By Liza Gross, Inside Climate News
The makers of Roundup, the world’s top weedkiller, will pay $6.9 million for violating an agreement with the state of New York to stop making false claims about the safety of its best-selling herbicides.
Bayer and Monsanto, which was acquired by the German agrochemical giant for $63 billion in 2018, violated a 1996 agreement with the state of New York to “immediately cease and desist” from making false and misleading claims about glyphosate-based Roundup products, the New York attorney general’s office announced Thursday.
Studies have linked glyphosate, the active ingredient in many Roundup products, to a wide range of harmful effects in pollinators, lab animals, and people. In March, a first-of-its-kind study linked Roundup to liver and metabolic disease in children.
Yet Bayer and Monsanto repeatedly advertised glyphosate-based Roundup products as safe and nontoxic without adequate substantiation, Attorney General Letitia James determined in an investigation that started three years ago.
These claims violated state laws against false and misleading advertising as well as a previous settlement the attorney general’s office reached with Monsanto in 1996. The 1996 settlement cited Monsanto ads claiming its glyphosate-based herbicides are “practically nontoxic” and “less toxic than certain common household products,” claims the attorney general concluded constituted false and misleading advertising.
Related news:
Court rejects Trump-era EPA finding that weed killer safe
Roundup, the World’s Favorite Weed Killer, Linked to Liver, Metabolic Diseases in Kids
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