Food Ethics
June 6, 2019Sperm Count
June 21, 2019Food Chain Radio Show #1190
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
The Big Bayer Monsanto Bet!
Guest: Mischa Popoff, Author, Is It Organic
Monsanto’s weedkiller glyphosate, which is best known by its trade name Roundup, has become ubiquitous.
In the most recent survey by the Environmental Working Group, glyphosate was found in 21 of the 21 oat based foods being marketed to children. And, 17 of the foods contained levels of the weedkiller in excess of what EWG scientists consider “safe.”
A California jury recently awarded more than $2 billion dollars to a couple over their claims that Monsanto failed to warn them that using its Roundup would increase their risk of developing non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
There are, at last count, 13,400 of these cancer lawsuits pending in state and federal courts throughout the land. If each litigant in all of these lawsuits were to be awarded $2 billion dollars, that would mean Bayer would have to come up with more than $26 trillion dollars.
Given all of the lawsuits, the extent of damages being awarded and the fact that glyphosate is now in much of our food and nearly all of our bodies – it would appear as though the giant German chemical firm Bayer bought itself a pig in a poke when it paid $66 billion in cash for the Monsanto company.
Surely the Bayer company must have known that buying Monsanto would mean buying the liability for glyphosate, which the World Health Organization claims is a “probable cause of cancer.” Furthermore, Bayer surely knew that Monsanto’s glyphosate was out of patent, and freely manufactured by many other companies. And so we ask…
Leave a comment below: What did Bayer get for $66 Billion in cash?