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The Trump administration's move to mandate the use of glyphosate on crops across the United States is drawing strong criticism from environmental scientists.

Trump has said farmers must apply the chemical as a matter of national security, and buy it from the chemical maker Bayer, which is currently trying to pass an "immunity shield" at the federal level. The bill, called the "Cancer Gag Act" by critics, would protect the company from lawsuits if glyphosate is found to cause cancer among the people who use it, primarily farmers.

Trump's executive order invokes the Defense Production Act, prioritizing high-volume production of the glyphosate by treating it as a strategic national defense resource.

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Food and Water Watch staff attorney Dani Replogle said the order is an abuse of a law that is only supposed to be invoked when there is a true national emergency.

"This action to increase the production of a pesticide that is already doing incredible harm to public health and to our environment is absurd," she said. "At any time, there is an extremely large proportion of American crop fields that are already covered in it."

Glyphosate is routinely sprayed on row crops in Nebraska, often running into ground and surface water. The Environmental Protection Agency has said there is no direct evidence that glyphosate is carcinogenic.

Public sentiment could be starting to turn against Bayer, which produces a glyphosate-based herbicide called Roundup. Lawmakers in neighboring Iowa defeated an immunity shield last year, despite the state's dependence on agriculture.

Replogle said invoking the Defense Production Act to require high volume glyphosate production goes a step further than an immunity shield, and suggests the executive order really isn't about protecting crops.

"Glyphosate is being used primarily on corn and soy fields," she said. "Those crops are primarily being used to prop up the ethanol industry and the factory farm industry. It's not like the things being grown on those fields are going on the plates of Americans."

Nitrate-rich manure runoff from factory farms is also known to pollute ground and surface water. The Bayer-backed immunity shield is part of section 456 of the federal appropriations bill, which is currently pending in the House.