Bayer Stock Sinks 12% After Court Rules Weed Killer It Bought from Monsanto Caused Cancer

Why Bayer, primarily a pharmaceutical company, bought Monsanto, an agrochemical company known for making Roundup and Agent Orange, is beyond my imagination. Agent Orange produced dreadful famine in Viet Nam and many horrible diseases in the people and in the soldiers who encountered it. 

Bayer's website makes this astonishing claim:

We exist to help people thrive - Advancing health and nutrition is what we do best and care about most.

© Global Look Press / Sven Hoppe

Bayer shares plunged more than 12 percent after a second US jury ruled that glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer causes cancer. It was a huge blow to the German pharmaceutical giant which bought US agrochemical firm Monsanto.

The stock drop during Wednesday morning trading on the Frankfurt exchange wiped out almost $8 billion from Bayer's market value.

The unanimous decision by a jury in San Francisco federal court followed another ruling made in August in California. Back then, the biotechnology corporation was ordered to pay $289 million in compensatory and punitive damages over the case of a school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, whose cancer was allegedly caused due to years of using glyphosate-based Roundup.

The latest verdict was not a finding of Bayer’s liability for the cancer of plaintiff Edwin Hardeman. The trial is expected to proceed to the next phase, beginning on Wednesday, with the jury to determine the liability and damages in the case.

Bayer, which specializes in producing pharmaceuticals, consumer healthcare products, agricultural chemicals and biotechnology products, inherited the legal battles with its $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto, the US' leading producer of genetically engineered crops. Bayer may potentially face thousands of similar lawsuits in the US alone.

However, the German company has denied claims that glyphosate or Roundup causes cancer and said it was disappointed with the jury’s decision.

“We are confident the evidence in phase two will show that Monsanto’s conduct has been appropriate and the company should not be liable for Mr. Hardeman’s cancer,” Bayer said in a statement.

Good luck with that! I think you paid a fortune for a big liability.

Canada Sees No Cancer Risk from Monsanto’s Roundup Weed Killer

Nothing I could say here that would not put me at risk of being sued

Oh, Canada

© Reuters / Benoit Tessier

Canadian farmers will continue using glyphosate after Health Canada concluded that the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer poses no human risks.

The federal agency dismissed eight notices of objection and assertions made in the so-called Monsanto Papers in 2017.

“After a thorough scientific review, we have concluded that the concerns raised by the objectors could not be scientifically supported when considering the entire body of relevant data. The objections raised did not create doubt or concern regarding the scientific basis for the 2017 re-evaluation decision for glyphosate,” Health Canada said in a press release.

The 2017 re-evaluation determined that glyphosate is not genotoxic and is unlikely to pose a human cancer risk. It also determined that dietary exposure associated with the use of glyphosate is not expected to pose a risk of concern to human health. When used according to revised label directions, glyphosate products are not expected to pose risks of concern to the environment, according to the study.

Health Canada said it has selected a group of 20 of its own scientists who were not involved in the 2017 decision to evaluate the eight objections and the concerns raised publicly around glyphosate. The agency said its scientists “left no stone unturned in conducting” the review.

The agency noted that it “had access to numerous individual studies and raw scientific data during its assessment of glyphosate, including additional cancer and genotoxicity studies.” It added that it will “continue to monitor for new information related to glyphosate, including regulatory actions from other governments, and will take appropriate action if risks of concern to human health or the environment are identified.”

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, which is the most popular weed killer in the US. German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer, which bought Monsanto last year, disclosed earlier that lawsuits from 9,300 plaintiffs were pending at the end of October. The lawsuits alleged that the company’s recently acquired weed-killing product caused cancer.

The surge in lawsuits followed the $289-million California court verdict when Monsanto was ordered to pay damages to a man who alleged its glyphosate-based weed killers, including Roundup, caused his cancer.

Bayer rejected all the accusations, claiming there are hundreds of scientific studies and regulatory authorities that show glyphosate, the compound contained in the weed killers, is safe to use.

And how many of those studies were funded by Monsanto? I'm guessing, all of them!

Monsanto Sued Again by Brazilian Soybean Farmers over GMO Seed

Monsanto - Agricultural Mafia?

Workers harvest soy in a farm in Brazil © Paulo Whitaker / Reuters

Growers in Brazil’s largest soybean producing state Mato Grosso have asked a court to cancel Monsanto’s Intacta GMO seed patent. They claim irregularities, including the company’s alleged failure to prove it brings de facto technological innovation.

The Mato Grosso branch of Aprosoja, the association representing the growers, has filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Brasilia. The growers claim Monsanto’s Intacta RR2 PRO patent “does not fully reveal the invention so as to allow, at the end of the exclusivity period, for any person to freely have access to it.”

That requirement “avoids that a company controls a technology for an undetermined period of time,” Aprosoja said, adding Intacta’s patent protection extends through October 2022.

It cited data from consultancy Agroconsult, saying that about 53 percent of Brazil’s soy area was planted with Intacta technology in the 2016/17 crop cycle. Around 40 percent of the crop is grown with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seed technology (Intacta’s predecessor), and only seven percent is non-GM.

Brazilian farmers have been continually urging the replacement of genetically modified soybeans with non-GM seeds. Recently they asked Monsanto and other producers of pest-resistant corn seeds to reimburse them for money spent on additional pesticides when the bugs killed the crops instead of dying.

Several years ago five million Brazilian soybean farmers sued Monsanto, claiming the genetic-engineering company was collecting royalties on crops it unfairly claims as its own. In 2012, the Brazilian court ruled in favor of the Brazilian farmers, saying Monsanto owes them at least $2 billion since 2004.

After the legal disputes, Monsanto stopped collecting royalties linked to its first-generation Roundup Ready technology, and some farmers agreed to get a discount rate to use Intacta seeds.

Biotech crops are genetically engineered to resist pests or disease, tolerate drought or withstand the spraying of weedkillers like glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

In the US, the herbicide has been considered safe since 2013, when Monsanto received approval from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for increased tolerance levels for glyphosate. 

EPA needs to be gutted and run by people not in the industries it pretends to regulate.

However recently, the World Health Organization ruled it’s a carcinogen which along with other Monsanto chemicals could cause Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer’s disease, autism, and cancer.