Farmers are the backbone of society; without them, we’d all lose the food we need to survive. They toil in the fields without any expectation of fame or glory, since most farmers want neither. Instead, farmers want to do their honest work and return home at the end of the day with their health and a paycheck for their efforts.

Yet, farmers are also the target of severe and life-threatening corporate corruption. Monsanto, once a leading agriculture company, has secretly been poisoning farmers with its products. The most recent scandal involving the company involves Roundup, a product the company once bragged was invaluable to farmers.

The chemical compound, glyphosate, was marketed as an effective way to kill weeds without killing crops. For a while, people were happy to use to protect their gardens and their fields. Yet, it was recently revealed that Roundup was secretly killing people.

It turns out, the weed killer is a carcinogen and caused several people’s fatal and near-fatal cancer. Now, people are fighting back against the company and web of lies and corruption. Keep reading below to learn more about Monsanto, and what you can do to stop its corrupt business practices.

Monsanto Has a Long History of Sowing Chaos

The company’s problems began almost as soon as it went into business. While it started off as a chemical company, Monsanto soon pivoted into agricultural space with a line of genetically modified products. The seeds it sold to farmers were designed to be stronger, grow faster, and produce more.

Almost as soon as its products hit the market, the public responded with concern. People wanted more investigation as to the health effects of genetically modified products. They wanted to know if it was safe to eat GMOs and wanted Monsanto to hold off on selling its products until their questions could be answered.

Monsanto refused to listen to them, and soon began a campaign of shady and illegitimate business practices. Now, they’re criticized as a lobbyist firm as much as an agriculture company. Keep reading below to learn how the company’s corruption spiraled out of control.

Somatotropin Was Just the Beginning

The first genetically modified product Monsanto sold to farmers was bovine somatotropin, sold as Posilac. It was a hormone designed to increase the production of milk in dairy cows. Farmers just had to give their cows some Posilac, and the company promised them that they would see their cows produce more.

It was approved by the FDA in 1993, and the company began selling it in 1994. Yet, the general public was not satisfied.

Most people wanted deeper investigations as to the health effects GMOs may have. People didn’t know if they could trust their own food to be safe since it was genetically modified. Since they couldn’t trust it, people simply didn’t buy it.

This led to grocery chains refusing to carry milk from certain farmers, which cut into their paychecks. In the end, Monsanto only jeopardized farmers abilities to make money instead of improving it. The company managed to anger farmers, grocery stores, consumers, and almost everyone else.

Farmers Protested Monsanto Before the Roundup Scandal

The controversy around Posilac didn’t deter Monsanto, though. The company used its background in chemical engineering to monopolize the agricultural market. The company has a 34 percent market share in the global herbicides industry, meaning farmers can essentially only ever purchase from them.

Since the company became a monopoly, it refused to cave under pressure from both consumers and farmers to stop its practices. The company continues to push GMO products to farmers, despite opposition. The last time farmers succeeded in pushing a GMO product off the market was in 2001.

A Monsanto product for a genetically engineered potato was pushed off the market by farmers when McDonald’s refused to use it for their french fries. It cut a huge hole in farmers bottom-lines, keeping them both poor and dependent on the company at the same time.

Now, as controversies around Monsanto rise again, farmers may claim another victory against the company.

Roundup Killed Butterflies Before Killing People

One of Monsanto’s products, Roundup, was recently revealed as a cause of many farmers’ cancers. As it turns out, Monsanto wasn’t just keeping farmers poor while simultaneously keeping them dependent on the company. It was killing them, too.

Roundup was designed to be a weed-killer. When paired with Monsanto’s Roundup-ready seeds, it would kill dangerous weeds while protecting crops. It was advertised as a panacea for farmers struggling to protect their crops from weeds, disease, and pests.

Yet, soon after Roundup began to be sold, it was found to contribute to butterfly deaths. While that should have been a signal that something was wrong with the chemical, Monsanto covered up the findings. By then, the company had refined its lobbying and PR efforts so that it could almost totally control information about it.

Now though, people have united against the company. People are dying because of Roundup, and farmers are done being pushed around by companies like Monsanto.

Roundup is a Carcinogen — it’s Confirmed

The first case to go trial about Roundup was in summer 2018. A man in California claimed that the weed killer caused his cancer. Jurors agreed with him and awarded him $289 million, more to punish the company than to rectify the damage done.

After all, how much money can really fix cancer?

Yet, the trial opened the floodgates for a deluge of other trials surrounding Roundup. Now, farmers are coming out with their own stories of how using the chemical caused them to get sick. And with every new farmer, the class action lawsuit against the company gets stronger.

Farmers are reaping their fair share from a company that kept them in the corner for too long. And Monsanto is expected to pay a lot for its corrupt business practices that ended up killing people.

Don’t Let the Corporations Win, Again

Farmers give everything so that the rest of society can function. Without farmers, there is nothing else. That’s one of the reasons it’s such a big deal for a company like Monsanto to literally kill them with its products.

It’s terrible when a company lies on its face about the safety of one of its products, risking people’s lives.

It’ll only be worse if Monsanto gets away with it. If you suffered an illness as a result of Roundup, contact us here. We’ll make sure you’re part of the class action lawsuit against the company so that you can get your fair share from them.

According to the Guardian, the weed killer market is worth $9 billion.

Would you be shocked to know that the common household product you can pick-up at the grocery store, Roundup, has an origin story that begins with Agent Orange?

Yes, the chemical warfare product made famous by the Vietnam War and a 1970s punk band.

But luckily, the past is catching up with this corporate monstrosity.

Since one Roundup lawsuit that accused the product of causing cancer ruled in favor of the plaintiff in late 2018, thousands of new cases have been filed.

Here’s everything you need to know about Round Up.

Understanding the Problem with Roundup

For many people, the claims against Roundup seemed to come out of nowhere, but the weed killer has a nearly 50 year-long shady past.

Roundup is sold in grocery stores and used by the general public to groom their gardens. It’s used commercially by groundskeepers and farmers to keep grass green and crops flourishing.

That was all Roundup was seen as when it was incepted in the 1970s.

Roundup is made by Monsanto, the company that brought us, Agent Orange. An herbicide used as chemical warfare during the Vietnam war, that causes many fatal diseases and forms of cancer.

However, in the mid-1980s, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified the weed killer as a carcinogen. Identifying the chemical glyphosate as being toxic to humans and animals.

Conveniently an executive at Monsanto, Roundup’s parent company, became Director of Environmental Assessment and Toxicology at the EPA quickly after this label was given. The label was removed shortly after.

Through the 1990s Monsanto put in a lot of work to reverse the public’s view of glyphosate being seen as a “bad” ingredient. It wasn’t until 2012 – 2015, after use of Roundup across the world was booming, that scientists began to reveal the harmful effects of the chemical again.

The research on Roundup is astonishing. The World Health Organization labeled glyphosate “probably carcinogenic to humans.” A university found glyphosate in the urine of 93% of Americans. Glyphosate was found in many common foods. It was proven to cause liver disease.

Inevitably, in 2017 after all of this research was released. Lawsuits against Monsanto and Roundup began to emerge.

A Breakdown of the Round Up Lawsuit

Although Roundup continues to be sold everywhere, the company is having to pay for their actions financially.

The groundbreaking lawsuit that started them all was when a pest-control manager and groundskeeper in California filed a lawsuit against the corporation, after developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

After months of court battles, a jury found that Monsanto was in fact to blame. Due to the piles of research against glyphosate that the company chose to turn their nose at.

The trial resulted in the jury awarding the $289 million awarded to the plaintiff. CNN reports that the award amount was so large because the jury wanted to “punish” the corporation.  However, damages have since been cut down to $78 million.

This lawsuit leads to over 8,000 more people filing lawsuits. In 2019 another California man was awarded $80 million in damages. This man, also suffering from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, who had used Roundup for more than two decades regularly.

As of March 2019, there are now 11,200 lawsuits currently filed against the company. That’s 3,200 more lawsuits filed since 2018 alone.

Will each lawsuit result in multi-million dollar fines for the company? Eventually running them out of business? If only it were that simple.

What’s Next for Roundup

Since the lawsuits started, pharmaceutical company Buyer has purchased Monsanto. Shedding the Monsanto name, and becoming the new owner of Round Up.

Despite thousands of lawsuits, dozens of new studies and controversial history that proves that Roundup and its primary ingredient glyphosate are in fact dangerous.

Many agricultural workers are still at risk. Farmworkers, landscapers, groundskeepers and anyone who deals with commercially grown plants are at risk of developing ailments caused by Roundup.

Even residents in agricultural communities should are at risk.

The company is maintaining its stance that these accusations are a result of mass hysteria. Do 11,200 people really have nothing better to do? Disgusting!

With the Trump administrations new advisors and looking over the EPA, and a long history of Monsanto executives being intertwined in the decision-making process for federal policies regarding the use of glyphosate.

To end the use of Roundup in our corn, cotton and soybean supply, we need to attack at a local level.

States like Vermont, New York, and Hawaii have placed state-wide bans on the product. While hundreds of cities across America like Reno, Nevada; Portland, Maine; Chicago, Illinois; Miami, Florida and Los Angeles, California have all initiated restrictions.

After the conclusion of the second major Roundup trial resulted in the company being at fault for knowingly causing cancer, the company’s shares dropped by 12 percent.

This should make the public hopeful.

How Can Roundup and Bayer Be Beat?

It’s clear that a Round Up lawsuit is the best way to combat the corporate heavyweight. But it takes work.

If you’re thinking about taking a stand against Roundup or Bayer, our company has represented thousands in similar cases.

We work with families and individuals who have been hurt by drugs, chemicals, and other negligent consumer products.

We specialize in these types of cases and are currently taking on clients who have fallen victim to Roundup.

For questions, concerns or to set-up a consultation, contact us at 210-622-2600.