ST. LOUIS — More than a year after Bayer gobbled it up,
Monsanto has managed to stay in the headlines, thanks to a mountain of lawsuits
that allege its moneymaking weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Like Monsanto,
Bayer insists the widely used product is safe, but three big jury verdicts have
found otherwise.
“It’s been a little
bit more noisy than expected,” Liam Condon, president of Bayer’s crop science
division, conceded during a recent visit to the company’s St. Louis-area
facilities. “The noise is completely related to glyphosate,” he added,
referring to the active ingredient in Roundup. “For sure, there’s a speed bump
with the glyphosate litigation, but that’s not going to last forever.”
But the product liability lawsuits — the company is now
being sued by more than 18,400 plaintiffs — haven’t just raised questions about
a weedkiller that’s been on the market since the early 1970s, they’ve also
offered a rare glimpse into Monsanto’s internal public relations strategy when
under fire.
To shape public perception about Roundup, the biotechnology
giant formerly headquartered in Creve Coeur engaged in a coordinated push to
counteract negative publicity — efforts that included moves to discredit
critical journalists and activists, and also aimed to influence search engine
results online, according to records divulged in the lawsuits against the
company.
Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman, Los Angeles-based
trial lawyers who have handled many of the anti-Roundup cases, have been
selectively posting Monsanto documents, including internal correspondence,
starting in 2017.
The latest trove of documents, released in July, detail a
range of glyphosate-targeted efforts from Monsanto officials over the years.
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