RoundUp Science Hurts the Poor

It’s almost 2023, the year that at least some people will remember as the year we lost glyphosate. Most people probably won’t notice, unless you think of it as RoundUp. RoundUp is an incredible plant killer used on weeds that kills them right down to the root. It’s the most popular herbicide ever discovered and is cheap, safe and highly effective. Other than farmers and the makers of RoundUp, who suffers the most from its loss?

The answer: consumers, and in particular, poor consumers. Although there are other herbicides, no others are as effective. Fighting weeds will become harder to do and more expensive. When that happens, food prices go up. 

If you shop at Whole Foods, you may not notice or care as you (in the top 10 percent in income) spend about 7.6 percent of your income on food. But if you are in the bottom 10 percent of income, and shop at Walmart, you spend more like 30.6 percent of your income on food. In other words, the poor spend four times as much of their income on food as do the rich do.

Farm food prices in the U.S. are already up 14.7% in the last two years. This has been driven in part by a 53% increase in energy and supply chain knots from COVID lockdowns. Michael Swanson, chief agricultural economist at Wells Fargo says, “The scary thing is that food companies haven’t passed along all of their costs yet.” And that’s even before we come to the loss of glyphosate. 

Why are we losing Roundup? It’s not because the EPA said it was unsafe (i.e., causes cancer). In fact, every single international agency, including the European Food Safety Authority and in Germany, Australia, Korea, Canada, Japan and New Zealand all said it did not cause cancer. Except one – IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer). IARC is a branch of the World Health Organization in France. If you find working night shifts, drinking hot drinks and all but one of 1,000other things you study cause cancer, glyphosate is not surprise. 

The only reason we pay any attention to what IARC says is because those results are used in Prop 65 in California and, more importantly, are fodder for plaintiff lawyers who found deep pockets in the company that makes RoundUp, the Bayer Corporation (annual sales of $4.7 billion). Losing to bad science in court, Bayer settled roughly 100,000 lawsuits by paying $10 billion. When companies face multiple lawsuits that are expensive to try which could end in gigantic awards and terrible publicity, they are usually forced to settle and to stop making the products.

One issue for consumers who end up paying these higher prices is the effect on dietary quality, "particularly among the poorest of the poorest" as they switch to cheaper and less healthy foods. But loss of income also has a pernicious regressive effect because of the loss income. 

By forcing them to spend more money on reducing low or zero risks on food, they have less money to spend on bigger risks in their lives - like healthcare or unsafe neighborhoods.

In the end, the misuse of science by a foreign agency (although funded in part by the U.S.) ends up hurting the poor the most – a travesty for justice.