The herbicide Roundup remains a tool for professional turf managers and for use in agriculture, but its future drifts further into uncertainty with each successive lawsuit lodged against the company that manufactures it.
A Georgia jury recently ordered Bayer, the parent company of Roundup maker Monsanto, to pay $2.065 billion in damages to a man who says the weedkiller caused his cancer.
The Georgia decision is the latest in a long line of lawsuits brought against Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018 for $63 million. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, has been blamed for causing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in thousands of people since 2019.
John Barnes filed suit against Bayer/Monsanto in 2021, saying the weedkiller caused his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Bayer representatives said the company, based in Leverkusen, Germany, will appeal the decision.
Roundup was patented by Monsanto in 1971 and became commercially available in 1974. In that time, it had become the world's most popular weedkiller because of its effectiveness. Bayer began fending off lawsuits within months of acquiring the company that had been based in St. Louis.
Since the first complaint was filed in 2019, more than 177,000 suits have been filed against Bayer/Monsanto, thousands of which were settled for nearly $11 billion in 2020. That sum was increased to $16 billion last June.
The Houston-based law firm of Arnold & Itkin released the following statement: "Today’s verdict is another example of Bayer's refusal to accept responsibility for poisoning people with its toxic weed-killer Roundup. Our firms have now tried four separate cases to verdict for four different cancer victims and each jury has awarded punitive damages against Bayer for its wrongful conduct. Hopefully, today’s verdict causes Bayer's leadership to fully and finally take accountability for injuring so many families."
In 2023, Bayer announced it would pull glyphosate-based Roundup from the consumer and lawn and garden markets, replacing the active ingredient with a combination of four chemicals — fluazifop-P-butyl, triclopyr, diquat dibromide and imazapic. The original formulation remains available for the agriculture and professional markets — for now.
Bayer representatives have repeatedly said the weedkiller is safe in accordance with label directions. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted a regulatory review of Roundup in 2020 and concluded the herbicide is not a carcinogen.
The company released a statement saying the Georgia decision: "We disagree with the jury’s verdict, as it conflicts with the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence and the consensus of regulatory bodies and their scientific assessments worldwide. We believe that we have strong arguments on appeal to get this verdict overturned and the excessive and unconstitutional damage awards eliminated or reduced. The court previously granted the majority of the company’s motion for a directed verdict finding that the plaintiff had failed to prove most of their causes of action in this case.
"We continue to stand fully behind the safety of Roundup products - critical tools that farmers rely on to produce affordable food and feed the world."