Who is paying for Monsanto's crimes? We are. By Carey Gillam
A US court ordered Monsanto to pay $80m in
damages because it hid cancer risks. That’s a small consolation for victims
For the second time in
less than eight months a US
jury has found that decades of scientific evidence demonstrates a
clear cancer connection to Monsanto’s line of top-selling Roundup herbicides,
which are used widely by consumers and farmers. Twice now jurors have
additionally determined that the company’s own internal records show Monsanto
has intentionally manipulated the public record to hide the cancer risks. Both
juries found punitive damages were warranted because the company’s cover-up of
cancer risks was so egregious.
The juries saw
evidence that Monsanto has
ghost-written scientific papers, tried to silence scientists, scuttled
independent government testing and cozied up to regulators for favorable safety
reviews of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. Even the US district
judge Vince Chhabria, who oversaw the San Francisco trial that concluded
Wednesday with an $80.2m
damage award, had harsh
words for Monsanto.
Chhabria said there were “large swaths of
evidence” showing that the company’s herbicides could cause cancer. He also
said there was “a great deal of evidence that Monsanto has not taken a
responsible, objective approach to the safety of its product … and does not
particularly care whether its product is in fact giving people cancer, focusing
instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises
genuine and legitimate concerns about the issue.”
Monsanto’s new owner,
the German pharmaceutical company Bayer,
asserts that the juries and judges are wrong; the evidence of a cancer
risk is invalid; the evidence of bad corporate conduct is misunderstood and out
of context; and that the company will ultimately prevail... read more:
