\n<\/p>\n
Top US regulators met with Bill Anderson, Bayer\u2019s CEO, last year to discuss \u201clitigation\u201d issues \u2013 including \u201csupreme court action\u201d over its glyphosate weed killer \u2013 just months before the Trump administration took a series of steps to boost Bayer\u2019s case at the high court, internal government records show.<\/p>\n
The 17 June meeting, between officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Anderson and two other top Bayer executives, came as the Germany-based company was working to quash costly US litigation brought by tens of thousands of people who allege they developed cancer from their use of the company\u2019s glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup.<\/p>\n
At the core of those lawsuits are claims that the company failed to warn users of the risk of cancer, as shown in several research studies over many years.<\/p>\n
One of Bayer\u2019s stated key strategies to try to end the litigation, which has so far cost Bayer billions of dollars in settlements and jury verdict awards, is getting the supreme court to agree with Bayer\u2019s argument that if the EPA does not require a cancer warning on its glyphosate products, the company cannot be held liable for failing to warn of a cancer risk.<\/p>\n
While one appellate court has sided with Bayer, multiple other courts have rejected that preemption argument, as did the US solicitor general under the Biden administration. In contrast, the Trump administration has acted to defend and promote Bayer\u2019s position and its glyphosate herbicides.<\/p>\n
In a statement Bayer said the meeting at the EPA was a \u201cnormal part of the regulatory process\u201d and that the company has been \u201ctransparent about our position\u201d regarding glyphosate litigation.<\/p>\n
The show of administration support has largely come after that 17 June meeting, which government email communications and visitor logs confirm took place with Anderson and the other Bayer executives arriving at the EPA on the appointed day a little before 1pm.<\/p>\n
According to a 13 June internal EPA email planning for the meeting, Bayer\u2019s team was \u201cgoing to bring up some legal\/judicial issues\u201d, and discussion topics were to include \u201csupreme court action\u201d.<\/p>\n
The company would \u201cgive an update to the administrator on where they stand in litigation and labeling options\u201d, the planning email states.<\/p>\n
The meeting came less than two weeks ahead of a request from the Supreme Court for the Trump administration\u2019 Justice Department to weigh in on whether or not the court should agree to hear Bayer\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
The EPA officials attending the meeting with Bayer were to include Lee Zeldin, the agency\u2019s administrator, along with Nancy Beck, formerly senior director at the American Chemistry Council who is now the EPA\u2019s principal deputy assistant administrator in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.<\/p>\n
Sean Donahue, who was confirmed last May as the EPA\u2019s general counsel, and Turner Bridgforth, senior adviser for Office of Agriculture and Rural Affairs at the EPA, were also to attend.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s becoming abundantly clear that the political appointees at the EPA are more invested in protecting pesticide company profits than the health of Americans,\u201d said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which obtained the email communications in a Freedom of Information Act request and provided them to the Guardian.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the CEO of one of the largest companies in the world is meeting with political appointees in a US regulatory office, it shows just how much power and influence these corporations have on decisions that can have very real consequences for the health of all Americans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Since the meeting, the Trump administration\u2019s support for Bayer has taken many forms.<\/p>\n
In a 1 December filing with the US supreme court, D John Sauer, the solicitor general appointed by the Trump administration in April 2025, told the court that it should take up the Bayer case, and the supreme court subsequently agreed to do so, setting a hearing for 27 April.<\/p>\n
On 18 February this year, the White House invoked the Defense Production Act to protect the production of glyphosate herbicides and provide so-called \u201cimmunity\u201d for glyphosate makers such as Bayer.<\/p>\n
And on 2 March, Sauer filed an amicus brief with the supreme court throwing the full support of the US government behind Bayer\u2019s case. Signing off on the brief to the court was Donahue.<\/p>\n
When asked about the meeting and the actions that the EPA and Trump administration took after, Bayer said in a statement that such meetings are \u201ca normal part of the regulatory process\u201d, and Bayer has been \u201ctransparent about our position on these topics.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch interactions are not limited to registrant companies and many other groups including NGOs similarly interface with regulatory agencies \u2013 including several widely reported meetings with members of the [Make America Healthy Again] Maha movement and Zeldin late last year,\u201d Bayer said.<\/p>\n
Some legal experts said the meeting agenda and the subsequent actions by the administration were concerning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s concerning that the CEO of a major pesticide company can have private meetings with the EPA to talk about limiting the company\u2019s liability,\u201d said Whitney Di Bona, an attorney and consumer safety advocate at Drugwatch. \u201cWe should also ask whether the agency gave the same chance to speak to the thousands of people who say they got cancer after using Roundup, or to the families who lost loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
The high-level meeting between the CEO of a German company and the EPA\u2019s top environmental regulator seems \u201csimilar to a pattern\u201d in which \u201cindustry leaders have access to government officials\u201d in a way that citizens do not, said Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor who traces corporate influence in regulation.<\/p>\n
Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America and a Maha leader, said she was not surprised to learn of the meeting and subsequent actions by the government to aid Bayer.<\/p>\n
\u201cCoercion by chemical companies on our regulatory agencies is nothing new,\u201d she said, adding that her organization had met with leadership at the EPA multiple times but had little to show for it and were still waiting to see if the agency would act on calls to restrict or ban several pesticides.<\/p>\n
This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Top US regulators met with Bill Anderson, Bayer\u2019s CEO, last year to discuss \u201clitigation\u201d issues \u2013 including \u201csupreme court action\u201d over its glyphosate weed killer \u2013 just months before the Trump administration took a series of steps to boost Bayer\u2019s case at the high court, internal government records show. The 17 June meeting, between officials<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[794,2239,23148,3277,689,160,2699,2171,8835,251,241,159,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-46547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-agency","10":"tag-bayer","11":"tag-ceo","12":"tag-chief","13":"tag-court","14":"tag-epa","15":"tag-fight","16":"tag-met","17":"tag-records","18":"tag-show","19":"tag-supreme","20":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}