Environmentalists and MAHA Activists Say Bill To Expand Florida's 'Food Libel' Law Will Silence Critics

The bill has a wide variety of groups worried that they could be targeted for criticism of large agribusinesses.

A provision of a large farm bill moving through the Florida Legislature that would expand the state's "food libel" law is drawing criticism from an unusual coalition of environmental groups, First Amendment advocates, and Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) activists, who say the law will be used to target critics of industrial agriculture practices and squelch free speech.

Dozens of Floridians drove to the statehouse in Tallahassee from as far away as the Panhandle and Florida Keys to voice their opposition to the bill at a budget subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, prompting lawmakers to promise that work was going on behind the scenes to address their concerns. Nevertheless, the Florida House Agriculture and Natural Resources Budget Subcommittee unanimously approved the bill.

Florida reporter Jason Garcia first reported in December on Senate Bill 290, and its House companion, House Bill 433, which would expand Florida's "food libel law" to cover nonperishable agricultural goods, such as sugar. The bill would also allow agriculture companies to sue over disparaging statements about "any agricultural practices used in the production of such products."

Florida's current food libel law, passed in 1994, allowed producers of perishable agricultural products to sue for losses resulting from disparaging claims about food safety, which the law defines as "false information" that is "not based on reliable, scientific facts and reliable, scientific data which the disseminator knows or should have known to be false." It was originally passed to protect fruit growers from false news reports or claims that could lead to ruinous losses due to spoilage.

The proposal to expand the law to cover non-perishables and agricultural practices alarmed a wide variety of groups because agricultural practices—particularly issues like fertilizer runoff and the burning of sugar cane fields—are some of the most fiercely contested issues in the state. The standard for disparagement would be lower than in a normal libel lawsuit, which requires the plaintiff to prove that the defendant knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. The proposed expansion would also allow agricultural businesses that prevail in lawsuits to collect attorney fees—but doesn't allow those who successfully defend themselves against such lawsuits to do the same.

"It's incentivizing litigation," Anna Upton, CEO of the Everglades Trust, testified.

Daniel Andrews, the co-founder of Captains for Clean Water, an environmental advocacy group of Florida fishing guides, says the law would create opportunities for political opponents to bankrupt organizations like his.

Farm practices in the heart of Florida might not seem like a pressing issue for saltwater fishing guides, but excess nutrients in the water from fertilizer runoff cause noxious algae blooms and red tides. Water diversion and flood controls, meanwhile, can choke the flow of freshwater from Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades and Florida Bay. 

"Lake Okeechobee," Florida's largest freshwater lake, "gets five times the amount of nutrients that the state says it should be getting in a normal year every single year, and 75 percent of that is coming from agricultural lands," Andrews says. "And now there's proposed legislation that would make a lot of people think twice about what they're saying and really infringe upon their First Amendment rights to stand up for what they believe in.

Andrews says this is a "huge concern" for his organization. "If we're not able to speak up against these issues, if we're not able to speak up against the sugar industry, for fear of incredibly expensive litigation, it really gets to the core of what our mission's about and restoring the Everglades."

Captains for Clean Water's advocacy has put the group in the crosshairs before. Last year, the Hendry County sheriff accused the organization of inciting threats against public officials after a large sugar company complained to the sheriff about comments on Captains for Clean Water's social media posts.

It's that sort of hostile environment that has First Amendment advocates worried as well. Bobby Block, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation, wrote in a letter to the Florida Senate opposing the proposal that, "Researchers, environmental advocates and journalists who raise evidence-based concerns about these impacts…could face costly litigation simply for doing their jobs."

The bill has also drawn the ire of a growing constituency in Florida: the MAHA movement—a loose coalition of back-to-the-earth food and wellness types, anti-vaxxers, and self-identified "health freedom" activists, united by a general skepticism of public health agencies and large corporations. Several large MAHA social media accounts and influencers have been raising the alarm about the bill. 

Kelly Ryerson, a blogger and alternative farming activist who volunteered on Robert F. Kennedy Jr's 2020 presidential campaign, says she is in the process of moving from California to South Florida in large part because of the "Free Florida" reputation that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis cultivated during COVID-19.

She could barely believe it when Andrews told her about the bill. "When this [bill] popped up first, it was just shocking because Florida is an enormous MAHA state, and it has tons of supporters for Kennedy," Ryerson tells Reason.

One of the issues that Ryerson works on is reducing the use of pesticides and herbicides in favor of organic and regenerative farming techniques, and she worries that the legislation would have a chilling effect on the whole movement in Florida.

"It really would shut down a lot of the commentary from not only people that fight on pesticides, but also potentially against Big Sugar," Ryerson says. "All regenerative farmers and organic farmers that are out trying to do the right thing and restore and rehabilitate the soil—any kind of speech that would come out of them could be problematic, and it will likely deliberately stop the movement in Florida, which is heartbreaking because right now it's literally in the last gasps of having a citrus industry at all."

Andrews says it's a health freedom issue for him, too. He says his wife and son are both managing chronic illnesses through all-natural diets, rather than medication. He doesn't have any processed or packaged foods in his house, which he calls "poison"—the sort of language he worries could get him in trouble if the bill passes.

"To infringe upon my freedom of speech almost pisses me off more than the mission of Captains [for Clean Water] with this, because I've watched my wife suffer, I've watched my little boy suffer, and I wanna say whatever I want. That's my God-given right. That was reaffirmed by the Constitution, and the state of Florida has no business to come in there and tell me, especially after I've seen with my own eyes, what's happened."

Whether MAHA is right or wrong about commonly used weed-killers and seed oils is a separate issue from whether critics of industrial agriculture practices should be held liable for damages in civil court for disagreeing with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Indeed, state governments have used laws regarding unqualified scientific statements to retaliate against citizens for protected speech. In 2019, a federal judge ruled an Oregon engineering board violated the First Amendment by investigating and fining residents for practicing engineering without a license. One of the board's targets was a man who proved that his town had shortened the duration of yellow lights at an intersection with a red-light camera.

For now, the legislation continues to move through the Legislature and still has the support of state officials. Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson defended the farm bill in a recent radio interview with Florida's Voice.

"They say, 'Why is food so expensive?' It's because these same people that are saying we're anti-MAHA are accusing farmers of polluting the Everglades," Simpson said. "These same people are attacking farmers on a daily basis, and they're wondering why these farmers want to sell their land to developers. They're under constant bombardment from these outside groups that are special interests, and that's what they do."

Several agriculture, nursery, and trade associations also appeared in support of the bill at Wednesday's hearing, although none testified in its favor.

Of course, when one thinks of the hard-working, salt-of-the-earth American farmer, one probably does not imagine the Florida sugar industry, which isn't known as "Big Sugar" for being a quaint mom-and-pop operation.

And speaking of food costs and special interests, Simpson knows perfectly well that Florida's sugar industry has been propped up by heavy government subsidies and protectionist policies for decades. The U.S. government's sugar policy uses a combination of tariffs on imports and subsidies to domestic producers to keep sugar prices artificially high, costing American consumers between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion every year, according to a 2025 Government Accountability Office report. As Reason's Eric Boehm wrote, this is "a classic case of concentrated benefits for a special interest that results in huge, but very diffused, costs for everyone else."

The costs could suddenly become much less diffused for someone facing a disparagement lawsuit and possibly on the hook for attorney fees as well. This sort of one-way "fee-shifting" provision is often used to level the playing field for parties facing frivolous litigation against deep-pocketed opponents. For example, such contingencies are often found in open records laws to compensate successful plaintiffs in public records lawsuits against the government. And they're found in anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) laws, which shield defamation defendants from frivolous libel lawsuits. In this instance, though, the legislation would increase the incentives for agribusinesses to launch lawsuits against critics.

"The fact is whether you are correct or incorrect in your argument, the punishment is in the process with this," Chris Whitman, the other co-founder of Captains for Clean Water, testified at Wednesday's committee hearing.

"As fishing guides, we are the canaries in the coal mine," Whitman continued. "We see things that are happening in real-time, and we don't need a scientific study saying this thing that is happening is having this negative effect. I'm a lifelong conservative here, this is the free state of Florida. Stand up for First Amendment rights."