Monsanto-Bayer is ending U.S. glyphosate residential sales in 2023. This product was declared “probably carcinogenic” by the World Health Organization in 2015, and various lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by various consumer advocates, including the Center for Food Safety (CFS), led to this change.
For decades, glyphosate, the key ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, was considered safe because it only affected plants through the shikimate pathway. But bacteria in the human gut also use that pathway.
In response to the CFS lawsuit, the EPA “effectively admitted grave errors in its 2020 interim registration of glyphosate, asking the court for permission to re-do the agency’s faulty Endangered Species Act assessments.” But the agency still wanted Roundup to stay on the market in the meantime.
The lawsuit presented “ample evidence” that glyphosate is a human health threat, posing the risk of cancer especially to farmworkers and others who use the herbicide, such as gardeners and landscapers.
Bayer settled several lawsuits against it in 2020, which totaled over $10 billion to compensate those harmed by its products. Jury trials over glyphosate are continuing in California. One lawsuit, Hardeman v. Monsanto, was re-affirmed by the courts in May 2021, when the plaintiff, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2015, sued. He had used Roundup for more than 20 years.
CFS has warned about the dangers of Roundup for more than 20 years. The agency has also delivered petitions to Home Depot and Lowe’s, asking them to end the sales of Roundup.
Executive director of the Center for Food Safety, Andrew Kimbrell, said in a statement, “Bayer’s decision to end U.S. residential sale of Roundup is a historic victory for public health and the environment. As agricultural, large-scale use of this toxic pesticide continues, our farmworkers and consumers remain at risk. It’s time for EPA to act and ban glyphosate for all uses.”
It must be ended completely. Commercial as well as residential