Beshear vetoes bill blocking Kentuckians from suing pesticide makers
FRANKFORT — Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed a bill that critics said would prevent Kentuckians from suing pesticide companies for failing to warn about the dangers of their products.
Beshear called it “dangerous to Kentuckians” and “antithetical to the effort to keep America healthy.”
Beshear is in it Tuesday veto message He said Senate Bill 199, sponsored by Sen. Jason Howell, R-Murray, “would close the door on citizens’ access to the courts to seek compensation from the manufacturers of these pesticides if the product only has a warning label approved by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.”
“These labels do not warn consumers about the risks of using these pesticides, such as possible risks of chronic diseases such as leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, or other cancers and chronic diseases. These are not sufficient to allow companies to escape legitimate lawsuits for failure to warn,” Beshear said.
Proponents of SB 199 include agriculture industry groups that argue the bill ensures farmers have “plant protection tools” during litigation over these cases. In particular, the company that produces the herbicide Roundup has faced thousands of lawsuits from people who claim it causes cancer. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015 I found the herbicide It was “probably carcinogenic.”
The bill was passed by the legislature with opposition from both parties, and with the amendment, its scope was narrowed to apply only to pesticides used in agriculture. Republican co-chair of the legislature’s Make America Healthy Again Kentucky task force strongly opposed the bill in the Kentucky House of Representatives.
Citing his role as state attorney general enforcing consumer protection laws, Beshear said in his veto message that SB 199 leaves the authority to approve warning labels for products on Kentucky shelves to the federal government — the same federal government that approved misleading labels for opioids that are destroying the lives of Kentuckians.
Republican supermajorities in the GOP-controlled legislature can override a gubernatorial veto with a simple majority in each legislature, and on Tuesday the Kentucky Senate immediately overrode Beshear’s veto of SB 199.
