Farmer Bill Bader claimed the companies encouraged farmers to use the dicamba weedkiller irresponsibly (AFP Photo/INA FASSBENDER) |
Washington (AFP) - A US jury has awarded $265 million to a Missouri farmer who blamed herbicide from chemical giants Bayer AG and BASF for destroying his peach orchards, in a case set to bolster 140 other lawsuits.
Jurors in
federal court in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, made the ruling on Saturday after
peach farmer Bill Bader claimed the companies encouraged farmers to use the
dicamba weedkiller irresponsibly.
Bloomberg
News reported that the case was the first US trial over dicamba herbicide,
which is alleged to have wrecked crops across America's Midwest by drifting
onto plants that were unable to resist it.
Much like
Roundup, another much-criticized herbicide marketed by Monsanto, dicamba has
been on the market many years.
Use of the
chemical jumped after Monsanto -- which was bought by Germany's Bayer in 2018
-- introduced seeds that can resist the weed-killer.
But the
product has been blamed for polluting around four percent of US soybean fields
in 2017. A common complaint is that the herbicide spreads to nearby areas.
The fight over
dicamba comes in the wake of a case in which Bayer was ordered by a California
jury to pay $290 million for failing to warn a dying groundskeeper that Roundup
might cause cancer.
In January,
reports suggested Bayer could stump up $10 billion in a settlement with tens of
thousands of US plaintiffs suffering from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
The cancer
sufferers say they developed the disease after exposure to glyphosate, the key
ingredient in Roundup.
Bayer,
which has argued that dicamba is safe for crops as long as users follow
instructions, was reported to be planning to appeal Saturday's ruling, while
BASF was not available for comment.
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