The White House said Wednesday that glyphosate-based herbicides are widely used in American agriculture but that domestic production was insufficient to cover national demand.

German agrichemical firm Bayer has been the only producer of glyphosate-based herbicides in the United States since acquiring its American developer, Monsanto, in 2018.

The executive order tasks the US secretary of agriculture with taking measures to facilitate the US production of glyphosate and phosphorus, a chemical component necessary for glyphosate that also has military uses.

"The US president's executive order reinforces the critical need for US farmers to have access to essential, domestically produced crop protection tools such as glyphosate," Bayer said on Thursday. "We will comply with this order."

While neither the US Environmental Protection Agency nor European Union regulators consider glyphosate a carcinogen, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization (WHO), classifies it as a "probable carcinogen."

Bayer said Tuesday that Monsanto had proposed a class settlement of up to $7.25 billion to settle claims that its glyphosate herbicide Roundup causes blood cancer, potentially drawing a line under years of costly litigation.

The firm has spent more than $10 billion settling thousands of cases linked to Roundup since it acquired Monsanto in 2018, and about 67,000 cases are still pending.

Bayer denies that Roundup, the world's most popular weedkiller, causes cancer.

Its chief executive Bill Anderson said Tuesday that the settlements implied no admission of liability, saying they were necessary because of the "broken" US legal system.

The US Supreme Court in January agreed to hear Bayer's appeal against an award of $1.25 million to a Missouri man who claimed Roundup was responsible for his blood cancer.

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