As legislation in Missouri is being weighed to protect the weed-killer product Roundup from lawsuits, a new poll in Missouri shows an overwhelming majority neither want to hand over influence in U.S. food supply, nor Missouri elections to China.
A poll produced by Tyson Group and presented exclusively Sunday to Newsmax before its Monday release showed fears China could influence the Missouri governor’s race and the U.S. food supply.
Missourians overwhelmingly support legislation to protect Roundup from lawsuits that could put the U.S. company out of business and hand the market to a Chinese counterpart.
The weed-killer Roundup has been under fire for having been linked to cancer, while manufacturer Bayer disputes claims Roundup’s key ingredient, glyphosate, causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Bayer has set aside $16 billion and already paid about $10 billion of that amount to resolve some of the tens of thousands of legal claims against it.
But if the Missouri legislation to protect it from lawsuits does not pass, Roundup could be forced out of business, handing over the market to a Chinese-based company.
Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft is running for governor in the upcoming GOP primary a little over three months out.
Gubernatorial poll results:
- Ashcroft 36%
- Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe 11%
- State Sen. Bill Eigel 3%
The remaining candidates polled at 2% or lower, and 40% of voters were undecided.
“While Jay Ashcroft has a sizable lead in Missouri’s gubernatorial primary, the large number of undecided voters this far out means the race is far from over,” Tyson Group President and CEO Ryan Tyson wrote in a statement provided to Newsmax.
“Missourians are incredibly concerned with China’s influence on our supply chain and candidates who don’t draw a hard line against the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] when it comes to the food supply could struggle down the stretch.”
In the GOP primary for attorney general, Andrew Bailey leads by double digits, but 58% of voters are undecided. Bailey leads challenger Will Scharf 29%-13%.
Republicans in Missouri support efforts to crack down on China, as 81% likely GOP primary voters back the legislation to protect Roundup from lawsuits, compared to just 9% opposed and OK with Roundup going out of business to hand the market to a Chinese company.
Other findings in the poll:
- 77% support government support for U.S. companies to avoid reliance on Chinese in technology, pharmaceuticals, and transportation.
- 76% support legislation that would effectively ban Chinese nationals from purchasing U.S. farmland.
- 70% support legislation that would ban the use of Chinese-made drones by the federal government and state governments.
- 66% support legislation that would restrict American taxpayer funds from Confucius Institute.
- 64% support increasing oversight on companies that do business in China (64%-19%).
Missouri conservatives overwhelmingly want China to have less control over the U.S. food supply; 79% of likely GOP primary voters agreed that if the U.S. relies on countries like China to produce a crucial ingredient for the food supply, it puts Americans’ health and safety at risk.
And 71% said they would be less likely to support a candidate for governor if they knew the candidate voted to outsource of a key ingredient in our food supply to China.
Kehoe and Eigel could possibly cast votes in the coming weeks on whether to outsource the production of weed-killer to China.
The Tyson Group polled 500 self-identified likely Republican primary voters April 23-26, and the results have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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