Name: Pesticide Companies Are Targeting Farmers and Freedom of Speech
Uploaded: 2026-02-17T17:11:34.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Pesticide Companies Are Targeting Farmers and Freedom of Speech' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-02-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Pesticide Companies Are Targeting Farmers and Freedom of Speech' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-02-17. Transcript available.

I did see there's a Tennessee farm bill, and there's a lot of stuff you want to
talk about, too, and we'll get into some of it for sure.
But this is what I was talking about here.
This bill, it's Farm Bill 809.
The bill is sponsored by Representative Rusty Grills.
Would limit lawsuits if a user gets sick from a pesticide.
Under the proposed legislation, as long as a product's label was approved by
the Environmental Protection Agency, a person wouldn't be allowed to sue over
the labeling.
So, actually, Sean Ryan, the podcaster, and John Rich, the musician, they
shared this online on the day that it was going up for vote, I believe.
Yeah, right here.
Tennessee state politicians side with foreign pesticide companies over people
dying of cancer.
Ryan posted on X alongside a video speaking out against the bill.
As did musician John Rich.
After the pushback, Representative Grills took the bill off notice, which at
least delayed the vote.
It's unclear why that decision was made or whether Grills has plans to bring
the bill back to this legislative session.
And bring up a—just so we know who's doing this, bring up a picture of Mr. Grills.
Oh, there you go.
Well, I mean, look, if you're a farmer and you get sick from using a pesticide
that you didn't know would make you sick, that you wouldn't have recourse
against a pesticide company that did know that they caused illness.
Because these companies knew that these caused illnesses.
Yeah.
Yeah, evidence from lawsuits, internal documents, and independent reports
indicates that Monsanto had information suggesting potential risk to human
health from some of its pesticides, yet worked for years to downplay or obscure
those risks in public and regulatory arenas.
I mean, that's just wild.
The reason they're doing this is because of my lawsuits against Monsanto.
Right.
I remember you had that huge settlement against them a long time ago, right?
Yeah, I think it was 20—maybe 2019, we finally settled it.
But I did three of the trials in San Francisco.
And the first one, we won, I think, $289 million for, you know, people who've
gotten non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from using Roundup.
And then the second one, we won $89 million.
The third one, we asked for a billion dollars from the jury.
It was a couple that had both got it simultaneously.
They were home gardeners.
And their dog also got it at the same time.
They had a Labrador retriever, and the dog died.
Both the couples were sick.
We asked the jury for a billion dollars, and they gave us $2.2 billion.
And they did that because we were able to show them documents that showed Monsanto
knew of the danger and then worked with corrupt officials, a guy called Jess
Rowland,
inside of EPA, who was the head of the pesticide division, and that they had
deliberately concealed the science, fixed the science.
And now the big study that they used to prove safety has now been retracted.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I saw an article about that.
Like, they'd found emails that they were like, that it was kind of ghostwritten
or something from the science.
Yeah, it was ghostwritten.
And also, the head of the pesticide division, they asked him, Monsanto asked
him secretly, and now we have these emails,
and they asked him to kill a study by another agency called ATSDR, and he said,
I can't kill it.
That's not my agency.
I can kill them in EPA, but not outside.
And they said, you've got to do it.
We can't have this study go forward.
And he said, okay, I'm going to do it, but if I succeed, you've got to give me
a gold medal.
And we had all of that, and we were able to show it to the jury, and they were
angry, and that's why they gave us that huge judgment.
A gold medal in what?
Just anything?
A gold medal for killing a study that showed that it caused cancer, that showed
that it grew tumors.
That's insane that it's at a contest level now, that things like that are so
prolific that now it's like there's awards for it.
It seems baffling.
There's been a ton of lawsuits about this, right, like about pesticides causing
diseases and sickness in people, right?
Or about this glyphosate, I think it's called?
Yeah, glyphosate.
There's been a ton of lawsuits, but they still don't have to take this product
off of the shelf, so that's the craziest thing to me.
Is that right?
Well, you know, it's a problem because you have all the row croppers are
dependent on it right now.
And there's other technology that is emerging right now that actually, you know,
I looked at one yesterday.
It's a tractor attachment that uses lasers to kill weeds.
And that, you know, if they can make that affordable, particularly for smaller
farmers, that will be the answer because you'll be able to, they can kill bugs
and they can kill weeds.
You program this thing and it zaps the weeds with a laser.
It makes all the cells explode and it destroys them.
And so, you know, there's a future that we can now see the light at the end of
the tunnel there.
But right now, if you band glyphosate outright, it would put out of business 80%
of our farmers.
Got it.
Wow.
So, we're kind of dependent upon something that we know makes us sick.
Yeah, we are.
And, you know, we're trying, we're doing a lot of work in the HHS to look for
other alternatives and to find a, you know, find an off ramp because the
farmers don't want to be using chemicals anyway.
They're very expensive.
They know, you know, they have some of the highest cancer rates of any
profession.
And farmers care about their land.
They want to leave it for their kids.
It also destroys the microbiome and the soil and that causes erosion.
And so, it's not a, you know, it's not a good long-term solution.
You know, the issue is how do you transition off of it without putting farmers
out of business?
Here's that laser.
Wow, that's unbelievable.
Laser weeding robot kills 100,000 weeds per hour.
Yeah, and it also kills insects.
You can program it to kill, you know, certain insects.
And, you know, that machine looks, that machine probably costs a million
dollars.
But if you could have a couple of those running at night through your farm,
that'd be sick.
Well, yeah, it would be, it's a lot better than using chemical pesticides.
So, this is going to be, you know, the future, but.
Well, we're not there yet.
We're not there yet.
Wow.
It's just wild that we get stuck in something that makes us sick and we don't
have a, you know, it's like, I don't know.
It just feels like such a conundrum.
It must be like that for you guys a lot where you're like, this is just kind of
where we are, you know?
The agricultural community has been very, very supportive of the Maha Agenda
and they're helping us transition away from ultra-processed foods,
which is really the biggest issue.
That's what's causing all these chronic disease in kids.
And farmers are going out of business.
You know, farmers usually lose money seven out of 10 years.
Even when they're making money, they're making, you know, a lot of them are
just making for their work hours minimum wage.
And we're having a hard time finding young people who will go into farming.
So that is a crisis that, you know, we need to, we need to keep into
consideration.
And, you know, you have people at USDA finally who are, you know, really intent
on solving this problem,
but nobody wants any farmers going out of business.
Got it.
Got it.