A health and wellness expert who has thrown support behind Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement has described President Donald Trump’s recent promotion of controversial pesticides as “actually devastating.”
“It is not a conspiracy theory that glyphosate is linked to cancer,” Jillian Michaels said, speaking to NewsNation’s “The Hill” program Monday. “There are hundreds of studies that have illustrated how it increases risk significantly for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
“We also know through whistleblowers and numerous lawsuits, of which there have been over 170,000, that the chemical company knew this and tried to bury the information, tried to go after the independent researchers, created ghost studies to try to tell a different story and essentially, they now have to pay $7.25 billion the makers of glyphosate to the victims,” she added.
It comes after Trump signed an executive order last week that provided protections for glyphosate – a chemical that is used in many herbicides – which many, including the Health Secretary himself, have claimed causes cancer and is often targeted by the MAHA movement.
Despite his previous criticism, Kennedy backed Trump’s decision, saying that it would bring back U.S. agricultural chemical production and “end our near-total reliance on adversarial nations.”
The Independent has contacted the Department of Health and Human Services for comment about Kennedy's backing of the president's executive order.
The Environmental Protection Agency has said glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans when used as directed.
In his order the president said that production of the herbicide was critical to agricultural supply chains, adding that restrictions on access to glyphosate-based herbicides would have economic effects on farmers and “make it untenable for them to meet growing food and feed demands,” the order reads.
“I don’t buy that,” Michaels, who was previously a trainer on weight-loss TV show The Biggest Loser, told NewsNation. “We have a bevy of ultra processed crops, corn, soy, wheat; there’s unfortunately no shortage, which of course has to do with hundreds of billions in the subsidy dollars.”
“I think that somebody powerful called up someone else powerful after paying out $7.25 billion and essentially saying this is an existential threat we need to call in this favor, and they did and it’s exceptionally upsetting,” she added.
Michaels was referring to a huge financial settlement proposed by Agrochemical maker Bayer last Tuesday to resolve thousands of U.S. lawsuits alleging the company failed to warn people that its popular weedkiller Roundup could cause cancer.
Germany-based Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto in 2018, disputed the assertion that the weedkiller's key ingredient, glyphosate, can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
But the company has warned that mounting legal costs are threatening its ability to continue selling the product in U.S. agricultural markets. “Litigation uncertainty has plagued the company for years, and this settlement gives the company a road to closure,” Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said Tuesday.
