The day after a California federal judge rejected Bayer AG’s $2 billion deal to cover future claims that Roundup causes cancer, the company said it was considering taking the weedkiller’s active ingredient off the U.S. residential market.
Bayer said talks about taking the ingredient glyphosate off the retail market won’t extend to ceasing its agricultural sales, since most Roundup users said they used the herbicide made by the company’s Monsanto unit on their lawns at home.
The company emphasized that it still believed glyphosate is safe, citing a recent brief filed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the Ninth Circuit stating glyphosate doesn’t pose a health risk to humans.
Bayer said it believed a class action settlement would have been the fairest way to resolve the future claims.
The $2 billion deal struck down by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria was meant to cover two groups of Roundup users: those who have been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but haven’t yet filed suit, and users who have been exposed to Roundup but haven’t yet developed cancer.
Bayer said it was still looking into creating a science panel to review the science about the safety of Roundup, whose findings would be made public.
Law360: https://www.law360.com/articles/1388863/bayer-may-end-glyphosate-retail-us-sales