Section 453: A Bill to Restrict Pesticide Warnings Must Be Rejected!

Issue: Section 453 is a rider added to the Interior and Environment House Appropriations Bill that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and pesticide manufacturers from updating warning labels on pesticide and herbicide products when side effects are discovered. It would restrict label updates to only those resulting from a multi-year review, and these reviews are scheduled no more often than every 15 years. The rider is not in the Senate version of the bill.

Why did Section 453 Appear? Bayer/Monsanto has paid out $11 Billion dollars for injury claims resulting from its failure to warn users of its glyphosate (Roundup) products of the risk of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Lawsuits have prevailed based on the company’s lack of warning on the product label of its known risks, when it should have updated the label to include them.

Impacts:

· Section 453 grants pesticide manufacturers de facto immunity from liability for injuries caused by exposure to their products, shielding them from accountability.

· Until now, the only consumer products that were granted a waiver of liability by Congress were childhood vaccines and a few emergency medical products under the PREP Act. Issuing a de facto liability waiver for pesticides, products that are designed to be toxic, opens up a Pandora’s box. Will Congress to give out waivers of liability to other preferred industries?

· Injured citizens will be unable to prevail in pesticide injury cases

· Section 453 would apply to every one of the over 50,000 pesticide formulations registered in the US.

· Even more toxic pesticides are likely to enter the market once there is a way for them to avoid liability until many years after harms become known.

Bayer’s Misinformation Campaign:

· House members have been falsely told that Section 453 merely harmonizes state and federal pesticide warnings and does not provide immunity from liability.

· Their offices repeated this false claim to many constituents

· Bayer’s advertising tells farmers that federal and state bills threaten to ban glyphosate or other pesticides. These bills do nothing of the sort.

· Representative Mike Simpson, chairman of the Interior and Environment Appropriations subcommittee, misled committee members about the impact of the Section 453. (@ 3h 26 min)

Please reject Section 453 in the 2025 House Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill:

If you want a more complete discussion of this bill rider, you can find it here:

 

IPAK-EDU is grateful to Meryl’s CHAOS letter (Critical Health Analysis and OpinionS) as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More