Bayer announced earlier this week that it would no longer be selling products containing glyphosate to U.S home gardeners.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup and has been known to cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other cancers.

Bayer currently has around 30,000 legal claims against them from customers who have developed cancer after long-term exposure to glyphosate.

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer declared that it was ‘probably carcinogenic to humans,’ in 2015. While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under former President Donald Trump ruled that the chemical did not pose any risk to human health, the Biden Administration later admitted that the review was flawed and needed to be redone.

Bayer to Pull Glyphosate Products, Including Roundup, From U.S. Home and Garden Market

Bayer inherited several lawsuits in 2018 when it acquired Monsanto. Bayer settled those cases in 2020 with $10 billion. The settlement allowed Bayer to keep selling glyphosate products without warnings.

As the company continued to face problems they pulled the product to prevent more lawsuits. The company maintains that the decision was purely made to manage litigation risk and not because of health concerns.

Roundup and other products will be replaced with other active ingredients starting in 2023 after EPA reviews.

Related: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

The French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety has taken away the marketing licenses for 36 glyphosate-based products. The products will no longer be available for purchase in France, which accounts for almost three-quarters of glyphosate products sold in France. Several Roundup products are included on the list, another blow to pharmaceutical giant Bayer. France is not the only country to ban glyphosate-based products recently, as there is increasing scrutiny on the herbicide worldwide.

Bayer Problems

Since Bayer acquired Monsanto in June 2018, public questioning of glyphosate has drastically increased. The company has been on the losing side of three major decisions in the U.S., with the initial payout amounts totaling more than 2 billion USD (the awards would later be reduced by judges).

Increasing Bans

France is the European Union’s largest producer of cereals, poultry, beef, and wine. Losing a large portion of business from French farmers is not ideal for Bayer, but bans or restrictions on glyphosate are becoming a more common occurrence. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a group of nations in the Middle East consisting of Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has banned the chemical completely since last year. Austria is the first European country to approve a total ban of glyphosate while Germany has announced plans for total bans in the future. Several smaller municipalities around the world have enacted restrictions on public and non-commercial use of glyphosate.

The United States is not included in the number of countries planning to limit glyphosate usage. Quite the opposite, actually. When the government of Thailand announced plans to ban glyphosate on December 1st, U.S. officials warned that the regulations would interfere with grain trade, as U.S. crops are heavily sprayed with that herbicide. Once again, the U.S. government puts profit over citizen health, even over those in other nations.

Sources:

• France to ban dozens of glyphosate weedkillers amid health risk debate – Reuters
• France bans dozens of glyphosate weedkillers – France24
• Where is Glyphosate Banned? – Baum Hedlund Law
• Thailand wants to ban these three pesticides. The US government says no – The Guardian