Glyphosate-related lawsuits against Monsanto are sprouting up like weeds.
Bayer, which now owns Monsanto, revealed in a conference call yesterday that as of the end of July it faced about 8,000 glyphosate lawsuits, up from around 5,200 the last time it reported on them.
Bayer stock prices fell after the August 10th ruling in Johnson v. Monsanto, which it is appealing. Until this month, Bayer had not fully incorporated Monsanto because a judge had ordered it to first divest part of its holdings for antitrust reasons.
However, on August 16th, Bayer reiterated that it expected that the Monsanto deal would bring it profits starting in 2019 and the company’s leadership said it would stay the course on fighting the glyphosate cases it inherited.
Bayer CEO Werner Baumann said during yesterday’s call that the California jury decision was “inconsistent with the robust science-based conclusions of regulators and health authorities worldwide.”
The World Health Organization considers glyphosate a “probable carcinogen” as does the State of California, where Johnson v. Monsanto took place, but some agencies, including U.S. National regulators, do not.
Monsanto had a long history of influencing glyphosate’s scientific image, going so far as editing manuscripts that scientists later submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals without acknowledging Monsanto’s involvement, according to emails revealed during the Johnson v. Monsanto court case.
Baumann said that Bayer was not budgeting to pay any settlements for the glyphosate cases, though an independent analyst estimated that it may need to spend as much as $5 billion on glyphosate cases, Bloomberg reports.
Coins2Day has contacted Bayer for further comment.