Monsanto going Down!! Second verdict is in.

This from Popular Resistance.org

SAN FRANCISCO – Today’s verdict in favor of a California man who said his cancer was caused by exposure to Bayer AG’s Roundup weedkiller is further evidence that glyphosate, the herbicide’s active ingredient, is carcinogenic to humans, said Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook.

In the first phase of Edward Hardeman v. Monsanto Company, the jury sided with arguments and scientific evidence presented by the attorneys for Edward Hardeman that glyphosate was the cause of his non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“Today’s verdict reinforces what another jury found last year, and what scientists with the state of California and the World Health Organization have concluded: Glyphosate causes cancer in people,” said Cook. “As similar lawsuits mount, the evidence will grow that Roundup is not safe, and that the company has tried to cover it up.”

Bayer AG bought Monsanto last year for $63 billion and is now liable for claims against it. Bayer faces more than 11,000 U.S. lawsuits alleging that glyphosate causes cancer.

Now the case before the federal district court in San Francisco will enter the second phase of the trial. Hardeman’s lawyers will present evidence to the jury, including internal Monsanto documents, that could show the company knew the dangers of Roundup and glyphosate and attempted to cover them up.

Judge Vincent Chhabria, who is presiding over this case, unsealed some of those documents in March 2017. The New York Times reported that they show how Monsanto systematically attempted to discredit scientists and independent scientific research, swayed scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency over its review of glyphosate, and even ghostwrote stories that appeared to be authored by scientists not affiliated with Monsanto.

“The decision by Bayer to purchase Monsanto, a company with a long history of environmental malfeasance, could go down as one of the worst business decisions ever made,” added Cook. “The day of reckoning for Bayer and its cancer-causing weedkiller is getting closer.”

In August, another California jury awarded Dewayne Lee Johnson, a former groundskeeper who regularly handled Roundup, $289 million in his case against Monsanto. The verdict was later reduced by the court to $78 million.

Glyphosate is the most heavily used herbicide in the world. People who are not farm workers or groundskeepers are being exposed to the cancer-causing chemical through food.

Two separate rounds of laboratory tests commissioned last year by EWG found glyphosate in nearly every sample of popular oat-based cereals and other oat-based food marketed to children. The brands in which glyphosate was detected included several cereals and breakfast bars made by General Mills and Quaker.

California Cancer Courts glyphosate Roundup

Despite the clear hostility of the yet another judge, yet another jury has found for the claims of another plaintiff injured by Round UP, a product which is in some ways worse than DDT, IMO.

As the article points out, there are now about 11,000 cases pending against Monsatan. Clearly victims are getting in before some sort of settlement is imposed from above.

I can, of course, only speak for myself, but I would respectfully suggest to activists that they and their candidates better get on the right side of food and farm issues if they want or need the votes and support of folks like me. I suggest that the two trials already heard as well as the upcoming ones are for real, game changing, watershed events. Please keep in mind that scruffy former hippies and small time intelligensia don't get on juries; I once saw a prosecutor actually roll his eyes before thanking and excusing me. We do, however, vote. We consider it a duty. I suggest that our votes are no longer automatically available to any self-styled "progressive", just so we can feel righteous, or because we can't stand the Right Wing opponent. Now, in urban districts the scruffy hippie vote may be of no importance, but in rural areas, progressives need us if they are to have any hope of even making a good showing.

People have to eat. There will always be a need for farmers and farm workers. No one's cousin is going to loose his or her job because public opinion turns against Monsatan, nor will Safeway go out of business. I don't frankly care if cousin would rather work for Mr. Chemical Farmer Big Shot than for Scruffy Organicperson. Too bad. I have had enough of being asked and expected to compromise my health for someone else's fantasy life, whether that fantasy be Better Living through Chemistry, or We can Feed the World, or I Wanna be part of the Important Team.

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Thank you for this hopeful report.

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Steven D's picture

@Linda Wood @Linda Wood This is your government on Big Money.

Saying it's like pigs at a trough is an insult to pigs.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

for that graphic. Monsantan employs a super lobbyist, I can't remember his name, to represent its' interests in DC. He it was who organized congresspersons to stop the Justice Department from bringing an anti-trust suit against Monsatan in 2009, and who was bundling contributions for Shillary in 2016.

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Mary Bennett

but 12, 15 years from now when the appeals and arcane maneuvers are done and all these little questions end up in the SC and the awards are reduced to nothing, then what happens? Not throwing pies, but look how the Exxon Valdez ended up. No negligence, no fault, business as usual. Once everything was reduced they sued the Coast Guard and the State of Alaska for negligence. Morgan invented credit default swaps to protect itself with it's line of credit to Exxon. I mean, do we ever really win?

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thanatokephaloides's picture

Exhibit A:


source

Wink

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

It's not as expensive as it was 5-10 years ago. Here's the new listing of the "Dirty Dozen" most contaminated produce in America, put out by the Environmental Working Group. https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty-dozen.php At the least make it a priority to buy these 12 items organic.

I'm hoping Monsanto/Bayer gets held to account somewhat, maybe as far as the tobacco industry has. Smoking is not cool anymore. Maybe in a generation or two organic will explode.

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@p cook cook for yourself at home. And for those of us who still can't afford Dr. bills or health insurance, it is A LOT cheaper than a hospital bill. What I suggest is become a fanatical label reader. For example, the label on a can of beans should read: beans, salt. Period.

As of right now, the GMO contaminated products are soy, corn, cotton--as the blogger at Farm Wars said, they have us by the chonies-- and canola. And there is a GMO papaya and a GMO zuke on the market. Soy and corn are found in most processed "food" products, another reason to cook at home.

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Mary Bennett

Mark from Queens's picture

@Nastarana
We soak two cups of raw chick peas (organic whenever possible) in water overnight. And then in the morning between their breakfast and mid-morning snack we cook them in the pressure cooker (indispensable) with a bay leaf. While that's cooking I'm roasting garlic in the broiler. Then the food processor comes out, along with the tahini paste and lemons. And we make fresh hummus together.

Two principles I want to instill in them: that cooking is fun, and that I want them to have tactile experience with handling and making food. For the purpose also of teaching them that food doesn't just magically appear and is not from cans or boxes (it can be occasionally, buy mostly not). We talk about where it comes from, how important farms are, that everything comes from the dirt/soil and explain that through a system of distribution it appears in our local markets.

Great news about the evil Monsanto monster. I hope this gets publicized.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

@Mark from Queens I bought my nephew a children's cookbook when he was 5 or 6. He embraced it and is still cooking at 23 yo. He cooked the peach cobbler this past Thanksgiving!

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@p cook is ...kale??? Kale, or collards, the same species, except one can tolerate cold and one can't, is one of the easiest of veges to grow, in pots or in the ground. Any seed catalogue will have a wealth of varieties, lots of OP breeders are working with kale, and the plants of most varieties grow huge, so you need never be without greens. (OP means open pollinated, so non hybrid).

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Mary Bennett

OzoneTom's picture

@Nastarana
I have both purple tree collards and lacinato (dinosaur) kale in self-watering containers and get a frequent harvest of leaves off of each in the growing season and some past that.

The lacinato kale produces strap-like and fairly tender "curly" kale leaves that may be harvested all season. I will see if they come back this spring and produce flowers this year.

The tree collards are perennial, do not produce flowers and are easily grown from cuttings. They survive months of avg. 20F temperatures but deer will eat them up anytime. I last harvested greens and cuttings for New Years collards and had to break trail through snow.

There may be other plants called "tree collards" which produce flowers and I am not sure what their relationship might be, the group of plants within Brassica oleracea do all kinds of odd crosses and variants.

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@Nastarana And the hot peppers too. I guess ALL the peppers should be considered contaminated with herbicides/pesticides.

The worst for roundup is wheat and oats. Farmers spray these crops just before harvest because it speeds up dessication/drying which makes their job easier and quicker. It's shocking IMO.

Happy cooking!

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boriscleto's picture

Plaintiff's aren't.

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

@boriscleto because we the people allow it. We could insist on regular renewal of charters if we wanted, say every ten years, with any who felt themselves harmed invited to testify.

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Mary Bennett

mimi's picture

@boriscleto
are immortal, mortal persons have created thees new persons. Really so horrible you wanna die over that.

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Mark from Queens's picture

No wonder our local markets are filled year round with cheap strawberries, kale, blueberries and a few other things on that list.

They’re regularly in our refrigerator. I should know better, at least take more care to really wash them off.

The mass production corporate farms are doing so much damage to our sense of privileged expectation, how much we consume, and have distorted our connection to the land. It’s a huge problem in so many ways. Not sustainable.

(On my phone here... was supposed to be a reply to p cook)

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

TheOtherMaven's picture

@Mark from Queens
There's just no comparison with that mass-produced grocery store dreck. It's not quite as pronounced as the difference between real wild strawberries (Fragaria spp - white flowers) and mock strawberries (Duchesnea indica - yellow flowers), not yet anyway. The mock species has a very faint berry-ish taste, but that's about it. Birds love 'em anyway, and the birds can have 'em.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.