Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent years fighting Monsanto's glyphosate herbicide in court, exposing internal documents that revealed the company suppressed safety concerns and ghostwrote research. Yet today, as head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy is publicly endorsing President Trump's executive order that declares glyphosate production critical to U.S. national security. The dramatic reversal has sparked outrage among environmental and health organizations that once counted Kennedy as an ally .

What Did Kennedy Say About Glyphosate Before?

Six years ago, Kennedy celebrated a major court victory that forced Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, to release tens of thousands of pages of internal documents. At the time, Kennedy was one of the plaintiffs' lawyers in the case. He wrote that "all Monsanto's claims about glyphosate's safety were myths concocted by amoral propaganda and lobbying teams" .

Kennedy was particularly alarmed by what those documents revealed. Internal emails from Monsanto scientist Donna Farmer stated: "you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen... we have not done the necessary testing on the [entire composite] formulation to make that statement" . The documents also showed that Monsanto had ghostwritten research later attributed to academics, and that a senior EPA official had worked to suppress a review of glyphosate that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was supposed to conduct .

Kennedy called the revelations comparable to the documents that brought down Big Tobacco. "Monsanto has been spinning its lethal yarn to everybody for years," he wrote, "and suborning various perjuries from regulators and scientists who have all been lying in concert to American farmers, landscapers and consumers" .

Why Is Kennedy's Position Now So Different?

The shift is particularly striking because Kennedy had explicitly opposed the kind of regulatory corruption he once exposed. Yet the Trump administration's executive order, which Kennedy now supports, declares glyphosate essential to national security. The order also protects white phosphorus, another Monsanto/Bayer product with military applications .

Environmental and health organizations that once worked alongside Kennedy have rejected the executive order outright. The No Spray Coalition, which won a landmark 2007 lawsuit against New York City's pesticide spraying program, issued a strong statement opposing the order. The coalition joined forces with major groups including Beyond Pesticides, the Organic Consumers Association, Greenpeace, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), the Center for Biological Diversity, and GMO/Toxin Free USA .

What Do the Hidden Monsanto Documents Actually Show?

The court-ordered release of Monsanto's internal documents revealed a pattern of deliberate concealment. According to attorney Brent Wisner, who reviewed the materials: "This is a look behind the curtain. These documents show that Monsanto has deliberately been stopping studies that look bad for them, ghostwriting literature and engaging in a whole host of corporate malfeasance" .

The documents indicated that both industry and regulators "understood the extraordinary toxicity of many chemical products and worked together to conceal this information from the public and the press" . Dr. Jonathan Latham, executive director of the BioScience Resource Project, explained the scope of the regulatory misconduct: "Time and time again regulators went to the extreme lengths of setting up secret committees, deceiving the media and the public, and covering up evidence of human exposure and human harm. These secret activities extended and increased human exposure to chemicals they knew to be toxic" .

How Has Glyphosate Contamination Spread Beyond Farms?

The evidence of glyphosate's widespread presence in consumer products has mounted over the past decade. In 2016, revelations emerged that the Quaker Oats Company had been spraying glyphosate on its rolled oats as a drying agent. Shortly after, testing found that 90 percent of samples of Ben & Jerry's ice cream contained glyphosate, followed by discoveries of the herbicide in leading orange juice brands .

More recent findings have expanded the contamination picture even further. Testing has detected glyphosate in children's vaccines, as well as popular brands of wine and beer . These discoveries have fueled a heated global debate about the safety of a chemical that regulators have long claimed poses minimal risk.

What Legal Actions Have Been Taken Against Monsanto?

The evidence of harm has led to thousands of lawsuits. In 2018, a jury unanimously awarded Dewayne Johnson, a school groundskeeper, a quarter of a billion dollars in damages, much of it as punitive damages against Monsanto. The jury was particularly infuriated by evidence of governmental collusion with the company .

Currently, thousands of people are suing Monsanto and Bayer, alleging that Roundup caused them or their family members to develop non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Bayer and Monsanto have set aside 7.2 billion dollars to settle these lawsuits, though legal experts argue this amount is inappropriately small given the size of individual jury verdicts .

Steps to Reduce Your Glyphosate Exposure

• Choose Certified Organic Products: Look for USDA Organic certification on foods, particularly grains, oats, and processed foods. Organic standards prohibit synthetic herbicides like glyphosate, reducing your exposure through diet.
• Wash Produce Thoroughly: While washing cannot remove all pesticide residues, rinsing fruits and vegetables under running water can reduce surface contamination from herbicide drift or residual spraying.
• Avoid Conventional Lawn and Garden Treatments: If you use herbicides on your property, consider organic alternatives like vinegar-based sprays, hand-pulling, or mulching to avoid contributing to environmental contamination and household exposure.
• Read Food Labels Carefully: Check ingredient lists for products that explicitly state "glyphosate-free" or "non-GMO," as genetically modified crops are often treated with higher herbicide doses.
• Support Regenerative Agriculture: Purchase from farmers who use regenerative or organic practices that eliminate synthetic herbicide use, supporting a food system with lower chemical inputs.

The contrast between Kennedy's past statements and his current position raises fundamental questions about regulatory capture and the influence of corporate interests on public health policy. The organizations that once fought alongside him continue to oppose glyphosate's expansion, citing the very evidence Kennedy himself helped uncover .