ADVERTISEMENT

Bayer Now Faces Roundup Issues at Home

Bayer Faces Roundup Woes at Home Now

(Bloomberg) -- Germany’s Environment Ministry laid out a plan Tuesday for a step-by-step retreat from glyphosate, the weedkiller that has been a thorn in Bayer AG’s side since its $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto Co.

The plan calls for a ban on the chemical, the active ingredient in Bayer’s Roundup herbicide, in areas that are environmentally sensitive or important for groundwater. The new rules would also make it tougher for farmers to use similar chemicals that kill a broad range of plants and insects, requiring them to reserve acreage for pesticide-free planting as well.

“There’s nothing gained for the environment if instead of glyphosate other, perhaps even more damaging pesticides are used,” Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said in a statement. She called for using “every kind of legal leverage” to abandon glyphosate.

Schulze’s effort to lead a long-term retreat from Roundup comes after a tussle within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition over the chemical last year. Defying objections from center-left Social Democrats, Merkel’s agriculture minister unilaterally voted to keep the weedkiller on the market in the European Union until 2022. That makes it tough to ban the chemical outright at home.

Cancer Question

But if Schulze wins backing from elsewhere in the cabinet, a slow retreat may be possible. The move would deliver another blow to Bayer, which has struggled to defend Roundup since it gained the world’s most widely used weedkiller with its Monsanto takeover. A California judge upheld last month a jury’s verdict that Roundup caused a school groundskeeper’s cancer. Bayer must pay $78.6 million in the case -- and it faces lawsuits from some 8,700 more plaintiffs.

“Unfortunately the debate about glyphosate in Germany is shaped by political interests instead of scientific evidence,” Helmut Schramm, chief of Bayer’s agriculture business in Germany, said in a statement. Not using the chemical would place German farmers at a disadvantage, according to Schramm.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, labeled glyphosate a probable carcinogen in 2015, a claim Bayer rejects. The company says that other studies and regulators have shown the chemical is safe.

--With assistance from Tim Loh and Lydia Mulvany.

To contact the reporters on this story: Naomi Kresge in Berlin at nkresge@bloomberg.net;Patrick Donahue in Brussels at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Eric Pfanner at epfanner1@bloomberg.net, Marthe Fourcade, Chris Reiter

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.