Pixabay
Pixabay

A US jury has found that German chemical giant Bayer’s Roundup weedkiller did not cause an Oregon’s man’s cancer – the company’s fourth consecutive trial victory over such claims, Reuters reported on 18 June.

Bayer said the verdict, reached on 17 June by the Circuit Court of Jackson County, Oregon, was “consistent with the assessments of expert regulators worldwide as well as the overwhelming evidence from four decades of scientific studies concluding that Roundup can be used safely and is not carcinogenic.

“We continue to stand behind the safety of Roundup and will confidently defend the safety of our product as well as our good faith actions in any future litigation,” the company added.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Bayer brands such as Roundup and RangerPro and has been at the centre of mass litigation in the USA brought mostly by residential gardeners claiming the weedkiller caused their cancer.

The company, which inherited the lawsuits following its 2018 purchase of global agrichemical firm Monsanto for US$63bn, has spent billions of dollars to settle almost 100,000 Roundup cases.

Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court has rejected Bayer’s bid to dismiss claims that its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, Reuters reported on 21 June.

The justices turned away a Bayer appeal and left in place a lower court decision that upheld US$25M in damages awarded to California resident Edwin Hardeman, a Roundup user who claimed his cancer had been caused by the company’s glyphosate-based weedkillers, the report said.

Hardeman had regularly used Roundup for 26 years at his home in northern California before being diagnosed with a form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Bayer has said it should not be penalised for marketing a product deemed safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and on which the EPA would not allow a cancer warning to be printed, the report said.

Last month, US President Joe Biden's administration had urged the court not to hear the Bayer appeal, Reuters wrote, reversing the government's position previously taken under former President Donald Trump.

Bayer has a second petition pending on a related issue that justices could act upon in the coming weeks, according to the Reuters report.

Roundup is used by farmers in combination with the company’s genetically modified seeds.

Bayer has said it planned to replace glyphosate in weedkillers for the US residential market for non-professional gardeners with other active ingredients, Reuters wrote.