While the European Commission announced on Thursday, November 16, the renewal of the authorization of glyphosate until 2033, in the United States, Monsanto and Bayer are pursuing a series of trials. Vietnam has completely banned the herbicide since 2019.
Vietnam completely banned all imports of glyphosate-based herbicides in 2019. The decision was then strongly criticized by the United States and its Secretary of State for Agriculture at the time, Sonny Perdue. He predicted a devastating impact on global agriculture and the ability of farmers to feed the planet. Behind these statements, there was the fear that other countries in the area would follow Vietnam’s lead and ban the substance. The Asian glyphosate market is, in fact, estimated at four billion dollars per year.
Vietnam’s decision to ban glyphosate was strongly influenced by the use of Agent Orange, a herbicide marketed by the Monsanto company, the same company that produced the main glyphosate-based weedkiller on the world market, Roundup. . Agent Orange was used during the Vietnam War to destroy areas of forests where communist fighters were hiding and the product was found responsible for causing cancer, serious illnesses and deformities for nearly three million Vietnamese. . However, the country has not become a champion of organic agriculture since other chemical pesticides are still authorized there.
The same year, Thailand also came close to banning glyphosate, but also the import of agricultural products grown with glyphosate, which would have considerably reduced agricultural exports from the United States to Thailand. The government finally changed its mind a few days before the ban came into force. An investigation found concerted lobbying efforts between German firm Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, and US officials at the Commerce Department to influence Thai authorities on the issue. Sri Lanka also changed its mind after banning the product in 2015, before authorizing it again in 2022, officially to improve the yields of tea growing in the country.
In the United States, Bayer is drowning in lawsuits
The German group has been faced, in recent years, with an avalanche of lawsuits linked to glyphosate. The fault lies with its flagship product, Roundup, accused of causing cancer. This glyphosate-based herbicide is at the center of the 160,000 lawsuits filed so far against Bayer since 2018. The German company was forced to set aside $16 billion to face this legal risk and two-thirds of This sum has already been spent to settle the accounts of 115,000 of these procedures.
The latest case dates from the end of October, where in California, a San Diego jury awarded more than $330 million to a 57-year-old surveyor diagnosed with lymphoma after decades of using the controversial herbicide based on glyphosate. This verdict is the third setback in a row in one month for the German company before the American courts, after a consecutive series of nine successes in court.
But Bayer does not intend to give up since the group appealed on November 1, as in each of these long and costly cases for everyone. There are still around 40,000 open procedures across the Atlantic against Roundup and the German giant.
Despite the lawsuits, Bayer has no plans to stop selling its cans of Roundup in the United States. It still made a concession in 2021, saying that it would soon no longer sell its glyphosate-based weedkillers to non-professional gardeners, whom the company accuses, moreover, of being at the origin of most of his legal troubles.
The German group regularly assures that its products are not carcinogenic and therefore intends to continue to sell them to American farmers. However, there is local resistance from many communities in the United States. In Connecticut, for example, it is illegal to use pesticides near elementary schools. Glyphosate-based products remain by far the most used across the Atlantic, with nearly 140,000 tonnes sprayed each year on corn, cotton and soybean crops.