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Monsanto will appeal California court ruling on Roundup

Monsanto plans to vigorously defend its Roundup herbicide and will appeal a California court decision linking the product to cancer.

A jury in San Francisco Superior Court has awarded a former school groundskeeper who has cancer $289 million-dollars after finding that Monsanto failed to warn him of the dangers posed by his use of glyphosate-based Roundup.

Monsanto vice president Scott Partridge said in a statement while the company is sympathetic to the plaintiff and his family, the initial verdict does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews, as well as conclusions by the EPA, National Institutes of Health, and regulatory authorities around the world, support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer.

Partridge says Roundup has a 40-year history of safe use and continues to be a vital, effective, and safe tool for farmers and others.

The court decision is seen as significant because there are thousands of similar cases pending against Monsanto.

Organic Consumers Association international director Ronnie Cummins says he hopes this is the first of many defeats for Monsanto, and that EPA will pull Roundup off the market immediately.

“I think this is the beginning of the end for Roundup, glyphosate, and other highly toxic chemicals in agriculture.”

In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said glyphosate is probably a human carcinogen.

Last year, the EPA concluded a decades-long assessment of glyphosate risks by declaring the chemical is not likely carcinogenic to humans.

 

Ronnie Cummins audio: