With a California court ruling that Monsanto’s Roundup chemical caused groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson to get cancer (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma) and ordering the company to pay $289M in damages, the reverberations have been felt around the world.
Even though many of us in organic may feel vindicated that justice is finally being served, the risks of glyphosate have been clear for quite some time. This super-toxic chemical was classified by the World Health Organization in 2015 as a “probable human carcinogen” which means that it probably causes cancer. Additionally, glyphosate is known to the State of California to cause cancer.
Given the enormity of this ruling, I wanted to give you some perspective on what this decision means and how it could impact organic food companies.
Legal Landscape
Not surprisingly, Monsanto said it will appeal this decision to the State of California Court of Appeals, yet the timetable for this appeal is uncertain.
However, another trial is expected to begin in October in St. Louis, and there are 4,000 plaintiffs who have claims pending against Monsanto, with the potential outcomes resulting in billions of dollars in damage awards.
“Plaintiffs’ attorneys have said that they intend to seek the unsealing of many more internal Monsanto documents obtained through discovery. But it’s already clear in the documents we’ve seen to date that the company has had ample scientific evidence showing risks associated with its herbicides. Rather than choose to warn consumers of the risks revealed through scientific studies, Monsanto instead sought to muddy the scientific arena with a host of strategies that put its own propaganda forward disguised as independent information,” said Carey Gillam, a journalist, Research Director of U.S. Right to Know, and author of the book Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer and the Corruption of Science which documents Monsanto’s controversial history with Roundup
Impact Going Forward
Despite the fact that the social media world was abuzz with elation, Carey Gillam said, “I think it will take more than this one verdict to create real change. Yet, this is one more chink in the wall that powerful corporations have built with the help of regulators to protect their profits.”
And while politicians and corporations in the U.S. have barely acknowledged the ruling, the same cannot be said for those in Europe.
Henry Rowlands, an expert on glyphosate who serves as both founder of The Detox Project and Director of Sustainable Pulse, said, “The retailer and government reactions in Europe have been shocking to me, as they usually both take a while to weigh the verdicts from court cases in the U.S. However, not this time. Several of the largest retailers in the UK, including Homebase, Wilko and B&Q, stated that they have already begun a review of their glyphosate product lines.”
European governments have also expressed strong opinions.
A spokesman for the German environment ministry said on Monday that glyphosate should be halted during the current legislative period, which ends in three years. Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio wrote on his Facebook page over the weekend, “We must fight the invasion of this substance in our market, a threat that exists due to monstrous commercial agreements signed only in the name of profit.”
In France, Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot said on Sunday that he hoped the verdict against Monsanto would put an end to political indifference to the danger of pesticides.
What Organic Companies Need to Know
As Organic Insider has been advising for many months, organic food brands would be well served to get their supply chains tested for glyphosate, due to the fact that consumers will increasingly demand this type of transparency.
Henry Rowlands, who runs the Glyphosate Residue-Free Certification program, which is administered through The Detox Project, acknowledged that the court’s ruling has had an extraordinary impact.
“The verdict itself caused a massive boost in global interest in glyphosate testing of water, food and hair, as well as Glyphosate Residue-Free Certification for food brands. We received over 200,000 unique visits over the weekend on The Detox Project website, and we were also contacted by 52 food brands on Monday regarding our certification.”
Glyphosate is the most widely used chemical in the world, with approximately 250 million pounds sprayed annually in the U.S. and 1.65 billion pounds globally. Furthermore, results from a laboratory test at the University of California at San Francisco, one of the most respected medical schools in the country, showed that 93% of people tested had glyphosate in their urine.
The unfortunate reality is that glyphosate is everywhere, and consumers’ awareness of this super-toxic chemical is only growing, particularly because of this recent court ruling.
Despite the fact that many organic food companies may have “certification fatigue,” the issue of glyphosate contamination is not going away.
What it comes down to is whether organic brands want to deal with this problem proactively or not.
(Disclosure: I have a marketing relationship with the Glyphosate Residue-Free Certification.)
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Have a great day! 
Max Goldberg, Founder |
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