NY & Bayer Reaches $6.9M Settlement Over Roundup Advertising

NY & Bayer Reaches $6.9M Settlement Over Roundup Advertising

Introduction

The pharmaceutical and biotechnology giant Bayer has agreed to pay $6.9 million to resolve accusations brought by the attorney general of New York that its Monsanto division made false and misleading statements regarding the safety of the weedkiller Roundup.

The amount is in addition to the many billions of dollars Bayer has already spent to resolve claims that Roundup, one of the most commonly used herbicides in the world, causes cancer. The New York Attorney General's complaint centered on statements made in advertisements by Monsanto, which Bayer purchased in 2018, that Roundup "won't harm anything but weeds" and does not endanger the welfare of wildlife or other animals.

According to the attorney general, such assertions violated a prior agreement New York state and Monsanto signed two decades ago, in which Monsanto promised to refrain from making unfounded claims about the safety of Roundup products containing glyphosate.

The AG stated in a statement that pesticides may seriously affect the environment and represent a lethal threat to animals, particularly pollinators and other species essential to agriculture. To ensure that pesticides are used appropriately, it is crucial for pesticide manufacturers, even the most potent ones, to be open and honest with their customers about the risks associated with their products.

Insisting that Roundup is safe to use, Bayer said it was "pleased" to settle the legal dispute. The business pointed out that the state's legal claim concentrated on advertising tactics rather than human health hazards and that it reached no conclusions about the safety of Roundup products or about whether they had harmed the ecosystem, particularly pollinators or aquatic species.

The business claimed that in making the assertion, the attorney general had used out-of-date scientific data. For many years, glyphosate has been the focus of investigation and scholarly discussion. In 2015, it was designated as a "probable human carcinogen" by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer, which has its headquarters in France.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined in 2020 that the pesticide did not present a danger to human health, but a federal appeals court in California ordered the agency to reconsider that conclusion last year, claiming it was not adequately supported by the available data.

The millions of cash that Bayer and Monsanto will give to the office of the New York attorney general will be used to mitigate the harm that environmental toxins or pollutants inflict on aquatic creatures and pollinating insects.

The firms must also immediately take down or stop running any marketing that portrays glyphosate-containing products like Roundup as being safe for animals or nontoxic.