2023-12-20 14:14:33
MONDE – A month after being convicted for its glyphosate, better known under the brand Roundup, the agrochemical manufacturer Monsanto, a subsidiary of the German group Bayer, is found guilty again, in a case this time linked to its polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB). A court in King County (Washington State) ordered the American company to pay $857 million to students and parents of a school who were exposed to this highly toxic substance, described as an “eternal pollutant”. Monsanto announced its decision to appeal, claiming to have alerted the establishment to the dangers of PCBs contained in lighting. The group is the subject of other legal proceedings linked to the effects of this substance.
Monsanto’s legal troubles never end. The German group Bayer has around 165,000 cases for its Roundup product alone. Nearly two-thirds of these cases, or 113,000, were resolved or declared inadmissible, and 75% of the 125,000 actions against the company were concluded out of court for an amount of 10 to 11 billion dollars, he said. -she announced in June 2020.
Monsanto “never warned anyone”
However, the agrochemist is not at the end of his troubles. Monsanto was ordered on Monday, December 18 to pay the tidy sum of $857 million in damages to parents and students who were exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls, toxic, ecotoxic and reprotoxic substances, very persistent and described as “pollutants eternal”.
The seven victims, five former students and two former parents of students, claimed that their exposure to PCBs, contained in the lighting, caused them health problems.
Felix Luna, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Monsanto “never warned anyone” that the PCBs would last as long, even longer than the facilities that contained them. “They never warned that when they enter the body, they stay there for life, that they are neurotoxic,” he said.
The American company, for its part, recalled that the production of the incriminated PCBs, supposed to prevent the risk of fire, had been stopped since 1977. The school was also “regularly warned” in the 1990s about the need to replace lighting, according to Monsanto. The group announced its decision to appeal, as has been the case in other legal cases related to the effects of PCBs.
The company emphasizes that it has been exonerated in several of these cases, but decisions rendered in the past and which concerned teachers as well as other students and parents of this school, have inflicted on Monsanto several hundred million dollars in damages. damages and interests.
The heaviest sentences handed down against the Bayer subsidiary nevertheless concern its Roundup weedkiller, made from glyphosate. It is a herbicide used to eliminate weeds in agricultural crops and public areas. The product has been at the heart of lawsuits, controversies and debates for many years due to its impacts on human health.
RoundUp’s authorization in Europe renewed for 10 years
In the United States, the Supreme Court refused Monsanto, ordered to pay $25 million to a retiree suffering from blood cancer. In November, it was the Missouri court that ordered the American company to pay 1.5 billion to three Americans, who blamed their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma on the use of RoundUp. The group appealed this decision.
The product is still authorized in Europe and the European Commission ruled in mid-November, after a second vote by Member States, in favor of renewal of its authorization for 10 years. The controversy over the consequences of using weedkillers comes mainly from the mixed results of the various studies carried out so far. For example, in 2015 the World Health Organization (WHO) classified glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen” for humans, based on “case-control studies of occupational exposure conducted in Sweden, the United States and Canada which showed increased risks of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
But Brussels’ decision to extend the authorization of glyphosate is mainly based on the conclusions of the report by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), published in July, according to which glyphosate does not present a “critical area of concern “. However, “new conditions and restrictions” are planned, such as a ban on the use of this pesticide for desiccation.
In addition to its Roundup weedkiller, Monsanto is the only company to cultivate a GMO (genetically modified organism) in Europe, its MON 810 corn, authorized in 2017 by the European Union for a period of 10 years. “Privilege” that the American company obtains through the powerful lobbyists of the influential agency FleishmanHillard, whose practices – such as the registration of personalities for the purpose of lobbying for which the agrochemist has been sentenced – are sometimes controversial.
Bayer has constantly contested the harmfulness of glyphosate after the WHO conclusions. The German group, which quadrupled its profits in 2022 thanks to its agro-industrial sector, announced in 2021 that it would release an additional $4.5 billion to finance ongoing legal proceedings. The total amount spent and dedicated to the trials is more than $16 billion.
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