Pesticide and herbicide manufacturers have been lobbying state legislatures to pass bills granting legal immunity from product-liability lawsuits.

RED ALERT: Bill Moving Through Florida Legislature Would “Give Immunity To Pesticide Makers,” Gaetz Says

However, there's now proposed federal legislation that would grant pesticide companies legal immunity.

A House committee will vote on the measure Tuesday morning.

"Congress is considering federal legislation (Federal House Interior Appropriations bill) that would grant pesticide companies legal immunity, just as vaccine manufacturers have. Section 453 of the bill SNEAKILY includes Total Pesticide Immunity language; eliminating the ability for the @EPA
to hold companies accountable," Children's Health Defense wrote.

"TAKE ACTION NOW: Contact the Congressmembers below telling them you are AGAINST the Federal House Interior Appropriations bill. Vote is TOMORROW (Tues. 7/15) at 10am ET," it added.

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A closer look at the House members who will vote on the measure:

Dr. Meryl Nass wrote:

Congressman Glenn Thompson (R-PA) has said a pesticide liability shield will be in the Farm Bill as well, which will be (probably) dealt with in August and September. The vote tomorrow will embed the liability shield in an Appropriations bill. The liability shield needs to be included in 2 bills—one to approve it (the Farm Bill) and one to pay for it (the Appropriations Bill).

The body of US jurisprudence is supposed to provide a legal remedy whenever citizens are harmed. You are supposed to be allowed your day in court.

Vaccines were the first and only consumer product to be given a liability shield in 1986, but in order to do so, an alternative remedy was set up: the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), with its own Special Masters instead of judges, to adjudicate alleged harms from liability-waived vaccines. Then Congress set up the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), which began operating in 2010, to compensate Americans for injuries from vaccine, drug and device “countermeasures” when emergency countermeasures were given a liability shield in 2005.

For Americans who may have been injured by these products, neither program is satisfactory. The CICP in particular is ridiculous. Citizens have a short 1 year statute of limitations to file. Of over 14,400 filings, and 4,413 final decisions, the program has only compensated 69 individuals! Only 1.6% of claims adjudicated received compensation. Most of these were related to the COVID vaccines.

But if that wasn’t bad enough, issuing a liability shield for any manufacturer means that the company is now free to do less testing for safety, use sloppier manufacturing processes and roll out unsafe products knowing it won’t have to pay the price for injuries.

While glyphosate (Monsanto/Bayer’s Roundup) is now know to cause cancers and other problems, particularly non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, the liability shield sought by Bayer would apply to ALL pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and insecticides. Even those banned in other countries for toxicity, but allowed into the US, would be shielded for the injuries they cause.

The way legal cases alleging Roundup caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma have been pursued is under the “failure to warn” doctrine. The pesticide label does not warn that lymphoma could be a result of exposure, although the manufactur knows it could be. This cause of action is what Bayer and the other chemical companies, including China’s Syngenta, seek to abolish. If a condition wasn’t listed as a warning on the label, they don’t want anyone to be able to sue for the injury, whether the manufacturer knew or not.

"URGENT - Section 453 of the Federal House Interior Appropriations bill has Total Pesticide Immunity language included in it. If passed, the EPA would effectively be frozen in time and prevented from reviewing and doing its job as it relates to pesticides, herbicides, etc. It would also immediately impede the 67,000 pending lawsuits claiming Monsanto-Bayer Roundup caused cancer," Breeauna Sagdal, senior writer and research fellow at The Beef Initiative, explained.

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"TOMORROW, July 15, the Appropriations Committee will be doing a live markup of the bill, which you can watch here," Sagdal continued.

"Please call members of the House Appropriations Committee today and ask that section 453 is removed tomorrow in the markup session! No immunity for Big Chem!" she added.

Read the full legislation HERE.

 

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