Bayer, the German bio-tech giant, has proposed paying $7.25bn … to definitively resolve a legal battle in the US over whether its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer.
The possible settlement is part of a broader push to secure closure over the claims, which have weighed on the company since it bought Monsanto, the American-maker of the widely used but controversial herbicide.
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The company, which maintains that the product is safe, said the latest settlement had support from several key plaintiffs’ groups. It would need approval by a judge to move forward.
Bill Anderson, chief executive of Bayer … said he expected the vast majority of people with pending claims to sign onto the new proposed settlement. It relates to patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a kind of blood cancer.
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“This doesn’t work unless there is closure,” he said.
Roundup was developed by Monsanto in the 1970s. Its active ingredient is glyphosate, which the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a unit of the World Health Organization, identified in 2015 as a probable human carcinogen.
Bayer and some other regulators, including the US Environmental Protection Agency, have disputed those findings.
