RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Germany’s Bayer AG, which bought Monsanto Co. last year, is underlining its determination to fight cases involving the U.S. company’s Roundup weed-killer in the face of more than 11,000 lawsuits so far.
In August, a San Francisco jury awarded a man $289 million after determining Roundup caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A judge later slashed the award to $78 million, and Monsanto has appealed. A second case in which a man claims the weed-killer caused cancer went to trial this week.
Bayer CEO Werner Baumann said as he presented the company’s annual earnings Wednesday that, as of Jan. 28, 11,200 lawsuits had been filed. He said that “we will continue to defend ourselves resolutely in all proceedings.”
He stressed that the active ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, “is a safe product.”
The Basyer-Monsanto merger had a significant impact on agtech operations in the Research Triangle.
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Bayer reached a $7 billion deal to sell parts of its Crop Science unit to German chemical company BASF to alleviate regulatory concerns over its planned takeover of Monsanto. All three companies have operations in North Carolina. Bayer Crop Science and BASF have significant operations in the Triangle. Several hundred Bayer employees in the Triangle were affected,
Overall Bayer agreed to the U.S. government’s demand that it sell about $9 billion in agriculture businesses as condition for acquiring Monsanto.
Bayer’s $57 billion takeover of Monsanto has been watched by competitors and environmental groups, which are fearful that the number of players in the business of selling seeds and pesticides will shrink further, according to CNBC.
The DOJ also required the divestiture of intellectual property, including R&D projects, and Bayer’s “digital agriculture” business to develop new farm technologies to maximize crop yield.
Antitrust regulators at the Justice Department said it was the biggest divestiture ever required for a merger.
