France has been compensating farmers with Parkinson's for the last three years following numerous scientific studies linking the disease to the use of glyphosate pesticide.
Diseases linked to Glyphosate include:
Cancer
Lymphoma
Brain inflammation
Parkinson's disease
Alzheimer's disease
Manganese depletion
Autism
Depression
Bowel inflammation
Crohn's disease
Celiac disease
Infertility
A huge increase in the incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases has been reported in the United States over the last 20 years. Similar increases have been seen globally. The herbicide glyphosate was introduced in 1974 and its use is accelerating with the advent of herbicide-tolerant genetically engineered crops. Evidence is mounting that glyphosate interferes with many metabolic processes in plants and animals and glyphosate residues have been detected in both. Glyphosate disrupts the endocrine system and the balance of gut bacteria, it damages DNA and is a driver of mutations that lead to cancer.
In 2021, Bayer announced it would no longer sell glyphosate-containing products. The move came after the company suffered 30,000 legal claims from customers who believe use of these products — including the flagship product "Roundup" — caused them to develop cancer, as AgWeb reported.
“Bayer’s decision to end U.S. residential sale of Roundup is a historic victory for public health and the environment,” Center for Food Safety executive director Andrew Kimbrell said in a statement. “As agricultural, large-scale use of this toxic pesticide continues, our farmworkers remain at risk. It’s time for EPA to act and ban glyphosate for all uses.”
The antithesis of eco-friendly lawn care, Glyphosate is a controversial ingredient because it has been linked to the development of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as Cure noted. In 2015, The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer declared that it was “probably carcinogenic to humans.” While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under former President Donald Trump ruled that the chemical did not pose any risk to human health, the Biden Administration later admitted that the review was flawed and needed to be redone, as Common Dreams reported. Still, it refused to take it off the market in the meantime.
Bayer’s decision came in response to the many lawsuits related to glyphosate that it inherited when it acquired Monsanto in 2018. Juries sided with the plaintiffs in three highly-watched trials before Bayer settled around 95,000 cases in 2020 to the tune of $10 billion. That settlement, which was one of the largest in U.S. history, allowed Bayer to continue to sell Roundup without any warnings. However, the company still faces further litigation, and said it decided to pull the product from residential use in order to prevent more. More than 90 percent of recent claims come from the residential home and garden market, AgWeb reported.
