Washington DC - President Donald Trump issued an executive order Wednesday aimed at supporting glyphosate production, arguing that the herbicide, which the WHO says is a probable carcinogen, is essential to the country's food security.

The White House said that glyphosate-based herbicides are widely used in American agriculture, but there is only one domestic producer, necessitating imports.

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

While the US Environmental Protection Agency does not consider glyphosate a carcinogen, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, classifies it as a "probable carcinogen."

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The move is expected to anger the Make America Healthy Again movement led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

German agrochemical giant Bayer said Tuesday its subsidiary 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 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.