Environmental advocates in North Carolina are urging lawmakers to remove a provision from the 2025 Farm Act that would shield pesticide companies from legal liability and limit consumer protections.
Christine Zhu reports for NC Newsline.
In short:
- Section 19 of North Carolina's 2025 Farm Act would exempt pesticide manufacturers from disclosing certain health risks if their products carry EPA-approved labels.
- Critics argue the provision would block individuals harmed by pesticide exposure — linked to cancer, infertility, and brain damage in children — from seeking justice in court.
- Bayer, which has supported the bill, faces multiple lawsuits over its pesticides and is accused of lobbying to avoid future accountability.
Key quote:
“This is a direct attack on our community’s right to hold chemical manufacturers accountable for the harm they cause.”
— Kendall Wimberley, policy manager at Toxic Free NC
Why this matters:
Pesticides can carry serious health risks, particularly for children and pregnant women. Scientific studies have linked common pesticide ingredients to long-term conditions including cancer, developmental delays, and reproductive harm. Typically, if a person is exposed and harmed, they have the right to pursue justice in court—especially if manufacturers failed to adequately warn them. But Section 19 would block such legal avenues, as long as the pesticide’s label was approved by the EPA. That’s a significant shift in liability, giving companies broad immunity even when evidence later reveals harm. Similar efforts to limit accountability have failed in most states this year, but powerful lobbying from manufacturers like Bayer continues.
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