HILDA LABRADA GORE: Bayer is working on passing legislation in various states to protect themselves from liability when customers want to sue them for poisoning them. Our guest is Kelly Ryerson, known as the “glyphosate girl.” She is focused on defending us from one of the most toxic carcinogenic ingredients that we may ever encounter, and it is routinely sprayed on our lawns and crops. How is it that the manufacturers of glyphosate are looking for some kind of liability shield similar to what pharmaceutical companies have for vaccines?
KELLY RYERSON: It’s shocking. Hardly anyone knows that it’s happening, so I’m so glad you want to talk about it. This is a situation that’s been coming for several years. Bayer manufactures glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup—the most widely used pesticide of all time. There are around 177,000 outstanding lawsuits, and they keep coming because it’s been connected with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It’s a huge problem for them because Bayer’s stock price has crashed. They are having major financial difficulties because of glyphosate litigation. They stand to go bankrupt. We also have a situation with paraquat, which is manufactured by ChemChina, a government-owned chemical company. It is a pesticide that’s connected to Parkinson’s disease.
HLG: I interviewed someone who said she got sick because she was walking barefoot in China, and she got paraquat in her system.
KR: This is crazy because they banned paraquat in China but it wasn’t all that long ago. It could have happened before they banned it.
HLG: I know that she absorbed it through her skin. She is the author of For the Love of Soil. She asked, “Why am I so sick?” She thought, “Isn’t it interesting? My life’s mission is to make the soil healthy so we’ll be healthier, and yet I got sick from something that we were spraying all over the place.” How does paraquat enter into this story?
KR: ChemChina is one of the major foreign manufacturers of pesticides. They will stand to benefit from this liability shield because their paraquat lawsuits are exploding throughout the United States. China does not allow paraquat to be sprayed in China, but they want to be sure they can keep spraying it here and making us sick with Parkinsonʼs, with no liability. In fact, sixteen thousand different chemicals will fall under this liability shield, but it is primarily driven by glyphosate litigation and the power that Bayer has—Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018.
Our entire agriculture system is effectively built upon Bayer’s products, so it gets even more complicated. They’re asking for a liability shield because they are claiming that American agriculture can’t continue if we still have this liability issue.
HLG: Do the judges and the legislators who might pass this legislation believe this argument?
KR: What’s shocking is they tried to pass it first in the Farm Bill and a different spending bill at the federal level, to make it apply for all of the United States. It did not get through because we didn’t have a Farm Bill. They’ll try to slide it in again. Every year, we think there should be a Farm Bill, and it’s delayed by two years. It hasn’t passed. This is a bipartisan push by certain bought-out legislators. They’re clearly being bribed in some way to come to bat for Bayer in the Farm Bill. Overall, the sentiment was that Democrats weren’t going to want the liability shield included, but they were willing to trade more SNAP dollars for potentially having a liability shield.
HLG: These are the wheelings and dealings that a lot of us aren’t aware of because they happen behind closed doors.
KR: That’s exactly it. They haven’t passed it at a federal level yet. Meanwhile, Bayer’s stock price keeps going down. There’s a new CEO who is saying, “Something needs to change right now.” This could all go away by putting “It has been shown by IARC to cause cancer” on the side of the glyphosate bottle. They would no longer be sued because they would’ve warned the public, but Bayer would rather withdraw their pesticides entirely than put that cancer label on the product. And since they didn’t get their liability shield federally, they are going state by state to twenty-one different states and trying to pass it at the state level.
HLG: How’s that going?
KR: Fortunately, we have gotten some passionate people, a lot of people from the MAHA movement, who are aware of what happened with the vaccine liability shield. They have hopped on and they’re making phone calls. We got it defeated in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Montana, I believe, Wyoming, and Iowa. However, this is on the desk of two governors, the governor of Georgia, Governor Kemp, and the governor of North Dakota, Governor Armstrong. Both have an opportunity to veto this bill that has already passed through their state legislatures.
HLG: That’s so scary. Did you have your people on the ground in those states?
KR: North Dakota is hard because there aren’t that many people in the state. People from out of state have been calling a lot. In Georgia, there are a lot of very passionate people. The problem is that Governor Kemp ran on the idea that he wants to decrease mass tort litigation so that lawyers stop getting rich from these kinds of lawsuits. That’s a problem because with these big glyphosate lawsuits, tons of lawyers have piled on to try to get their share. It’s a conflict there. I don’t know what he’s going to do. If anyone knows anyone who knows Governor Kemp, tell me because I’ve been talking to family friends of the Kemps trying to tell him, “You don’t realize this is not a pro-farmer bill. That’s what they’re saying it is.”
HLG: How do they frame it that way? What are some of the arguments they are using?
KR: They have billboards up. They have radio ads, in places where most of the farmers listen, and TV ads. They’re saying, “We are here to protect the food supply. You need to have these chemicals. Our farmers need these chemicals in order to feed the world,” the same old argument that’s always made. “If you believe in farmers, then you should support this bill.” Meanwhile, I’m thinking of all the farmers I know who have cancer, Parkinson’s, or thereʼs poor Gabe Brown with ALS. It is awful. Will Harris has joined us in protest. He is a famous farmer of White Oak Pastures in Georgia. It’s wonderful because he’s willing to speak out about this. And the more cotton growers who come out and say, “This is not a pro-farmer bill,” the better. If your child gets sick with cancer, if you become infertile, if you suffer from any of the diseases connected to glyphosate, you will have no recourse to sue the company for damages if they have a total liability shield.
HLG: You said Georgia and North Dakota have it nearly passed, but are there others on the horizon, too?
KR: There are. Florida is threatened. Fortunately, with Florida, the activists are maybe the most active in this country. When I was asking for volunteers, the list filled up immediately. It was fantastic. I can’t imagine it passing there. The liability shield has also been proposed in Texas, Indiana and Illinois, but I haven’t seen it advance there yet. There’s a whole team that’s watching to see when those bills are introduced so that people can act.
HLG: Why should people become active against these bills? What if I were to say, “It’s just a farming thing. It doesn’t have much to do with me. Why is glyphosate so bad anyway?” What would you say to that?
KR: What’s interesting is that Bayer has made this conversation about farming. It’s so much more than that. For example, in California, there is a pediatric cancer pocket in an area where glyphosate has been sprayed. This was in a school park. Again, if your child gets sick with cancer, develops infertility, or suffers any of the things that are connected to glyphosate, then you will have no recourse because they will have a total liability shield. Not only that, it’ll be the same thing as it was with the vaccine manufacturers. They have no responsibility. They can make this product more toxic if they want to because they know that there’s no cap to stopping the damage.
HLG: They think, “We could keep going because no one’s going to stop us. No one’s going to sue us.” I understand that glyphosate or the weed killer, Roundup, is used more frequently on lawns than on farms. In other words, in terms of quantity, it’s used most commonly on lawns.
KR: Actually, the vast majority is agriculture. Ten percent is on parks, lawns and schools. We’re affected by the food we eat but when you think about the actual dermal contact, which is how a lot of these people get cancer, and you see kids walking around barefoot or touching things, and you know it’s going right through their skin, it’s so upsetting. Dog and cat lymphoma is also through the roof.
HLG: That’s true. I wonder why our pets are getting cancer.
KR: Many vets think it’s because the dogs and cats are walking on the sidewalk and ground where the glyphosate has been sprayed. They absorb it through their paws. With absorption through the skin, those animals became very sick with cancer in the studies.
HLG: Even if you’re not walking in the soil or even if you’re not a farmer, when we eat wheat that’s been sprayed with glyphosate to help desiccate it, people are getting a lot of glyphosate in their system. I understand that when you do a urine analysis people find glyphosate in the urine.
KR: People eating fully organic have less glyphosate in their urine, but they still have some. You can do a urine test through HRI Labs where we have Dr. John Fagan, a brilliant toxicologist. You can go to the website and send in your sample, and he can tell you where your levels are. You can eat carefully over time, and then you send in a second sample. What’s shocking is that during my investigation, I started wondering, because glyphosate is everywhere, would we find it in semen, because I’d seen a study showing that it kills sperm. I’d been concerned about the 50 percent decrease in sperm counts, so I sent in three different semen samples from three different men. All three came back positive for glyphosate in the semen. We know that it kills sperm. I dug further and talked to some researchers. They said, “It’s been shown to cross the blood-testis barrier.” I told Bobby Kennedy about this so he’s aware of the situation. I went to the EPA last September 2024 because they had made a fraudulent claim that there’s no endocrine disruption from glyphosate exposure. They based this claim fully on industry research. Glyphosate is connected with miscarriages, a decrease in estrogen, a decrease in testosterone and semen issues.
We have such a fertility crisis in this country. It’s so shocking that this continues. I know that they know this at Monsanto because some of the internal documents we’re talking about are connected to women’s fertility. Think of the heartbreak of not being able to have a child. Many of my friends have suffered with that. Remember that if glyphosate’s liability shield gets passed in certain states, it will immediately halt lawsuits.
HLG: Going back to where we might come in contact with glyphosate, it’s in the soil and our food. I’ve heard it’s also in the air. Is that right?
KR: It is in the air, particularly if you’re in an area that’s been sprayed. It also ends up in the rain and in our water supply. A lot of municipalities don’t even test for it. You’re also exposed from any cotton products that are not organic. Things like tampons, pads, and diapers can have glyphosate in them.
HLG: Tell me what motivated you to get involved in this issue about glyphosate and this possible liability shield.
KR: I became interested because I had an autoimmune-like condition that was not diagnosable. I just knew that I felt horrible. I was layered with medications to try to help my many symptoms. I finally started turning a corner when I gave up gluten and started eating clean. I did a deep dive into gluten sensitivity and why it was increasing. I went to a conference at Columbia University where they were talking about this increased incidence of gluten sensitivity. They said, “We don’t even know if it’s gluten. We think it might be something else.” I went up and asked the question, “Could it be something that’s on the farm?” They said no. Someone from General Mills found me and said, “You should check it out because Roundup is sprayed on our oats, our wheat and all these grains right before harvest.”
HLG: Why would that person tell you that?
KR: He was a whistleblower. I wondered what he was talking about? Roundup? The kind they sell at Home Depot? We’re eating it? Around that time, the cancer litigation involving Lee Johnson, the school landscaper, was starting in San Francisco, where I live. I went up to protest Monsanto. I ended up finding no protestors and no journalists. I walked right into the courtroom and sat down with Bobby Kennedy, who was the attorney suing. I then realized no one was going to be covering the day-to-day trial, so I quit my job at the time and named myself Glyphosate Girl. I tried to stay anonymous and wrote every day all these horrible things that the EPA and Monsanto were doing. I knew these things were never going to make it to mainstream media.
Lee Johnson was a pesticide applicator for schools. He had a few accidents where the backpack sprayer had a leak. He washed it off but he very rapidly developed a severe, awful case of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
HLG: When he did that spraying, did he have to wear almost a hazmat suit?
KR: Yes. He had one, but the glyphosate goes right through it. Even though he washed it off quickly, it was too late. He tried to call Monsanto during that time to talk to their doctor asking, “I see some evidence that it might be connected to my cancer. What do you think?” They didn’t get back to him, and then they saw him in court.
HLG: If it gets passed in certain states, will this liability shield stop these lawsuits?
KR: It will stop them immediately if these are passed. There’ll be no more cancer lawsuits. Anyone’s opportunity to get any kind of recourse will be gone.
HLG: I know you don’t have a crystal ball, but what do you expect to happen? Do you think Bayer is going to keep pushing for this liability shield, even in the states where it’s been defeated?
KR: It’s interesting because about forty Congressmen wrote a letter to Kennedy, Brooke Rollins (head of the USDA) and Lee Zeldin (head of the EPA) begging them not to listen to any of the activists and their “shoddy science” when it comes to pesticides. They claimed that the activists will present shoddy science and it will lead to horrible health in the United States. I see this as helpful because now we have the list of who’s been bought off by Bayer. This is all tied to the fact that they’re losing these liability shield efforts in some states. They’re wondering what they are going to do now that they have to come back and get Congress to pressure our regulators. They do not have the same grip on this administration. Bayer does not have the same grip on Kennedy, and I don’t think on either of the other two. They’re freaking out. The CEO came out and said that they may be pulling glyphosate from the United States.
I founded a group called American Regeneration. We’re working on getting different policies passed in the government. We were doing this brainstorming exercise, thinking that if glyphosate is pulled, this will be mayhem for agribusiness because all the GMO seeds are connected to it. It’s a brilliant system that Monsanto developed. They are called Roundup-Ready GMOs. Most of the GMOs that we grow in this country are resistant to the effects of Roundup and glyphosate. You can spray a field, and the crops keep growing, and the weeds around the crops will die because they are not resistant to glyphosate. This is true for our corn, soy and cotton. It is going to be a huge thing not to have glyphosate, and they know that. We were going through the mind exercise.
Let’s say they did pull Roundup because Bayer doesn’t want to go bankrupt. Then what? Are we going to use biologicals for our soil? How do we rapidly start regenerating? A lot of the replacement pesticides are much more expensive than glyphosate, so it would be cost-prohibitive. It’s a fascinating thing to watch.
HLG: My concern is that it will be replaced with something that’s even more damaging, but we don’t know it yet.
KR: That could be true. What happened is that they pulled glyphosate from the Roundup product that you buy at Home Depot because most of these lawsuits are from home users. They pulled glyphosate, but now the new Roundup product is forty times more toxic than what it was with glyphosate. Instead, they put in diquat which is a more toxic pesticide than glyphosate.
HLG: What are they thinking? They’re looking for a loophole to keep those products on the shelves.
KR: Most people don’t even know they’ve replaced the chemical. It’s the same bottle, they changed only one of the ingredients that’s listed.
HLG: These people applying it to their lawns at home certainly are not doing what Lee did. They’re not putting on a hazmat suit. They’re not protecting themselves.
KR: It is quite stressful for people to assess what they are doing in their own yard, in their own life and in their own diet. When they plant their spring gardens, you see the wind blowing and people out in shorts. When I see this, I go over and warn them. I’m the crazy neighbor. They don’t want to hear what I am saying.
HLG: This reminds me of a big scandal some years ago about BPA, a certain chemical in plastic that people were saying was an endocrine disruptor. It’s been replaced by BPF and BPS, which are nearly identical in how they affect our hormones.
KR: The herbicide that is the second most used is called atrazine. The facts about atrazine are more disturbing than those for glyphosate. It’s banned everywhere else. We still spray it. It’s in drinking water. Have you ever heard of the frogs changing sex? Tyrone Hayes, a scientist at Berkeley, found it to be severely endocrine-disrupting. That is why Europe banned it. It was our number one most-used pesticide until glyphosate came along.
HLG: Speaking of Europe, I’ve heard gluten-sensitive people say many times, “I went to Italy. I ate pasta and bread to my heart’s content. I was fine.” Do you think it’s the glyphosate factor?
KR: Glyphosate is part of it. They are used much less frequent as pre-harvest desiccators in Europe. They are legally allowed to do it, but a lot of farmers don’t. When you let the wheat naturally dry on the field as it should, it has time to become less inflammatory.
HLG: We always think that we can improve on Mother Nature and make things more efficient and cost-effective. We want to improve on Mother Nature. Let’s speed up this desiccation process. But in the process, we’re messing things up.
KR: We’re messing things up so much! The pre-harvest desiccation only started in 2005. When you look at the increase in chronic disease—not just me but many scientists—the conclusion is that they are connected. Understand also that glyphosate is an antibiotic. It kills beneficial gut bacteria while allowing detrimental bacteria to proliferate. It’s a weird antibiotic that only hits the good stuff. At least eighty percent of our dietary exposure to glyphosate comes from pre-harvest desiccation. You think that would be so easy. All you need to do is get swathers [harvesting machines] back into the hands of the farmers, do it like you did in 2005, and restore our health.
HLG: We’re together today because we were at the big press event at HHS, where Kennedy was saying they are going to be phasing out petroleum-based dyes in our food system. And he wanted to see less glyphosate.
KR: My recommendation to them was, can we at least get pre-harvest desiccation out? Is this something that everyone could agree with? There might be an appetite for it, which is great, because it’s not touching the GMO situation that’s so entrenched in subsidies.
HLG: I’m the only one in my neighborhood who pulls weeds. I have a big sign that says “No Pesticides.” My kids are mortified. It’s like a big scene. But there are some people who love it.
KR: I’m doing my own little mini regenerative situation. I tolerate weeds. But I have lost friends over this issue. It’s a stressful thing for people to feel judged when they know what I do. I hate that because I don’t judge. It makes people assess what they’re doing in their own yard, their own life, or think about what they’re eating. It makes people stressed.
HLG: I’m sure the reader can relate. I know I can. By making a simple food choice, suddenly, the people around me feel threatened, like I’m giving them a hard time. It is not about them at all. It is for myself and for staying healthy. That makes me feel bad because you never want to shame other people. You just want to make the healthiest choice you can. You, Kelly, are trying to help other people be empowered with knowledge, which I love.
KR: That’s what I’m trying to do. I can speak from my own experience that cleaning up my diet and going gluten-free was completely life-changing. I was probably on an early-death path, I was so sick. I see people coming down with these severe autoimmune conditions and it is hard to watch. I can see what they’re putting in their body and know what’s happening.
HLG: Have you worked at all with Zen Honeycutt? I know she’s done some investigation about the levels of glyphosate even in our school lunches.
KR: In fact, we have spent a lot of time in DC together, going from office to office and talking about glyphosate, fertility, cancer and the toxicity of our food supply. It’s interesting. We do feel like we have some takers when we convey that information. When JD Vance was still a senator, his chief of staff was my favorite. We met with him, and he was a sponge. He was writing every last detail and shaking his head like, “This is terrible. The senator’s going to be very interested in this.” When I see JD Vance, I realize, “I know he knows,” and it makes me relieved.
HLG: As we wrap up, I want to ask you the question I love to pose at the end. If the readers could only do one thing to improve their health, it may be related to avoiding glyphosate or not, what would you recommend that they do?
KR: The number one thing you can do is get a water filter. I tell as many people as I can. “I have an under-the-counter water filter from Clearly Filtered. It takes out atrazine, glyphosate and all these things that a lot of these water filters don’t even test for. I had to look far and wide, and I finally found this one. It was interesting because I filled my dogs’ water bowl with this new water. I have never seen them drink so much! I thought, “You guys can tell this is super clean water.”
This was Wise Tradtions Podcast #526 (May 12, 2025)
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Summer 2025
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