US jury orders Monsanto to pay $289 m to cancer patient |
In a landmark verdict, a jury in the US has ruled that Monsanto’s Roundup and other glyphosate-based weedkillers are linked to cancer, and directed the agro-giant to pay $289 million in damages to a school groundskeeper who developed the disease. The ruling is likely to have far reaching ramifications in other parts of the world including India, where glyphosate-based weedkillers are widely used. It is a landmark development in terms of the jury fixing responsibility on Monsanto and its negligence and given the discussion around glyphosate and its safety in India, said Kavitha Kuruganti, from the Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA). Environmentalists in India have forcefully argued that the indiscriminate use of glyphosate poses a grave challenge in India, where the regulatory framework on herbicide and pesticide overuse/misuse is weak. In India, the consumption of glyphosate was 148 million tonnes in 2014-15, the highest for any weedicide. Poor regulation was in the spotlight in the deaths of over 40 farmers earlier this year in Maharashtra from pesticide poisoning. According to the Centre for Science and Environment, there were around 7,000 deaths in 2015 related to accidental intake of insecticides/pesticides in India.
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