Comment: 2023 at earliest before moves to ban glyphosate in EU
The EU doesn’t have America’s much more legalistic society, nor its class action legal mechanisms.
Nevertheless, court decisions over there can have considerable side-effects on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Therefore, one hopes that American juries and judges make wise decisions.
A California jury has held that Monsanto’s Roundup and Ranger Pro herbicides contributed to school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson’s lymphoma, and awarded a combined $289 million in compensatory and punitive damages against Monsanto.
That contrasts sharply with EU states last November renewing EU licencing for use of the glyphosate ingredient in these weedkillers for five years, after Germany dropped its opposition to the pesticide, ending an EU decision-making deadlock since June 2016, when a 15-year glyphosate licence expired, and an 18-month extension was granted.
The licence renewal was welcomed by EU and Irish farmers (who said glyphosate makes growing of winter cereals viable for them).
So Europe will have to wait until the end of 2022 at the earliest before any attempt to ban glyphosate.
The European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency say glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer in humans.
Few expect a replication in Europe of the mounting legal pressure Monsanto faces in the US from thousands of other plaintiffs filing suits, despite reactions to the Dewayne Johnson verdict including Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, Luigi Di Maio, saying there was no longer any doubt about the dangers of the herbicide, and both him and France’s environment minister, Nicolas Hulot, saying it must be banned.
A European Commission spokesperson said it would only reassess the safety of chemicals when a company re-applies to Brussels to extend or renew a licence.
Meanwhile, Monsanto — and Bayer of Germany, which is buying Monsanto — plan to appeal the California decisions, and say they are confident courts will ultimately find that Monsanto and glyphosate were not responsible for Mr Johnson’s illness.
Nevertheless, the California verdict puts the multinationals of the agri-business world on notice that their operations must be legally waterproof if they operate in the US.
Unfortunately, such multinationals now include Ornua Co-operative Ltd of Ireland, and its US subsidiary, against which a consumer has filed a putative class action in the California federal court, alleging Ornua Foods North America misleadingly marketed Kerrygold butter as produced from grass-fed cows. The plaintiff, Dyami Myers-Taylor, claimed the cows are fed for part of the year with soy, corn and other grains.
Ornua says its products are marketed in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, and they will vigorously defend claims which propose otherwise. Once again, one hopes for the sake of the Irish dairy industry that American juries and judges make wise decisions, if that case proceeds to a verdict.
It’s just one of many agri-business cases currently in the US courts.
Also in the dairy industry, and in the California federal court, a judge has been asked to approve a $40m settlement to resolve putative claims for tens of thousands of dairy farmers alleging that DairyAmerica Inc and its affiliate, California Dairies, conspired to boost profits by lowballing milk prices paid to farmers.
At least dairy farmers stand to win in that one.
Another California federal judge has certified three classes of the state’s consumers who claim Kellogg falsely advertises its cereals as healthy, when they’re loaded with added sugar.
Novelty dessert company 600 lb Gorillas was recently awarded $725,000 from a Massachusetts federal jury in a breach of contract suit over allegedly inferior ice cream. But the ice cream supplier has successfully counterclaimed $270,000 for being stuck with unused ice cream sandwiches.
An Illinois federal judge is ruling on a proposed class action alleging that Walmart brand pita chips are falsely labeled as “all natural.
The list goes on and on, in the land of 1,338,678 lawyers.
