Glyphosate Lawsuits
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup, is one of the most commonly used herbicides in the world. Back in March The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced that they consider glyphosate to be “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Now people are beginning to sue. The glyphosate lawsuits claim Monsanto knew more about glyphosate than it let on, and that the EPA changed their classification for glyphosate after pressure from Monsanto.
In U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Sept. 22, plaintiff 58-year-old Enrique Rubio filed a lawsuit. He was a former farm worker in California, Texas and Oregon who over several years labored in fields of cucumbers, onions and other vegetable crops. His duties included spraying fields with Roundup and other pesticides before Rubio was diagnosed with bone cancer in 1995, the lawsuit states.
A separate lawsuit making similar claims was filed the same day in federal court in New York by Judi Fitzgerald, 64, who claims she was exposed in the 1990s to Roundup when she worked at a horticultural products company. Fitzgerald was diagnosed with leukemia in 2012.
Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You poisoned me with glyphosate. Prepare to be sued.
Monsanto hired Intertek Scientific & Regulatory Consultancy to convene a panel of internationally recognized scientific experts to review IARC’s work. The experts include cancer experts, medical doctors, and individuals with doctoral degrees who are specialists in public health. I’m sure they’re hoping that more favorable findings will discourage additional lawsuits over glyphosate.
Monsanto spokeswoman Charla Lord said that the claims (lawsuits) are without merit and that glyphosate is safe for humans when used as labeled.
To read this article in its entirety, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2015/09/29/us/29reuters-monsanto-lawsuit.html?_r=1
Original reporting by Carey Gillam; Editing by Cynthia Oysterman.
