A second jury in the USA finds carcinogenic effect in glyphosate of Monsanto
A federal jury in the United States today considered that a glyphosate-based Monsanto herbicide was a "substantial factor" in the cancer of a man who used that product from the Bayern subsidiary for decades.
It is the second verdict blaming Monsanto's glyphosate for causing cancer after a state jury in California last year sentenced the company to pay $ 289 million - then reduced to $ 78 - to a gardener exposed to the product.
The verdict released today is the first at the federal level and the affected is a man, Edwin Hardeman, who is 70, who between 1980 and 2012 used regularly for his garden in California the controversial herbicide, which is marketed as Roundup .
Hardeman suffers from a non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (a cancer in blood lymphocytes).
Once concluded that Roundup was a "substantial factor" in Hardeman's cancer, the process now moves to the stage where the jury must decide whether Monsanto is responsible for it.
"Today's verdict reinforces what another jury failed last year and what scientists from the state of California and the World Health Organization (WHO) have concluded: glyphosate causes cancer to people," he said in a statement. President of the environmental organization Environmental Working Group, Ken Cook.
"While similar demands are mounting," he added, "there will be more evidence that Roundup is not safe, and the company has tried to hide it."
In the previous case, the first conviction against Monsanto in the US, a jury determined that the company did not correctly warn of the health risk that Roundup was running, which he considered "a substantial factor" in the illness of gardener Dewayne Johnson .
Johnson, who also suffers from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, used the controversial herbicide Monsanto on a frequent basis while working as a gardener in San Francisco and, according to him, it was the continued exposure to this product that caused cancer.
The initial sentence condemned Monsanto to pay 289 million dollars to Johnson, but later it was reduced to 78 million dollars (39 for damages and another 39 for exemplary punishment).
Monsanto, however, has appealed the guilty verdict as it considers that neither this nor the sentence "are backed by evidence or by law."
