Bayer will pay more than $10 billion to resolve thousands of
lawsuits regarding claims that its herbicide Roundup causes cancer, the company
announced Wednesday.
Monsanto, which Bayer bought in 2018, lost a lawsuit that
same year brought by a school groundskeeper who claimed its weedkiller had
caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Since then, thousands of U.S. lawsuits have
been filed against the company.
Bayer CEO Werner Baumann called the decision to settle the
lawsuits the right one in order to end a long period of uncertainty.
“The decision to resolve the Roundup litigation enables us
to focus fully on the critical supply of health care and food,” he said in
statement. “It will also return the conversation about the safety and utility
of glyphosate-based herbicides to the scientific and regulatory arena and to
the full body of science.”
The settlement, however, does not contain any admission of
wrongdoing or liability.
Bayer will pay $8.8 billion to $9.6 billion to settle
existing lawsuits and then another $1.25 billion that will cover any potential
litigation in the future, the company said in a press release Wednesday.
Kenneth Feinberg, a court-appointed mediator for the
settlement, called the deal a "constructive and reasonable"
resolution.
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