Monsanto hit with $175M verdict against Roundup | Hacker News Reader

Monsanto hit with $175M verdict against Roundup

ehn.org

41 pointsPaulHoule19 comments

"drop in the bucket" comments aren't reading the article. Once the mechanism for successful suit is proven, I'd imagine there will be thousands more.

>>Friday's verdict on behalf of retired restaurateur Ernest Caranci is the first of more than 200 cases filed since 2022 waiting to go to trial in Philadelphia alone, according to the court's website. Bayer settled most Roundup claims against it in 2020 for $10.9 billion. And while Bayer has recently prevailed against nine consecutive cases bringing similar claims as Caranci's, thousands of additional lawsuits are waiting in state and federal courts.

The EU says Glyphosate has no "critical areas of concern". The US says it's "not likely to be carcinogenic". IARC says it's "probably carcinogenic".

I've been using these chemicals for the past couple of years, buying them in concentrate, diluting it inside a backpack sprayer, and applying it to 2 acres of uneven land that I don't want to let turn into a forest but also can't easily be mowed.

Is there a better / safer chemical? Or different way to achieve the same result?

Covering the land with salt would kill all plant life and trees and is "natural" and "safe for humans" but much worse for the land and soil from what I've read.

Edit: Guessing the downvotes are people who disapprove of herbicides. Fair. But the fact is there's demand for these products. If this chemical is banned, another one will pop up and there's no guarantee that it will be safer or better for us or the environment.

I agree, for what it’s worth. It’s hard. Roundup kills weeds and it seems miles better than other things that also kill weeds. But yeah it’s bad so don’t use it, but that doesn’t solve the question of what should we use instead. It’s genuinely hard, many people who start off organic farming and hating Monsanto end up using Roundup because it’s the best out of a series of bad choices.

That said, if they lied about known risks and lied in their marketing then by all means throw the book at them. And if people are sick as a result of their greed then throw the book twice. But still, I wouldn’t blame any farmer for using their product.

Can someone explain why they keep losing when all the evidence does seem to say that it isn’t problematic? Is it just politics?

The story I read somewhere is that Bayer keep thinking if they just lay out the facts in court they will prevail like they do in Europe but that's not how things go in American courts where the legal team's ability to manage the court's emotions wins the day. I have no idea how much truth there is to it.

They've lost 3 recent cases, before that they won 9 in a row: https://www.reuters.com/legal/bayer-investor-calls-rethink-a....

Any idea what was different between the cases? The article isn’t clear.

Be careful please. My mom got Parkinson’s at 52 and the increasing consensus is that roundup was the cause. She sprayed it all the time in the garden. I never believed that could have been the reason for her illness, but in Ireland, now, people increasingly point the finger at round up.

We should be pouring money into herbicide-free weed control, like laser equipped robots (which I swear is not a sci-fi fever dream)

https://carbonrobotics.com/

>can't easily be mowed

Not for Andrew Camarata

Brush mowing an island https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP1HkicY0Eo

Track loader, new water pump and mow field https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaI7kWav8SE

I've used a vinegar based weed killer. Not a home mix, a proper horticultural strength product. For a large area that is already under some control it works very well as it'll kill all the seedlings outright. For larger plants it varies in effectiveness. If you've already sprayed with roundup you could switch to control with horticultural vinegar.

On the safety front, it would burn your skin if left on for a few minutes. Other than that I've found no information that it's bad, it is really just very strong apple cider vinegar.

Plant an ivy to choke out everything else.

Pen goats in the area to eat everything.

Controlled burning yearly.

Inculate area with honey mushrooms to kill off trees.

Monsanto slapped on wrist with equivalent of $1.75 bus fare for giving cancer to millions

I am really curious if time will tell Werner Baumann right. He is the architect of the Bayer / Monsanto deal and so far Bayer has lost double-digit Billions on this.

Another Roundup damages story in the past day:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38136314

Cost of doing business

I love the video when the guy said you can drink the stuff, then when they said go ahead he refused.

"I would be glad to drink the RoundUp...Well not really, but it would be harmless if I did!"

I love the video where the guy has a bartender concoct him a drink of glyphosate and fracking fluid and then drinks it: https://youtu.be/M8sgEhpHM4k?si=gmRk5pZmq8med2wP

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