Monsanto’s Roundup Faces European Politics and U.S. Lawsuits
Bernhard Url, the executive director of the agency, has called the criticism “the latest
in a series of efforts to discredit the scientific process behind the E. U.
assessment of glyphosate.”
Monsanto and its competitors, many of which also sell glyphosate products after Monsanto’s
patent expired years ago, now see the process as divorced from rational discourse.
But, he added, “this particular forum was not set up for substantive discussion related to the regulation and use of glyphosate.”
Monsanto, which is in the process of being acquired by Bayer, also faces litigation in the United States from farmers, members of their families
and others who claim that Roundup is connected to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
With Roundup at the center of a federal case in the United States over claims
that it causes cancer, European Union officials will meet in Brussels on Thursday as they weigh whether to allow the continued use of products that contain Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, in its 28 nations.
“Our planet is being poisoned by Monsanto,” said Teri McCall, a California avocado farmer whose husband, Jack, used Roundup for years
and died in 2015 after suffering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Because Europe makes such decisions the way Americans vote for president — with
a weighted vote among its member states — the outcome is tricky to predict.