{"id":154862,"date":"2020-03-09T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2020-03-09T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=154862"},"modified":"2020-02-22T08:52:12","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T08:52:12","slug":"battling-roundup-weedkiller-round-and-round-we-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/03\/battling-roundup-weedkiller-round-and-round-we-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Battling Roundup Weedkiller: \u2018Round and Round’ We Go"},"content":{"rendered":"
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From Organicconsumers.org<\/p><\/div>\n

21 Feb 2020 – <\/em>It seems forever that we\u2019ve been trying to get Monsanto\u2019s\u00a0Roundup<\/a>\u00a0weedkiller off the market, and out of our food.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a battle that\u2019s had more than its share of highs and lows.<\/p>\n

Where are we today? Fighting a new company\u2014Bayer now owns\u00a0Monsanto<\/a>. And watching the courts go \u2018round and \u2018round, as they start then stop trials, order, then reduce (and now, potentially, reverse) judgments against a company facing nearly 43,000 lawsuits.<\/p>\n

As Bayer digs in its heels, insisting that Roundup is \u201csafe,\u201d and as our regulatory agencies echo those false claims, the company finds itself fighting back in the courts, while simultaneously hinting at a settlement that could include taking Roundup off retail store shelves (but not off U.S. farms).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s enough to make your head spin.<\/p>\n

Where Things Stand in the Courts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the judge overseeing a trial scheduled to begin in St. Louis, Missouri, pitting a Roundup cancer victim against Bayer, slammed on the brakes. The judge\u2019s move fueled speculation about a settlement that potentially would address the nearly 43,000 similar lawsuits against the pesticide giant.<\/p>\n

The St. Louis trial, Wade v. Monsanto, involved four plaintiffs, including a woman whose husband died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.\u00a0As U.S. Right to Know\u00a0reported<\/a>, the trial was highly anticipated in large part because former Monsanto CEO, Hugh Grant, had been\u00a0ordered<\/a>\u00a0to appear in person to testify.<\/p>\n

The first three trials involving cancer victims suing Monsanto-Bayer didn\u2019t go Bayer\u2019s way. Jurors not only sided with the victims, but they also awarded huge sums of money. Bayer promptly appealed, and won reduced settlements. In one of the three cases, a California jury\u00a0awarded<\/a>\u00a0just north of $2 billion to Alberta and Alva Pilliod, a married couple who had sprayed Roundup on their property to control weeds. A trial judge later reduced that amount to $86 million.<\/p>\n

Now, Bayer wants the court to\u00a0throw out<\/a>\u00a0the $86 million award and pay the victims nothing. The move comes after Trump\u2019s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Justice\u00a0weighed in<\/a>\u2014in favor of the poison-maker.<\/p>\n

It also doesn\u2019t hurt Bayer\u2019s case that the EPA recently\u00a0signaled<\/a>, in a long-awaited\u00a0interim decision<\/a>, that it plans to re-approve\u00a0glyphosate.<\/p>\n

As the victims, the media and anti-Monsanto-Bayer activists worldwide wait to hear what\u2019s next\u2014will a settlement be reached, or will the trials resume?\u2014Bayer is battling a different type of lawsuit. In January, the trial of Missouri farmer Bill Bader vs. Monsanto got underway. Journalist Carey Gillam\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that Bader, a peach farmer, is suing the company for selling him GMO dicamba-tolerant soybean and cotton seeds despite knowing the actions would trigger chemical damage to farm fields that weren\u2019t planted with the new seeds. According to Gillam, Bader\u2019s lawsuit alleges that Monsanto induced farmers to buy the specialty seeds to prevent crop damage from herbicide drift coming from neighboring farmers who were planting the GMO crops and spraying them with dicamba. Bader, who is suing for $20 million, blames Monsanto for the loss of more than 30,000 trees.<\/p>\n

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Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ pesticide.
Photographer: Philippe Huguen\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

No Easy Path to a Settlement?<\/strong><\/p>\n

How long might it take for Bayer and the tens of thousands of Roundup weedkiller cancer victims to reach a settlement? Awhile, according to\u00a0legal experts.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0recent article<\/a>\u00a0by Reuters reporter Tina Bellon lays out the challenges that preclude an \u201ceasy settlement.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the challenges, according to Bellon, is that lawyers for the plaintiffs will insist that any settlement includes a cancer warning label on Roundup products. Given that the EPA, ignoring the mounds of evidence to the contrary, continues to claim that glyphosate and Roundup are \u201csafe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experts told Reuters that \u201cadding a cancer warning over a regulator\u2019s explicit opposition presented unchartered legal territory.\u201d (In 2018, Organic Consumers Association and Beyond Pesticides\u00a0sued<\/a>\u00a0Monsanto for misleading the public by labeling Roundup as \u201ctarget[ing] an enzyme found in plants but not in people or pets,\u201d when the\u00a0science<\/a>\u00a0says otherwise).<\/p>\n

One of the other obstacles to a swift settlement is the length of time between exposure to Roundup and the onset of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the specific cancer shared by all of the Roundup lawsuit plaintiffs. That, plus while doctors recognize multiple risk factors for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, there\u2019s no agreement on a \u201cknown cause,\u201d which makes it difficult to determine a settlement fund size that would cover future victims.<\/p>\n

That said, remember: With the EPA and DOJ on its side, if Bayer gets a reversal on the Pilliod judgment, the company may succeed in beating back the lawsuits.<\/p>\n

Could Public Pressure Force Roundup off the Market?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the latest rumors swirling around the Roundup weedkiller settlement speculation is that Bayer could agree to\u00a0stop selling<\/a>\u00a0Roundup to consumers. That would be a win for consumers. But it would do nothing to stop the millions of pounds of glyphosate sprayed on agricultural crops, and ending up in our\u00a0food<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0waterways<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Washington Post\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that Bayer is investing $5.6 billion to develop an alternative to glyphosate. The Post suggested that Bayer may be changing its tone, citing new text on the company\u2019s website, including this: \u201cWe listened. We learned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Could Bayer voluntarily altogether stop making Roundup and other glyphosate-based weedkillers? Despite the EPA and Congress\u2019 failure to ban the chemical?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine, yet that\u2019s what happened this month with another dangerous pesticide. Corteva Agriscience, spun off from DowDupont last year, said it will discontinue the manufacture and sale of\u00a0chlorpyrifos, a known neurotoxin considered especially harmful to children. (In 2016, Obama\u2019s EPA banned chlorpyrifos, only to have Trump\u2019s EPA\u00a0overturn<\/a>\u00a0the ban after a Dow executive donated $1 million to Trump\u2019s inauguration festivities. This month, California took the matter into its own hands, banning the chemical statewide).<\/p>\n

As we wait to see what unfolds next on the legal front, dozens of organizations (including ours) and millions of consumers and activists continue to step up the pressure on the EPA and Congress to stop the poisoning of our food, water and soil with Roundup and glyphosate.\u00a0(You can sign our petition to Congress here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 popularresistance.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Feb 2020 – It seems forever that we\u2019ve been trying to get Monsanto\u2019s Roundup weedkiller off the market, and out of our food. It\u2019s a battle that\u2019s had more than its share of highs and lows. Where are we today? Fighting a new company\u2014Bayer now owns Monsanto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":80157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[952,1405,930,887,1009,232,354,248,932,931,1495,487,651,929,1200,1122,985],"class_list":["post-154862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-organic-gmo-genetic-engineering","tag-agriculture","tag-basic-needs","tag-bayer","tag-big-pharma","tag-big-tech","tag-capitalism","tag-economics","tag-farming","tag-genetic-engineering","tag-gmo","tag-human-needs","tag-human-rights","tag-justice","tag-monsanto","tag-natures-rights","tag-organic-food","tag-social-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}