Australian judge dismisses lawsuit claiming Bayer weedkiller causes blood cancer

[July 25, 2024]  By Peter Hobson and Alasdair Pal

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian judge on Thursday dismissed a class action lawsuit claiming Bayer's Roundup weedkiller can cause a type of blood cancer, a ruling the company said it would seek to leverage in similar cases being fought in the United States.

More than 1,000 people had joined the lawsuit, claiming Roundup's active ingredient, glyphosate, caused their non-Hodgkins lymphoma (NHL).

Justice Michael Lee of Australia's Federal Court said in his ruling he had reviewed three types of scientific studies - epidemiological, animal studies and mechanistic evidence - that looked at the links between glyphosate and lymphoma and was not satisfied there was sufficient evidence that the chemical caused the cancer in humans.

"It is not proven in this proceeding on a balance of probabilities... that throughout the relevant period use of, and or exposure to Roundup products increased an individual's risk of developing NHL," Lee said.

The claimants' law firm, Maurice Blackburn, said it was reviewing the ruling before deciding whether to appeal.

The lead claimant, 41-year-old Kelvin McNickle, said he used Roundup to spray weeds for over two decades on his family's property and while working for a vegetation management company. He developed non-Hodgkins lymphoma aged 35.

Bayer, a German chemicals and pharmaceuticals company, has long maintained that Roundup and glyphosate are safe. It has been battling lawsuits over Roundup in the United States since it bought the product's owner Monsanto in 2018. It still faces more than 50,000 outstanding Roundup claims there.

It has prevailed in 14 of the last 20 U.S. trials but racked up a string of losses in late 2023 and early 2024, with more than $4 billion in damages awarded. Some of the amounts awarded have since been reduced but the string of wins for plaintiffs shattered investor and company hopes that the worst of the Roundup litigation was over.

Unlike the U.S., class actions in Australia are not decided by a jury.

A woman uses a Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller spray without glyphosate in a garden in Ercuis near Paris, France, May 6, 2018. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo

Bayer spokesman Philipp Blank said that while said the Australian and U.S. judicial systems were very different, "we will of course try to leverage the conclusion of the very science-based approach from the Australian legal system in the litigation in the U.S."

The class action brought by Maurice Blackburn against Bayer subsidiaries is one of around 40 similar cases that have been filed outside the United States, most of them in Canada.

Some farmers in Australia had worried that if the court had ruled glyphosate could cause lymphoma, it could lead to stricter regulation and restrict its use.

The National Farmers’ Federation said in a statement that the country's farmers had put their faith in the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicine Authority to ensure the safety of products they use and that Thursday's ruling had reinforced that the regulator was doing its job.

"This is a win for Australian farmers," said Warren Inwood, a Bayer executive in Australia.

Roundup has been in use around the world since the 1970s.

The product has been under scrutiny since the World Health Organization's cancer research agency concluded in 2015 that glyphosate was probably carcinogenic to humans, though without concluding whether it posed a risk in real-world use.

Bayer has replaced glyphosate with new active ingredients in its products for household use in the United States to reduce the risk of litigation as most claims have come from home users.

It continues to sell glyphosate-based weedkillers to farmers, who rely on it heavily.

(Reporting by Peter Hobson in Canberra and Alasdair Pal in Sydney; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

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