In a landmark court case in California, a dying man who contracted non-Hodgkins lymphoma due to his regular use of Monsanto's RangerPro weedkiller (which uses the same glyphosate base used in the company's ubiquitous Roundup product), was awarded $289 million in damages, because the jury found that Monsanto knew that its Roundup and RangerPro weedkillers were dangerous but failed to warn consumers. There are some 5,000 other plaintiffs across the USA waiting to bring their own cases against Monsanto (which is now owned by European agrichemical giant Bayer AG), who will no doubt be very heartened by the ruling. For its part, Bayer says it will vigorously challenge the verdict, and it continues to maintain that its product is safe.
And it is a thorny problem to be sure. Roundup, and glyphosate in general, is the world's most commonly-used weedkiller and has been used throughout the world for some 40 years. It very effectively kills every plant that has not been genetically-modified to be able to cope with it, GM crops that are only available from - you guessed it - Monsanto. Glyphosate has been widely found in people's urine, in food, and even in beer.
But it has been dogged by claims that it is carcinogenic almost since the beginning. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, the Word Health Organization's cancer agency, concluded in 2015 that there was "limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans" and that it is "probably carcinogenic", which might sound like the end of the story. But, even before it was corrupted by the Trump administration, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to insist that glyphosate is safe and "not likely" to be carcinogenic to people, at least when used carefully, as does the US National Institute of Health (NIH). Even the usually circumspect European Union renewed its licence for glyphosate in 2017, although there is still much contention among member states. So, what is a farmer to think?
Some expert commentators have argued that the WHO's public and peer-reviewed analysis of the product is more reliable, and that the studies done by the EU and others rely on data from the producing company itself, which is potentially suspect. It is further argued that many weeds are starting to become resistant to glyphosate, leading to farmers using it in combination with other chemicals like 2,4-D (which was used in Agent Orange in the 1970s), in an ever-escalating war against ... weeds. Whatever you might think about its cancer-causing properties, some people argue that the product needs to be banned anyway because it is putting whole ecosystems at risk as it kills off the plants that support insects, which in turn support birds, etc, etc. And all in the interest of efficiency, and - let's face it - profits.
Anyway, the California ruling is certainly a ground-breaking one, and you can just hear the sound of new cases and class action lawsuits being prepared. But don't count out Bayer just yet: it is company with very deep pockets, and it will not easily abandon such a signature product, nor pay out potentially billions in damages without putting up a good fight.
UPDATE
Five months later, Bayer has been hit with a $2 billion fine in another California case, which ruled that a California couple's cancer was caused by Roundup weedkiller. The company will contest the award, but the final fine will likely still be in the hundreds of millions. An estimated 13,400 people are now lining up to sue the company over its Roundup product.
No comments:
Post a Comment