Bayer's $10 billion settlement to put an end to roughly 125,000 lawsuits against its popular weed killer Roundup, which contains glyphosate, hit a snag this week when a federal judge in San Francisco expressed skepticism over what rights future plaintiffs would have, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The $10 billion settlement does not actually need judicial review and is set to move forward. The issue is that $1.25 billion from the settlement does need a court order to be approved. That part deals with future lawsuits by cancer patients who have not yet gone to court and by others who have not yet been diagnosed. The U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said in an order Monday that he had questions about the legality and fairness of the agreement and was "tentatively inclined" to reject it, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
In a court filing on Monday, the judge described a plan to create a class action for future litigants as problematic, and he set a July 24 hearing date to address the matter, as Bloomberg reported.
"We appreciate the judge's order raising his preliminary concerns with the proposed class settlement, which we take seriously and will address" at the hearing, Chris Loder, a U.S.-based spokesman for the Germany-based chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer, said in an interview.
Chhabria said he "is skeptical of the propriety and fairness of the proposed settlement." He raised concerns about the creation of a scientific panel to decide whether the key ingredient, glyphosate, causes cancer and whether the agreement unfairly limits potential plaintiffs from suing, according to The New York Times.
Right now about 30,000 claims contending Roundup caused non-Hodgkin's lymphoma are left unsettled. Some lawyers in the U.S. have vowed to file another wave of new suits that could add tens of thousands to the logjam of existing cases, according to Bloomberg.
"Thankfully, Judge Chhabria has seen the ruthless plan as an outrageous attempt to deprive every future victim of Monsanto's killer Roundup of their right to fair and full compensation and to a jury trial," Tom Kline and Jason Itkin, plaintiffs' attorneys for users of the weedkiller who haven't settled their suits, said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg on Tuesday.
Bayer has lost a series of high-profile multi-million dollar cases for Roundup's role in causing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in people who used the Monsanto brand herbicide. That series of losses has seen investors flee from Bayer since it acquired Monsanto for $63 billion in 2018.
To stem the tide of suits, Bayer insisted that the protection against future suits is a linchpin of the current settlement. Without it, the bulk of the $10 billion deal has the potential to fall apart, according to The New York Times.
In addition to the $8.8 billion to $9.6 billion to cover about 95,000 cases, $1.25 billion was set aside to finance the scientific panel and assist impoverished Roundup users with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. As The New York Times described, that panel would then decide whether glyphosate caused cancer and, if so, what exposure level was dangerous. Both Bayer and claimants would be bound to accept the findings in future litigation.
New York-based lawyer Hunter Shkolnik opposed the novel class-action idea from the onset. He described it as "nothing more than a legally infirm, backroom deal to protect Monsanto rather than compensating Roundup cancer victims," in an emailed statement to Bloomberg.
Judge Chhabria asked on Monday whether it was lawful to remove judges and juries from the equation and to shift the question of whether Roundup caused cancer to a panel of scientists.
According to The New York Times, he also noted the three previous multimillion-dollar verdicts and asked, "Why would a potential class member want to replace a jury trial and the right to seek punitive damages with the process contemplated by the settlement agreement?"
Furthermore, Chhabria also worried that the science on glyphosate's cancer-causing properties is still evolving. That led him to question whether it would pass legal muster to have claimants bound by one study that didn't find toxicity when a future, more rigorous study may find the opposite, as Bloomberg reported.
- Judge Blocks California From Putting Cancer Warning on Roundup ... ›
- Bayer Settles Roundup Cancer Suits for Over $10 Billion - EcoWatch ›
In one of the largest civil settlements in U.S. history, Bayer agreed Wednesday to pay more than $10 billion to resolve around 95,000 cases claiming its glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup causes cancer.
The deal will still allow Bayer to sell Roundup without adding any warnings, The New York Times reported. It comes after three juries in early, high-profile trials awarded more than $2.4 billion to plaintiffs who developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after long term Roundup use.
"Even Bayer's billions can't magically make glyphosate's well-documented links to cancer disappear," Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) senior scientist Nathan Donley said in a statement reported by The Guardian. "Bayer only settled after three multi-million-dollar verdicts over the past year from jurors who, unlike the EPA, wisely put more trust in the safety assessments of independent scientists than in Monsanto/Bayer's confidential reviews of its own product."
Even as they settle, @Bayer officials continue to deny Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicides cause cancer. “The extensive body of science indicates that Roundup does not cause cancer, and therefore, is not responsible for the illnesses alleged...”https://t.co/45xQPai62f
— carey gillam (@careygillam) June 24, 2020
The debate over Roundup's safety is ongoing, The New York Times explained. In 2015, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer said that glyphosate could "probably" cause cancer, but other regulatory bodies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have ruled it safe. However, critics point out that many of these safe rulings were based on studies provided by Monsanto, the company that developed and sold Roundup before it was acquired by Bayer in 2018.
Per the terms of the settlement, the question of Roundup's safety will now pass to an independent "Class Science Panel," U.S. Right to Know (USTK) reported. The panel will decide if Roundup use can cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma and at what levels of exposure. Both Bayer and any future plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit will be bound by its findings. Until those findings are released, a process likely to take years, plaintiffs cannot bring any claims or seek punitive damages.
In the deal, Bayer earmarked $8.8 billion to $9.6 billion to settle 75 percent of current cases and $1.25 billion for any future claims. The three cases already decided by juries, currently in appeal, are not included.
Both plaintiff lawyers and Bayer celebrated the agreement.
"After years of hard fought litigation and a year of intense mediation I am glad to see our clients will now be compensated," Mike Miller of the Miller law firm told USRTK.
Bayer, meanwhile, seemed eager to escape the shadow cast on the company after it acquired both Monsanto and its legal challenges. Bayer's stock price plummeted after the three juries ruled against it, The New York Times pointed out.
"First and foremost, the Roundup™ settlement is the right action at the right time for Bayer to bring a long period of uncertainty to an end," Bayer CEO Werner Baumann said in a statement.
Bayer has reached a series of agreements to resolve major legacy Monsanto litigation in the U.S.
— Bayer AG (@Bayer) June 24, 2020
Learn more: https://t.co/crqNTLIkVd
However, not all the plaintiffs bringing claims against Bayer agreed to the settlement. The company still faces at least 30,000 claims, according to The New York Times.
"This is nothing like the closure they're trying to imply," Fletch Trammell, a Houston-based lawyer who represents 5,000 of the people bringing those claims, told The New York Times. "It's like putting out part of a house fire."
Also on Wednesday, Bayer settled two other lawsuits inherited from Monsanto, The Guardian reported. First, it will pay $400 million to settle claims related to dicamba, another herbicide that can drift to other crops and kill them.
"The settlement announced today is an important step to making things right for the farmers who just want to be able to put food on the table of America and the world," lawyer Joseph Peiffer of Peiffer Wolf law firm, which represents farmers with dicamba claims, told USRTK of the second herbicide settlement.
Bayer will pay a further $820 million to settle "most" claims related to PCB, a toxic chemical that Monsanto produced until 1977 that contaminated U.S. water supplies, The Guardian reported.
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- Former Monsanto CEO Ordered to Testify at Roundup Cancer Trial ... ›
- Roundup Cancer Settlement Hits Snag With Judge Over Future Plaintiffs' Rights - EcoWatch ›
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The bright patterns and recognizable designs of Waterlust's activewear aren't just for show. In fact, they're meant to promote the conversation around sustainability and give back to the ocean science and conservation community.
Each design is paired with a research lab, nonprofit, or education organization that has high intellectual merit and the potential to move the needle in its respective field. For each product sold, Waterlust donates 10% of profits to these conservation partners.
Eye-Catching Designs Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles
The company sells a range of eco-friendly items like leggings, rash guards, and board shorts that are made using recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. There are currently 16 causes represented by distinct marine-life patterns, from whale shark research and invasive lionfish removal to sockeye salmon monitoring and abalone restoration.
One such organization is Get Inspired, a nonprofit that specializes in ocean restoration and environmental education. Get Inspired founder, marine biologist Nancy Caruso, says supporting on-the-ground efforts is one thing that sets Waterlust apart, like their apparel line that supports Get Inspired abalone restoration programs.
"All of us [conservation partners] are doing something," Caruso said. "We're not putting up exhibits and talking about it — although that is important — we're in the field."
Waterlust not only helps its conservation partners financially so they can continue their important work. It also helps them get the word out about what they're doing, whether that's through social media spotlights, photo and video projects, or the informative note card that comes with each piece of apparel.
"They're doing their part for sure, pushing the information out across all of their channels, and I think that's what makes them so interesting," Caruso said.
And then there are the clothes, which speak for themselves.
Advocate Apparel to Start Conversations About Conservation
Waterlust's concept of "advocate apparel" encourages people to see getting dressed every day as an opportunity to not only express their individuality and style, but also to advance the conversation around marine science. By infusing science into clothing, people can visually represent species and ecosystems in need of advocacy — something that, more often than not, leads to a teaching moment.
"When people wear Waterlust gear, it's just a matter of time before somebody asks them about the bright, funky designs," said Waterlust's CEO, Patrick Rynne. "That moment is incredibly special, because it creates an intimate opportunity for the wearer to share what they've learned with another."
The idea for the company came to Rynne when he was a Ph.D. student in marine science.
"I was surrounded by incredible people that were discovering fascinating things but noticed that often their work wasn't reaching the general public in creative and engaging ways," he said. "That seemed like a missed opportunity with big implications."
Waterlust initially focused on conventional media, like film and photography, to promote ocean science, but the team quickly realized engagement on social media didn't translate to action or even knowledge sharing offscreen.
Rynne also saw the "in one ear, out the other" issue in the classroom — if students didn't repeatedly engage with the topics they learned, they'd quickly forget them.
"We decided that if we truly wanted to achieve our goal of bringing science into people's lives and have it stick, it would need to be through a process that is frequently repeated, fun, and functional," Rynne said. "That's when we thought about clothing."
Support Marine Research and Sustainability in Style
To date, Waterlust has sold tens of thousands of pieces of apparel in over 100 countries, and the interactions its products have sparked have had clear implications for furthering science communication.
For Caruso alone, it's led to opportunities to share her abalone restoration methods with communities far and wide.
"It moves my small little world of what I'm doing here in Orange County, California, across the entire globe," she said. "That's one of the beautiful things about our partnership."
Check out all of the different eco-conscious apparel options available from Waterlust to help promote ocean conservation.
Melissa Smith is an avid writer, scuba diver, backpacker, and all-around outdoor enthusiast. She graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in journalism and sustainable studies. Before joining EcoWatch, Melissa worked as the managing editor of Scuba Diving magazine and the communications manager of The Ocean Agency, a non-profit that's featured in the Emmy award-winning documentary Chasing Coral.
A federal judge in California ruled on Monday that the state cannot put a cancer warning on the label of the popular herbicide Roundup, as The Associated Press reported.
The world's most widely used weed killer has faced nearly 125,000 lawsuits by plaintiffs who claim their non-Hodgkins lymphoma and other forms of blood cancer were caused by repeated exposure to Monsanto's signature product, which is now owned by the German chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG.
Since Bayer bought Monsanto, the spate of lawsuits and their legal fees have weighed on Bayer and made the company lose 40 percent of its value. To try to contain the damage, Bayer made a verbal agreement to settle 50,000 to 85,000 cases in May, awarding plaintiffs anywhere from a few thousand dollars to a few million, according to Fortune.
Those lawsuits have been aided by a 2015 finding by the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which said that glyphosate, the chemical in Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen.
Despite that categorization, U.S. District Judge William Shubb called California's cancer warning misleading and said the state's label is not backed up by regulatory findings, according to Reuters.
Regulators around the world have determined Roundup, or glyphosate, to be safe, even though the IARC labeled it a probable carcinogen. That includes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Late last year, when a judge reduced an $80 million jury award, the EPA filed papers in court that fully and unequivocally supported Bayer's claim that glyphosate does not cause cancer, as EcoWatch reported.
Since the EPA and its European counterparts have not found a connection between glyphosate and cancer, the judge said the state could not require the company to put a cancer warning on its label, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Shubb said the state, under Supreme Court rulings, cannot require a private company to change its label or say anything about its products unless the statement is "purely factual and non-controversial," as the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The ruling, which permanently bars California from affixing a cancer label to Roundup, is completely separate from the ongoing civil suits that claim glyphosate caused blood cancers, according to Reuters.
So far, juries in three trials have ordered the company to pay billions after concluding that the product did cause cancer. Plaintiffs alleged that Bayer manipulated studies and deceived the scientific community to make glyphosate seem safer than it actually is, according to Reuters.
Bayer has consistently denied those claims and has insisted that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and it got help on Monday when Shubb said, "the great weight of evidence indicates that glyphosate is not known to cause cancer," as The Associated Press reported.
As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, the lawyers for the plaintiffs in the jury trials that have awarded cancer patients over $200 million argued that the EPA's insistence that Roundup does not cause cancer is spurious since there was evidence the company had unduly influenced the federal agency and had "ghost-written" purported research studies on the product's safety.
In the case, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra proposed to reword the label warnings to include both the IARC and EPA findings and a reference to a website for further discussion, but the judge unequivocally rejected that compromise, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Becerra's office said it would review the ruling and plan its next step.
- More Monsanto Roundup Cancer Trials Expected to Be Postponed ... ›
- Trump's EPA Backs Bayer's Appeal in Roundup Verdict Appeal ... ›
- California Scientists: Safe Level of Roundup Is 100x Lower Than ... ›
- Judge Says Public Doesn't Need Cancer Warning Label - EcoWatch ›
- Roundup Cancer Settlement Hits Snag With Judge Over Future Plaintiffs' Rights - EcoWatch ›
A federal court overturned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) approval of dicamba Wednesday, meaning the controversial herbicide can no longer be sprayed in the U.S.
The product, originally designed by Monsanto, is opposed by some farmers and environmental groups because it can drift when sprayed, damaging wildlife and other crops.
"Today's decision is a massive win for farmers and the environment. It is good to be reminded that corporations like Monsanto and the Trump Administration cannot escape the rule of law, particularly at a time of crisis like this," lead counsel George Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety told U.S. Right to Know. "Their day of reckoning has arrived."
The Center for Food Safety sued the EPA together with National Family Farm Coalition, Center for Biological Diversity and Pesticide Action Network North America. The groups argued that the EPA broke the law when it ruled on the safety of a kind of dicamba designed by Monsanto to be sprayed widely over crops genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide. This method means the dicamba can drift to other, non-resistant crops.
The herbicide is believed to have damaged 3.6 million acres of soybeans in 2017, and more than 1 million in 2018, Bloomberg News reported.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the EPA "substantially understated the risks" of the herbicides and also "failed entirely to acknowledge other risks," according to U.S. Right to Know.
The court found @EPA refused to estimate the amount of dicamba damage, characterizing such damage as “potential” an… https://t.co/ev2bah3opD— carey gillam (@carey gillam)1591228144.0
One of the risks the EPA failed to acknowledge was the "enormous social cost to farming communities" where the herbicide's use "has turned farmer against farmer, and neighbor against neighbor," the court wrote, according to Bloomberg. A farmer was shot and killed because of a dicamba-related argument in Arkansas in 2016.
The ruling impacts the dicamba-based herbicide sold by Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018. It also prohibits the use of BASF's Engenia and Corteva Agriscience's FeXapan, Reuters reported.
Bayer told Reuters that the ruling impacted a 2018 EPA approval that expires in December and that it is currently at work on a new 2021 approval.
"Depending upon actions by the EPA and whether the ruling is successfully challenged, we will work quickly to minimize any impact on our customers this season," Bayer said.
The ruling comes around four months after a jury ruled against Bayer and BASF and in favor of a Missouri farmer who said the companies' dicamba products destroyed his peach orchard, according to Bloomberg.
That was the first of around 140 pending dicamba suits awaiting trial.
The dicamba suits are not the only suits Bayer inherited when it acquired Monsanto, Reuters pointed out. Wednesday's dicamba decision came days after arguments were heard in an appeal of the first case to go to trial over whether or not the glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup causes cancer.
- Bayer and BASF Ordered to Pay $265 Million to U.S. Peach Farmer ... ›
- Trump's EPA Backs Bayer's Appeal in Roundup Verdict Appeal ... ›
- 'Dangerous Drift-Prone Pesticide' Threatens Millions of Acres ... ›
Bayer Said to Be Reneging on Roundup Settlement Deals as Virus Closes Courthouses
By Carey Gillam
Bayer AG is reneging on negotiated settlements with several U.S. law firms representing thousands of plaintiffs who claim exposure to Monsanto's Roundup herbicides caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma, sources involved in the litigation said on Friday.
The reversal comes as U.S. courts are closed to the public because of the spreading coronavirus, eliminating the specter of another Roundup cancer trial in the near future.
Bayer, which bought Monsanto in June of 2018, has been engaged in settlement talks for close to a year, seeking to put an end to mass litigation that has driven down the company's stock, spurred investor unrest, and thrust questionable corporate conduct into a public spotlight. The first three trials led to three losses for Bayer and jury awards of more than $2 billion, though trial judges later reduced the awards.
Bayer made a public statement this week saying that settlement talks have been slowed by the coronavirus pandemic, but multiple plaintiffs' lawyers said that was not true.
According to the plaintiffs' attorneys, Bayer has been going back to law firms that had already completed negotiations for specified settlements for their clients, saying the company will not honor the agreed-upon amounts.
"A lot of lawyers around the country thought they had tentative deals," said Virginia attorney Mike Miller, whose firm represents roughly 6,000 clients and won two of the three Roundup trials to date. Bayer is now demanding a "hair cut" on those deals, Miller said.
Whether or not the various firms will take the reduced offers remains to be seen. "These are uncertain economic times," Miller said. "People have to consider what's best for their clients."
In response to a request for comment, a Bayer spokesman provided the following statement: "We've made progress in the Roundup mediation discussions, but the COVID-19 dynamics, including restrictions imposed in recent weeks, have caused meeting cancellations and delayed this process … As a result, the mediation process has significantly slowed, and realistically, we expect this will continue to be the case for the immediate future. During this time, we will continue to do whatever we can to help combat the global COVID-19 pandemic, consistent with our vision of 'health for all, hunger for none.' We cannot speculate about potential outcomes from the negotiations or timing, given the uncertainties surrounding the pandemic and the confidentiality of this process, but we remain committed to engaging in mediation in good faith."US Right to Know reported in early January that the parties were working on a settlement of roughly $8 billion to $10 billion. Bayer has acknowledged facing claims from more than 40,000 plaintiffs, but plaintiffs' attorneys have said the total number of claims is much higher.
Among the firms who had negotiated settlements for their clients are the Andrus Wagstaff firm from Denver, Colorado and the Los Angeles firm of Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman. Both reached agreements last year with Bayer.
In addition, the Weitz & Luxenberg firm from New York and Mike Miller's firm recently reached what they thought were agreements on terms. Each of the firms represents thousands of plaintiffs.
The primary leverage plaintiffs' attorneys had been using in the settlement negotiations was the threat of another public trial. In the first three trials, damning internal Monsanto documents laid bare evidence that the company knew of the cancer risks of its glyphosate-based herbicides but failed to warn consumers; ghost-wrote scientific papers proclaiming the safety of its herbicides; worked with certain regulatory officials to quash a government review of glyphosate toxicity; and engineered efforts to discredit critics.
The revelations have triggered outrage around the world and prompted moves to ban the glyphosate-based herbicides.
Several trials that were to have been held over the last several months were cancelled shortly before they were scheduled to begin when Bayer agreed to individual settlements for those specific trial plaintiffs. Two of those cases involved children stricken with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and a third was brought by a woman suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Those plaintiffs, and others who have agreed to settlements in lieu of trials in recent months, are protected and are not part of the current rollback effort by Bayer, according to multiple sources involved.
Bayer is slated to hold its annual shareholders' meeting on April 28. For the first time in the company's history, the meeting will be held entirely online.
The first three plaintiffs to win jury awards against Monsanto have yet to receive any money as Bayer appeals the verdicts.
Documents unearthed in a lawsuit brought by a Missouri farmer who claimed that Monsanto and German chemical maker BASF's dicamba herbicide ruined his peach orchard revealed that the two companies knew their new agricultural seed and chemical system would likely damage many U.S. farms, according to documents seen by The Guardian.
The lawsuit, which awarded the Missouri farmer $265 million, showed that Monsanto intentionally hid the risks involved in its plans and calculated how to profit off farmers worried about damage to their crops. The documents also show Monsanto's efforts to stymie tests from third-party labs to make sure there was no data that concerned regulators.
In fact, The Guardian reports that some employees joked about sharing "voodoo science" and hoping that they stay "out of jail."
The issue revealed by the documents was about dicamba and a new crop system from the two companies that addressed farmers' growing concerns that weeds resistant to Monsanto's glyphosate weed-killer, Roundup, were taking over croplands.
The new system allowed farmers to plant dicamba-resistant soybeans and cotton. Then farmers could spray dicamba over their fields and kill everything that had developed a resistance to glyphosate, according to The Guardian.
The documents, which date back to 2009, show that Monsanto and BASF, despite assuring regulators that their system would prevent drift to neighboring farms, were aware that their system could have catastrophic consequences, as The Guardian reported. It seems the companies were aware that farmers would likely use older versions of dicamba, which easily turns into vapor and carries away to neighboring farms that were not protected, ruining thousands of acres of crops. Dicamba is particularly volatile and likely to carry away in hot weather.
According to AgJournal, dicamba can start to vaporize and drift away three days after it has been applied.
The revelations from the successful $265 million lawsuit come amidst a deluge of complaints in several states. Regulators in Indiana, a soybean-intensive state, have been overwhelmed for the past three years by complaints that dicamba drift has ruined farmers' profits. According to The Republic in Columbus, Indiana, "Even small amounts of dicamba hitting unintended crops can lead to a 30% to 40% yield reduction, agricultural experts said. That can mean a $180 loss per acre, or $100,000 for a medium-size farm."
In Missouri, complaints about dicamba misuse have grown into a backlog of more than 600 cases. The Missouri Department of Agriculture had no cases of dicamba complaints in 2017, but was inundated with 595 cases by the end of 2019. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, before dicamba-resistant crops existed, approximately 231,000 pounds of the herbicide was spread every year. In 2017, Americans used more than 10 million pounds on cotton and soybean crops, as The News Tribune in Missouri reported.
The Guardian reported that Monsanto predicted this damage would happen. A 2015 document showed that Monsanto estimated that dicamba damage claims from farmers would total more than 10,000 cases, including 1,305 in 2016, 2,765 in 2017 and 3,259 in 2018.
"The documents are the worst that I've ever seen for any case that I've worked on," said lawyer Angie Splittgerber, a former tobacco industry defense attorney, as The Guardian reported. "So many of them put things in writing that were just horrifying."
Editor's note: This article has been updated with respect to a correction published in The Guardian on March 31. Internal emails described in the third paragraph were from both BASF and Monsanto, according to The Guardian.
- Bayer and BASF Ordered to Pay $265 Million to U.S. Peach Farmer ... ›
- Missouri's Largest Peach Farmer Sues Monsanto for Losses From ... ›
A new investigation revealed that Monsanto funneled money to secretly fund academic studies that warned of catastrophic consequences to farmers if glyphosate was banned in the UK, according to research from the German watchdog LobbyControl, as The Guardian reported.
The two studies in question come from 2010 and 2014, which was before the German chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018. Upon learning of the secret funding, Bayer said the failure to disclose it violated the company's principles, according to The Guardian.
"This is an unacceptable form of opaque lobbying," said Ulrich Müller at LobbyControl, as The Guardian reported. "Citizens, media and decision-makers should know who pays for studies on subjects of public interest. The studies also used very high figures for the benefits of glyphosate and for possible losses in case of a ban. These extreme figures were then used to spin the debate."
However, the authors of the two studies said that the funding did not influence their findings. The 2010 study, called How Valuable is Glyphosate to UK Agriculture and the Environment? touted glyphosate for "a wide range of benefits to users." It said that glyphosate binds to soil and rarely leaches into groundwater. It does mention that glyphosate is sometimes found in surface water, but far below levels that would register as toxic. It then goes on to discuss how a ban of glyphosate would upend UK farming and gardening.
The 2014 study followed a similar line of reasoning. The study, titled Glyphosate Use on Combinable Crops in Europe: Implications for Agriculture and the Environment, also mentioned that glyphosate is highly water soluble and does not readily leach into soil or water and is found in less than 1 percent of water samples. It then goes on to assess "the value of glyphosate use across wheat, winter barley and oilseed rape in Europe."
And yet, one of the lead researchers Sarah Wynn said the funding did not influence her research. She told The Guardian, "As with other companies in our field, it is entirely normal for external organizations to fund research studies. However, it has always been our core principle that our research is never influenced in any way by those that fund us."
Wynn and her colleagues, unsurprisingly, came down in favor of continued glyphosate use. The research concluded, "the loss of glyphosate would cause very severe impacts on UK agriculture and the environment," as The Guardian reported. In the 2014 study they concluded that Europe would see a 20 percent fall in wheat and rapeseed production if glyphosate were banned.
Other researchers came to a different conclusion, noting that farming practices would change. The Andersons Centre at Oxford Economics challenged the conclusion of the Monsanto-funded studies.
In its report on a glyphosate ban in the UK, it said, "The Andersons Centre believe that this may be rather high given the mitigation efforts and the rotational changes discussed elsewhere. A similar process has been undertaken for all the major crops grown in the UK, using the best available data and knowledge of industry experts."
The 2010 and 2014 studies were instrumental in the lobbying efforts of the National Farmers Union and others to successfully campaign against a European ban of glyphosate in 2017, as The Guardian reported. The new revelations have spurred the National Farmers Union to note the source of the funding on its glyphosate information.
The National Farmers Union was not alone in using the research. Industry lobbyings groups the Glyphosate Task Force (now renamed the Glyphosate Renewal Group), also used the research, as did the Crop Protection Association, according to The Guardian.
Bayer and BASF Ordered to Pay $265 Million to U.S. Peach Farmer in Weedkiller Suit
A jury in Missouri awarded a farmer $265 million in a lawsuit that claimed Bayer and BASF's weedkiller destroyed his peach orchard, as Reuters reported.
The lawsuit is ominous for Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018 and now faces nearly 140 similar lawsuits in U.S. courts, plus thousands of other suits that claim health damage from Monsanto's glyphosate-based Roundup.
The jury in U.S. District Court in Cape Girardeau, Missouri awarded peach farmer, Bill Bader, $15 million in actual damages and $250 million in punitive damages, after agreeing with his claim that a herbicide the two German companies produced drifted onto his orchard from nearby farms and irreparably damaged his 1,000 acre peach-tree orchard, according to Reuters.
Bader Farms is one of the largest peach tree farms in Missouri.
As the AP reported, Bader's attorneys argued that dicamba, which is present in herbicides made by Bayer and BASF, is so potent that there was no way for Bader's trees to recover from the exposure. The generous award paves the way for a large spate of lawsuits from farmers who have seen their crops destroyed by inadvertent exposure to dicamba-based products.
Like Roundup, dicamba was developed and distributed by Monsanto. Farmers across the country have claimed that dicamba turns into vapor and drifts for miles when used in certain weather conditions, as Reuters reported. They have alleged that it has destroyed millions of acres of U.S. cropland, according to The Associated Press.
Attorneys for Bayer said they plan to appeal the decision. "We want our customers to know that, as this legal matter continues, we remain steadfast in our commitment to delivering them the effective and sustainable tools they need in the field," Bayer said in a statement, as The Associated Press reported. In court, they argued that Bader Farms trees were damaged by root fungus and bad weather.
The lawyers also claimed that the decision was not based on facts, saying "there was no competent evidence presented which showed that Monsanto's products were present" on the Missouri farm and were responsible for the farmer's losses, according to Bloomberg.
The loss in this trial, which surely opens the door for many more lawsuits, heaps an enormous amount of pressure on Bayer Chief Executive Officer Werner Baumann, who staked his career on the $63 billion takeover of Monsanto. He became the first CEO of a major German company in decades to lose a shareholder confidence vote last spring, as Bloomberg reported.
Dicamba is not a new product. Farmers have been using it for nearly half a century. However, Monsanto developed a dicamba-resistant strain of cotton and soybeans. That opened the door for widespread use of dicamba, which led to complaints from neighboring farms who claimed that their crops were getting killed by the dicamba drift, as The Associated Press reported.
In response to those concerns, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency created tighter restrictions on dicamba usage. Some states have taken additional steps, requiring training and putting in place firm dates dictating when dicamba can and cannot be sprayed, according to The Associated Press.
The legal cases from Monsanto continue to pile up for Bayer. Not only are Roundup and dicamba suits in the pipeline, the company also faces litigation from several cities that claim Monsanto dumped toxic PCBs into waterways, as Bloomberg reported.
- Trump's EPA Sides With Monsanto, Extends Dicamba 2 More Years ›
- Missouri's Largest Peach Farmer Sues Monsanto for Losses From ... ›
- Federal Court Reverses EPA Approval of Crop-Harming Dicamba - EcoWatch ›
- Federal Court Reverses EPA Approval of Crop-Harming Dicamba - EcoWatch ›
'Troubling Allegiance' to Pesticide Company: Trump's EPA Claims Glyphosate Poses No Risk to Human Health
By Eoin Higgins
President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday wrapped up a regulatory review of the safety of the weedkiller glyphosate and found the chemical poses no risk to human health — a decision that was immediately decried by advocates as another indication of the closeness between the administration and private sector interests.
"The Trump EPA's assertion that glyphosate poses no risks to human health disregards independent science findings in favor of confidential industry research and industry profits," said Lori Ann Burd, the Center for Biological Diversity's director of environmental health. "This administration's troubling allegiance to Bayer/Monsanto and the pesticide industry doesn't change the trove of peer-reviewed research by leading scientists finding troubling links between glyphosate and cancer."
The EPA came to the conclusion after reviewing the chemical's effects on humans, but the determination is unlikely to change views on either side of the conflict over the chemical's safety.
"A whole lot of people will disagree" with the EPA, tweeted Civil Eats founder and editor Naomi Starkman.
As Reuters reported:
The conclusion reaffirms the agency's stance on glyphosate, the key ingredient in Bayer AG's Roundup, despite judgments by U.S. juries that have found that use of the weedkiller was responsible for plaintiffs' cancer in some trials.
...
In 2015, the World Health Organization's cancer arm classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans."
There are reportedly tens of thousands of lawsuits against Bayer/Monsanto for the chemical's cancer links, and the company is considering settling the claims for between $10 and $12 billion.
Thursday's decision is not expected to have an effect on those suits. But the message the EPA is sending, the Center for Biological Diversity's Burd said, is clear.
"The EPA's pesticide office is clearly willing to bend over backwards, including disregarding its own guidelines for evaluating cancer risks, to give the industry what it wants," said Burd.
As Common Dreams has reported, Trump's EPA has been criticized by advocates for years for its closeness to Bayer/AG and its treatment of glyphosate.
Media strategist Jen Degtjarewsky gave a blunt assessment on the president's environmental record in the context of Thursday's ruling.
"It's open season on clean air, water, and soil," said Degtjarewsky.
Reposted with permission from Common Dreams.
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Monsanto Roundup Cancer Trial Postponed in St. Louis, Bayer Stock Climbs
By Carey Gillam
A highly anticipated Roundup cancer trial set to start later this month in the St. Louis area has been pulled from the docket, a court official said on Wednesday.
The trial, which was to pit a woman named Sharlean Gordon against Roundup maker Monsanto Co., was to start Jan. 27 in St. Louis County and was to be broadcast to the public. Notably, Gordon's lawyers planned to put former Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant on the stand. St. Louis was the home of Monsanto's corporate headquarters until the company was purchased by Bayer AG of Germany in June of 2018.
In taking the trial off the calendar, the judge in the case has ordered that a status conference be set for a month from now, said St. Louis County Court spokeswoman Christine Bertelson.
The Gordon trial was already postponed once – it originally was scheduled for August. It is one of several trials that have been postponed in the last several months as Bayer attempts to find a settlement to the mass of claims filed against Monsanto by people stricken with non-Hodgkin lymphoma they claim was caused by exposure to Monsanto Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides. Bayer officials have said that Monsanto is facing more than 42,700 plaintiffs in the U.S.
Gordon developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after using Roundup herbicides for 25 years at her residence in South Pekin, Illinois, and has suffered extensive debilitation due to her disease. Gordon's stepfather, who also used Roundup at the family home, died of cancer. The case is actually derived from a larger case filed in July 2017 on behalf of more than 75 plaintiffs. Gordon was to be the first of that group to go to trial.
Monsanto and Bayer have denied that Monsanto's herbicides can cause cancer, and assert the litigation is without merit but is being fueled by greedy plaintiffs' attorneys.
According to sources close to the litigation, discussions are underway to postpone more Roundup cancer trials, possibly including one set to start Jan. 21 in St. Louis City Court. Attorneys for Monsanto and for the plaintiffs in the upcoming January trials declined to comment.
Shares in Bayer hit a 52-week high and were up close to 3 percent Wednesday. Investors have been pushing the company to find a way to avoid future trials and to settle the litigation.
In the three Roundup cancer trials held so far, unanimous juries have found that exposure to Monsanto's herbicides does cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that the company covered up the risks and failed to warn consumers. The three juries awarded a total of four plaintiffs more than $2 billion in damages, but the trial judges in each case have reduced the awards significantly.
No damages have yet been paid as Monsanto appeals the verdicts.
Bayer's annual shareholders' meeting is set for April 28 and analysts said investors would like to see either a settlement of the litigation by that time, or at least meaningful progress in containing the liability. Bayer's stock took a dive, losing billions of dollars in value, after the first jury verdict in August 2018, and share prices remain depressed.
Reposted with permission from U.S. Right to Know.
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Update, Jan. 8: On Wednesday, St. Louis County Court spokeswoman Christine Bertelson confirmed that one trial set to start Jan. 27 has been officially postponed with no new trial date yet set. That trial was to pit a woman named Sharlean Gordon against Monsanto.
By Carey Gillam
Discussions are underway to postpone one or more highly anticipated Roundup cancer trials set to start in January, including trials scheduled for St. Louis, the former hometown of Roundup herbicide maker Monsanto Co., according to sources close to the litigation.
Court dockets still show trials scheduled for later this month in St. Louis and in California courts, and court officials say they are still planning for the trials to take place on the designated dates. But multiple legal sources said the opposing sides were nearing agreements that would put off the trials by several months, if not longer. Attorneys for Monsanto and for the plaintiffs in the upcoming January trials declined to comment.
The talk of trial delays is not unexpected. Bayer AG, the German company that bought Monsanto in June 2018, successfully negotiated the postponement of several trials that had been set for the fall of 2019 after losing each of the three trials held to date. Each involved plaintiffs who claimed their cancers were caused by exposure to Roundup and other Monsanto glyphosate-based herbicides.
The juries found not just that the company's herbicides can cause cancer, but that Monsanto knew about the risks and hid the information from consumers. Bayer has estimated more than 42,700 people have filed claims in the U.S. against Monsanto, which is now a wholly owned unit of Bayer.
Bayer and a team of plaintiffs' attorneys have been pursuing a potential settlement of the litigation that could amount to well more than $8 billion, the legal sources said.
Bayer has been particularly uneasy about trials scheduled for St. Louis, where former Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant has been subpoenaed to testify and the trial of plaintiff Sharlean Gordon was to be broadcast to the public. In the three previous trials, all held in California, Monsanto executives have given testimony through depositions and have not had to take the stand in front of juries.
"Trial postponements make perfect sense right now," said Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Tom Claps. "I believe that it is in everyone's best interest to stay out of the courtroom at this time, especially when negotiations seem to be progressing in a positive manner."
Amid the maneuvering, more cases continue to stack up. Lawyers for Monsanto were in court Monday in Independence, Missouri to set a schedule and trial date for a newly filed lawsuit brought by a woman suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma she claims she developed due to her residential use of Roundup.
Gregory Chernack of the Washington, DC-based Hollingsworth law firm, one of Monsanto's long-serving defense firms, told the judge in Independence that Monsanto wanted the case consolidated with roughly 30 others being overseen by a different judge in Kansas City, Missouri. Attorneys for plaintiff Sheila Carver objected to the suggestion, and asked the judge to go ahead and set a trial date. Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Phillips decided to give the parties 30 days to file motions on the matter.
Bayer's annual shareholders' meeting is set for April 28 and analysts said investors would like to see either a settlement of the litigation by that time, or at least meaningful progress in containing the liability. Bayer's stock took a dive, losing billions of dollars in value, after the first jury verdict in August 2018, and share prices remain depressed.
"Bayer's stock has reacted negatively to each of the three trial verdicts. Therefore, Bayer does not want to face more negative trial headlines from losing another trial, especially while it is engaged in good faith settlement discussions," said Claps.
There are multiple factors at play, however, including the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the appeals that are pending for each of the three trials. If an appellate court were to overturn the jury findings of Monsanto's liability, it would weaken the plaintiffs' bargaining power for a global settlement. Conversely, the company's position would be weakened if the jury verdicts are upheld on appeal. But no decision is expected on the appeals for several more months at least.
In December, the U.S. Department of Justice took the rare step of intervening in the litigation to side with Monsanto and Bayer in the appeal of one of the verdicts.
Reposted with permission from U.S. Right to Know.
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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) added its weight to back Bayer AG in its appeal against a federal jury verdict that decided its Roundup weed killer causes cancer, according to Bloomberg.
Bayer is looking to overturn a verdict that first awarded a plaintiff $80 million, but was reduced to $25 million by a federal judge, in a suit that claimed the world's most popular herbicide caused a man's non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The EPA, working with the U.S. Department of Justice, filed papers in court on Friday fully and unequivocally supporting Bayer's claim that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, does not cause cancer, as The Wall Street Journal reported.
When the U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria cut the jury reward in the spring, he refused to overturn the jury's findings that Roundup should have been sold with a cancer warning on the label. The EPA, however, said in papers that it had vetted and approved the Roundup warning label issued by Monsanto, which Bayer acquired in 2018 for about $63 billion, and it did not require a cancer warning, as Bloomberg reported.
The filings by the EPA and Justice Department said that Monsanto, and subsequently Bayer, could not print a cancer-risk warning on its label because the EPA has the sole authority over warning labels on chemical products and the EPA would not have approved a cancer warning on Roundup labels, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"That label, once reviewed and approved by EPA, is controlling," the agency said, as Bloomberg reported. "States cannot impose distinct labeling requirements."
In August, the EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler said his agency would not allow a cancer-risk warning on glyphosate-based herbicides, saying it was tantamount to false labeling since the EPA had deemed it safe, as The Wall Street Journal reported.
"EPA has a longstanding position—It's not just this administration which determined that this pesticide does not cause cancer," said Jeffrey Clark, the assistant attorney general of the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the Justice Department in an interview, to The Wall Street Journal. "EPA should be in control. Congress set it up that way."
In its appeal, Bayer alleged that Chhabria made several errors and that the plaintiff's claims are preempted by federal law. Bayer claims that under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, it actually would have been misbranding to print a cancer-risk warning on a glyphosate-based product, according to IEG Policy Agribusiness.
Bayer is facing a mountain of litigation as there were 42,700 others suing the company over Roundup as of October, according to Bloomberg. So far, Bayer has lost three U.S. court cases where plaintiffs have claimed that long-term exposure to Roundup had caused their cancer. The company has postponed two trials in the U.S. while it works with a mediator to try to hammer out a settlement with the plaintiffs, as Bloomberg reported.
Legal scholars told The Wall Street Journal that the filing by the EPA and the Justice Department will stand out to the appeals court, and the federal government will often add its opinion when a case is based on the interpretation of a federal statute.
Bayer said in a statement to Bloomberg that it's pleased the EPA "expressed its views in this appeal, which are consistent with the preemption arguments we have made throughout this case."
Aimee Wagstaff, the lawyer for Edwin Hardeman, the plaintiff, emailed a statement to Bloomberg that said the EPA's filing reflected a desperation move by Bayer that has been rejected by several state and federal judges. "The EPA's brief doesn't change the law," she wrote.
"We are confident the Ninth Circuit will also reject Monsanto's argument and rule in favor of Mr. Hardeman," she added, as The Wall Street Journal reported.
The appeals court judges "may not ultimately agree with the side the government is supporting for other reasons," said Ben Feuer, an appellate lawyer in San Francisco, as The Wall Street Journal reported, but the agency's brief "is going to be closely parsed and they will engage with it."
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