Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Feb. 22 said that glyphosate is poisonous but necessary as he backed President Donald Trump’s recent order designating the production of the herbicide as critical to national security.
In a lengthy post on social media, Kennedy said that pesticides and herbicides are toxic.
“When we apply them across millions of acres and allow them into our food system, we put Americans at risk. Chemical manufacturers have paid tens of billions of dollars to settle cancer claims linked to their products, and many agricultural communities report elevated cancer rates and chronic disease,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals.”
If the United States stopped using the products, then “crop yields would fall, food prices would surge, and America would experience a massive loss of farms even beyond what we are witnessing today,” Kennedy said.
The health secretary described Trump’s order as protecting national defense and the nation’s food supply, stating that Trump inherited the current agricultural system and that his administration is shifting from it without destabilizing the food supply.
“We are accelerating the transition to regenerative agriculture by expanding farming systems that rebuild soil, increase biodiversity, improve water retention, and reduce reliance on synthetic chemicals, including pre-harvest desiccation. We are also driving the rapid adoption of next-generation technologies, including laser-guided weed control, electrothermal and electrical systems, robotics, precision mechanical cultivation, and biological controls that replace blanket spraying with precision intervention,” Kennedy wrote.
“These solutions are not theoretical. Farmers are already putting them to work. Markets are scaling them. Now the federal government will act with urgency to expand their reach and accelerate adoption nationwide.”
Kennedy added later: “The Make America Healthy Again agenda forces us to challenge long-standing assumptions about how we grow food, structure markets, and measure success in this country. Reform at this scale will test entrenched interests, and it will not move in a straight line.”
In his Feb. 18 order, Trump said herbicides with glyphosate are widely used in the United States and enable farmers to achieve high yields and low production costs.
“There is no direct one-for-one chemical alternative to glyphosate-based herbicides. Lack of access to glyphosate-based herbicides would critically jeopardize agricultural productivity, adding pressure to the domestic food system, and may result in a transition of cropland to other uses due to low productivity,” the president wrote. “Given the profit margins growers currently face, any major restrictions in access to glyphosate-based herbicides would result in economic losses for growers and make it untenable for them to meet growing food and feed demands.”
He designated production of glyphosate as a critical national security and directed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to ensure there is an adequate supply of the herbicides and elemental phosphorus, one of the ingredients in the products.
Some people supportive of the Make America Healthy Again movement criticized the designation.
Kelly Ryerson, co-executive director of American Regeneration, told The Epoch Times it “doubles down on a system that is making us a sick population and killing our soil, and we already have a limited number of harvests left.”
Bayer, which produces glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, just proposed a $7 billion settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits that allege Roundup caused cancer. Bayer maintains Roundup is not carcinogenic and can be used safely. That stance is shared by the Environmental Protection Agency, while the International Agency for Research on Cancer lists glyphosate as probably carcinogenic.
Kennedy, while running for president in 2024, said in a post on X that glyphosate was “one of the likely culprits in America’s chronic disease epidemic” and that the U.S. Department of Agriculture would, if he won the election, ban its use as a desiccant on wheat.
His Make America Healthy Commission in 2025 also said that glyphosate studies “have noted a range of possible health effects, ranging from reproductive and developmental disorders as well as cancers, liver inflammation and metabolic disturbances.”
Kennedy said in a previous statement to The Epoch Times, after Trump signed the new glyphosate order: “When hostile actors control critical inputs, they weaken our security. By expanding domestic production, we close that gap and protect American families.”
Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America, said in response to Kennedy’s post on X that she understands aspects of his position but that after about a year of the Trump administration being in power, officials have not worked to limit people’s exposure to pesticides.
“We love you Bobby but this administration needs to keep their word,” she said in a Feb. 23 post on X. “We were promised specifically clean air, clean water, and addressing of the pesticides [in] our foods.”
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