Bayer AG, reeling from major jury awards against it on Roundup, has issued an open letter on glyphosate, saying that American agriculture is at risk. The letter ran in major media outlets, including Politico, the Washington Post, the St. Louis Dispatch, the Jefferson City News Tribune and the Des Moines Register, as well as on Bayer’s own website at https://www.bayer.com/en/glyphosate-letter.
In
the meantime, the formation of Modern Ag Alliance, a group of more than 60
national and state agricultural organizations, including the National Corn
Growers Association and the American Soybean Association, was announced on
April 9 to promote the ongoing use of glyphosate.
In
its letter, Bayer stressed that Roundup has been thoroughly evaluated and
certified multiple times by the US EPA, the European Food Safety Authority
(EFSA), and all other leading safety and regulatory bodies around the world as
safe to use.
“It
has enabled millions of American farmers to have better yields and lower their
weed control input costs – and the only group to categorize glyphosate as a
probable carcinogen is an affiliate of the World Health Organization, which is
not a regulatory body and did no original studies,” the letter states. “It puts
other everyday things like drinking hot beverages, a barber’s occupational
exposure, and eating red meat at the same level of safety hazard as
glyphosate.”
Bayer
said it wins court cases when juries have access to all the relevant evidence
and scientific information. “So the litigation industry fights to prevent EPA’s
rigorous analysis and science-based conclusion that Roundup is safe to use from
being shown in court,” said the letter. “Instead, they rely on junk science to
mislead juries.”
Bayer
noted that it is the only domestic manufacturer of glyphosate. “If this keeps
up, farmers will be left with two options – grow less food or rely on foreign
supplies of the product,” the company said.
Bayer
said it plans to continue to provide US farmers with Roundup to ensure a safe,
abundant, and economical food supply. “But there’s a limit to what we can do,”
it added. “We hope others will soon recognize how high the stakes go, well
beyond one product or industry to touch upon fundamental American values and
interests.”
Modern
Ag, whose motto is “Control Weeds, Not Farming,” is a major backer of a bill
that passed the Iowa Senate on April 2 that would grant immunity to pesticide
companies from civil lawsuits related to damages caused by US EPA-approved
pesticides (GM April 12, p. 27). Bayer lobbied for the bill and argued
that Americans should be able to trust the EPA label as enough protection.
In addition to Iowa, Idaho, Missouri, and Florida are also considering
similar bills, according to reports from Civil Eats. Additionally,
CropLife America is seeking to pass a federal law barring states from passing
their own laws that restrict pesticide use based on risks.
Bayer received some good news earlier this month when a Missouri judge
slashed almost $1 billion from a $1.5 billion jury verdict that was one of the
largest in the six years the company has been fighting thousands of claims that
its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer.
While Judge Daniel Green in Jefferson City, Mo., refused to grant
Monsanto’s post-trial requests that he order a new trial or throw out the
entire verdict, he instead slashed the punitive-damages portion of the award by
more than 60% to about $550 million, according to Bloomberg, citing
court filings.
Bayer’s Monsanto unit has been hit with multiple nine- and 10-figure verdicts over Roundup in the last six months. With so much legal exposure, the company’s new chief executive officer has faced difficult decisions about whether to spin off part of the pharmaceutical-agrochemical conglomerate or put a unit into strategic bankruptcy (GM March 15, p. 1).
Bayer, which bought Monsanto for $63 billion in 2018, said it will still
ask Missouri’s appellate courts to review the entire verdict. “While the court
reduced the unconstitutionally excessive damage award, the company believes
that the court did not apply the law correctly on damages,” the company said in
an emailed statement.
Jurors had awarded the three plaintiffs a total of $61.1 million in
actual damages and $500 million each in punitive damages in November over
claims that years of using Roundup on their lawns and gardens caused
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The order reducing the verdict was expected because the US Supreme
Court has said punitive damages must be proportional to compensatory
awards underlying them and has limited punishment judgments to 10 times actual
damages.
Green reduced the punitive damages to about $550 million to meet the
Supreme Court threshold. He also ordered Bayer to post an $800 million bond to
guarantee payment of the verdict if it’s upheld on appeal. Bayer had asked for
a $50 million bond, court documents show.
In January, a state court jury in Philadelphia ordered Monsanto to pay
more than $2.2 billion to a former landscaper. That award is also
likely to be cut.
Two years ago, Bayer set aside as much as $16 billion to resolve more
than 100,000 cases over Roundup. The conglomerate now faces a second wave
of lawsuits alleging glyphosate and other elements of the herbicide are
carcinogens. The company said earlier this month that it has won 14 of the last
20 cases to go to trial.
Bayer agreed to transition from the glyphosate version
of Roundup to new active weed-killing ingredients in the US consumer
market by the end of last year.
