The pharmaceutical and agro – chemical company Bayer has filed in the USA against the first judgment in a glyphosate-process of appeal. Bayer, a subsidiary of Monsanto have requested a California court, the verdict of the jury in the case of Johnson against Monsanto suspend and dismiss the action, such as Bayer announced on Wednesday.
In August, was sentenced in a U.S. court, Monsanto due to a cancer of the plaintiff Dewayne Johnson to 289 million dollars for Pain and suffering. In October, the presiding judge reduced the payment to $ 78 million, rejected the demand for a new process. Johnson worked as a groundsman at a California school and had used for years, glyphosate-containing products. He accuses Monsanto to be there for his disease to lymph glands cancer.
Bayer announced now, the evidence submitted would not meet the requirements for proof of liability and causality. The company pointed to “the consistently positive assessments by international regulatory authorities and the assessments underlying a substantial body of scientific evidence that glyphosate is not carcinogenic”.
glyphosate – Background: glyphosate
was First synthesized glyphosate in 1950. Since the seventies, the substance is used in agriculture. As an essential ingredient of plant protection product Roundup of the group’s Monsanto, it kills weeds in fields with oilseed rape, Maize and other crops.
Up to today, glyphosate is by far the most widely used pesticide. Its use has doubled in the past ten years, such as the study of a pesticide researcher shows (Benbrook et al., 2016). In Germany, farmers buy every year, around 5,000 tonnes of glyphosate-plant protection products – the proportion of the active ingredient at all-selling herbicides, is a good third.
First of all, the chemical was used before sowing, in order to rid Fields of weeds. However, since there are genetically modified plants that are glyphosate-resistant, it can also be used after sowing.
All articles on the topic of glyphosate, there is the TIME-ONLINE-page themes.
