The Roundup decision is a red flag we cannot ignore. When corporations shape the rules and then hide behind those same rules to avoid accountability after people suffer harm, the system has failed. Now, Congress must act to hold bad actors accountable and promote the well-being of all: people, animals and our shared environment.

Gene Baur is president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, the world’s first farm animal sanctuary and advocacy organization, and author of the books “Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food,” “Living the Farm Sanctuary Life,” and the forthcoming “Farm Sanctuary: The Story of a Movement.”