Credit: Forbes and Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Monsanto Parent Bayer Said To Propose $8 Billion Settlement Over Roundup Claims, CBSNews, 9 August 2019

Monsanto parent company Bayer is said to be offering an $8 billion deal to settle about 18,000 claims that its weedkiller Roundup causes cancer.
…
In its most recent annual report, Bayer said it expects more lawsuits to emerge.

Only 3 cases have been heard so far, and Bayer/Monsanto lost all three, with unusually large pay-outs.

Will Litigation Over Roundup Continue? Reports Say Bayer AG May Propose $8 Billion Settlement, Forbes, 9 August 2019

1. Dewayne Johnson, a California groundskeeper, was diagnosed with terminal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that he alleges was caused by his regular use of the herbicide at his job. He won his case, eventually landing a finalized payout of $78 million. The jury in his case unanimously decided that the manufacturing company failed to warn consumers about the possibly carcinogenic cocktail of ingredients that make up Roundup.

2. The same occurred in the first federal trial regarding Roundup, in which Edwin Hardeman blamed the product for causing his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after years of consistent use on his properties. After reductions, his final payout totaled $25 million.

3. The second federal and most recent trial of Alva and Alberta Pilliod resulted in a payout of almost $87 million after its reduction, which was a whopping $2 billion at first. The California couple had also used Roundup regularly over the course of decades and had both been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Here’s a list of 38 countries throughout the world that have taken steps to either restrict or ban glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup.

Guess which country isn’t on that list. The United States:

Despite the IARC report’s 2015 conclusion that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans. As such, glyphosate is not banned by the U.S. government; Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides are readily available for purchase throughout the country.

However, the EPA is a captured agency, meaning it is dominated by the industry it presumably regulates. Internal company documents now public in the Monsanto Papers demonstrate that EPA prioritizes the interests of corporations like Monsanto or political groups over the interests of the public it is charged with protecting.

What I have learned from this:

• Exposure to Roundup causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
• If we’re not going to ban it, as Bayer said, expect more lawsuits.