By Renee Hickman and Tom Polansek
CHICAGO, June 2 (Reuters) – Bayer has no plans to spin off Monsanto, a representative said on Tuesday, even as the company faces an avalanche of lawsuits over its Roundup weedkiller.
The company representative, speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the Wall Street Journal’s Global Food Forum, said that restructuring the company could be a viable option but was not currently planned, with the company focused instead on improving its performance and handling the wave of litigation it faces.
On stage at the forum, Bayer Chief Executive Bill Anderson reiterated the threat that Roundup lawsuits, which the company says involve around 100,000 plaintiffs, pose to the German drug-making and crop science giant’s production of the glyphosate-based pesticide.
“If there’s not a solution to the litigation problem on glyphosate, there won’t be American-produced glyphosate,” Anderson said.
Bayer is the only company producing glyphosate in the U.S. but the farming sector also imports large volumes of generic versions of the pesticide from China.
Bayer acquired Roundup as part of its $63 billion purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018, and with it litigation from consumers who say the company failed to warn them that Roundup’s active ingredient could cause cancer.
The company has sought to stem the tide of litigation in the United States through a multipronged strategy including a massive settlement, and a state-by-state effort to change the legal landscape surrounding its liability.
The company is also behind a case before the Supreme Court appealing a jury verdict in Missouri state court awarding $1.25 million to a man who said he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma after years of exposure to glyphosate in Roundup.
And elsewhere, the company has proposed a $7.25 billion settlement that would end most of the lawsuits pending against it, although some plaintiffs are objecting to the deal.
In state legislatures, a dozen Bayer-supported bills have been introduced to prevent people from suing pesticide manufacturers for not warning them that their products could cause cancer or other illnesses, though they have only had success in a few states, including North Dakota, Kentucky and Georgia.
Bayer’s most recent setback in its campaign for some legal immunity came from Congress in April, when the House passed a version of the Farm Bill that strips away a provision supported by the company that would have shielded pesticide companies from some lawsuits.
The Senate has not yet taken up the bill.
(Reporting by Renee Hickman and Tom Polansek. Editing by Emily Schmall and Lincoln Feast.)
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