ST. LOUIS — Bayer has agreed to pay $39.6 million to settle claims that Monsanto's labeling of the Roundup weed killer was misleading.
As part of the settlement, in a class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in Kansas City, Missouri, Bayer will remove language from Roundup labels saying that glyphosate — the weed killer's active ingredient — only affects an enzyme found in plants, Bloomberg reported. Users and plaintiffs have contended that the ingredient attacks an enzyme in people.
“The matter has been settled to the satisfaction of all parties” pending court approval, a Bayer spokesman told the AFP news agency.
Bayer said the settlement agreement has no impact on the tens of thousands of lawsuits brought by gardeners and other users who claim Roundup causes cancer, which the company denies. Bayer lost the first three Roundup cases to go to trial, and has appealed.
Settlement talks have been going on for months to resolve cancer claims, and “the parties continue to mediate in good faith” in those cases, a Bayer spokesman told Bloomberg.
Bayer, which acquired Roundup with its $63 billion purchase of St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. in 2018, has said that it faces more than 48,000 cancer claims over Roundup. Estimates of a possible settlement of those cases have been in the range of $10 billion.
Separately, Monsanto filed a motion Friday asking a federal judge to dismiss a $265 million verdict against the company for another of its herbicides, Dicamba. In that case, a Missouri peach farmer, Bader Farms, alleged that the herbicide killed its crops.
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