Texas AG Launches Investigation Into Glyphosate In Food
What they're not telling you: Texas AG Opens Door on Decade-Long EPA Blind Spot: 250 Million Pounds of Glyphosate Annually, 70% of Americans Contaminated More than 250 million pounds of glyphosate are sprayed across American farmland every year, yet the EPA continues to classify it as safe for food consumption—a regulatory posture that Ken Paxton's Texas investigation now directly challenges. On June 2, the Texas Attorney General's office announced a formal probe into glyphosate contamination in food products, naming PepsiCo and Bayer as subjects of investigation. The move represents the first major state-level enforcement action targeting the herbicide since the 2015 WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer determination that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans" and shows "strong" evidence for genotoxicity—the ability to damage cellular DNA.
What the Documents Show
The biological numbers are stark. Seventy percent of American adults now carry detectable glyphosate residues in their bodies, up from 12 percent in 1993. That 483 percent increase correlates directly with the adoption of Roundup Ready crops engineered specifically to tolerate glyphosate, a technology that Bayer (which acquired Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion) commercialized in the 1990s. Bayer maintains roughly 60 percent market share in the global glyphosate market. PepsiCo's exposure stems from its reliance on glyphosate-treated grain and legume inputs across its Frito-Lay and Quaker divisions.
Follow the Money
Neither company immediately responded to the Texas investigation announcement. The EPA's May 5 statement reaffirming glyphosate safety contradicts mounting scientific literature. The Paxton investigation explicitly cites evidence linking glyphosate to "endocrine disruption, infertility, kidney disease, and autoimmune diseases, in addition to its cancer-causing properties." Yet the EPA—under influence from an industry that generated $7.2 billion in annual glyphosate revenue as of 2020—has resisted classification changes or residue limit reductions since the WHO's 2015 determination. The agency's pesticide division has approved glyphosate for use on wheat, barley, oats, chickpeas, and lentils as a pre-harvest desiccant, a practice responsible for over 90 percent of glyphosate detected in food. What distinguishes the Texas action is its targeting of the supply chain's commercial beneficiary tier. Rather than challenging EPA policy directly—a Washington-level battle requiring resources most states lack—Paxton's office is pursuing product liability against the corporations profiting from the contamination.
What Else We Know
This sidesteps the regulatory capture that has defined glyphosate policy at the federal level. The investigation's scope includes major grain buyers and food manufacturers who knowingly source glyphosate-treated inputs. Bayer faces mounting legal exposure: it has already paid $10.9 billion to settle over 125,000 glyphosate cancer claims in the United States since 2018, yet continues to profit from expanded global market adoption while American regulators provide legal cover. Texas joins California, which has classified glyphosate as a known carcinogen since 2017, in state-level enforcement. If other major agricultural states follow with similar investigations, the cumulative legal pressure could force market recalculation independent of federal regulatory action—a pattern we've seen with plastic microbeads, PFOA chemicals, and tobacco, where state-level product liability ultimately achieved what federal agencies would not.
The story here isn't whether glyphosate causes cancer. The story is how a $7.2 billion annual market survives a WHO carcinogen classification by capturing the one agency tasked with protecting American consumers from it. I find the EPA's May 5 reaffirmation particularly striking—it came four years after the WHO's assessment, eight years into mounting litigation, and with 70 percent of the American population measurably contaminated. That's not regulatory lag. That's regulatory choice.
The beneficiaries are three-tiered: Bayer maintains market dominance and pricing power while settling litigation as a cost of doing business. The grain commodity complex (Cargill, ADM, Archer Daniels Midland) buys cheaper, desiccated crops. PepsiCo and General Mills buy cheaper commodity inputs and avoid food safety liability by relying on EPA approval as a regulatory shield. The payers are the 70 percent of American adults now carrying glyphosate in their bodies and the 125,000-plus claimants who developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after pesticide exposure.
What I find most revealing is that state attorneys general—not the EPA—are now the functional regulators. That's institutional failure documented in dollars: $10.9 billion in Bayer settlements versus zero federal policy changes. Watch whether other agricultural states (Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska) launch similar investigations. If they do, you're watching the circumvention of captured federal agencies become standard enforcement practice. That's the real story: when states must regulate what Washington refuses to.
Primary Sources
- Source: ZeroHedge
- Category: Corporate Watchdog
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