Another conviction for Bayer
Two billion dollar settlement to a couple made ill by Roundup. By taking over Monsanto, the German group inherited thousands of complaints
A California court has ordered Bayer to pay a couple $2 billion in settlements. Both had fallen ill with cancer and for this they accused the German pharmaceutical multinational of having marketed a carcinogenic herbicide. This is the third conviction of its kind in the United States for Bayer, which acquired Monsanto which produces Roundup.
Bayer, which faces 13,400 lawsuits in the United States alone, expressed disappointment at the ruling and reiterated that Roundup and its controversial ingredient, glyphosate, are harmless.
What is glyphosate
Glyphosate — or more correctly glyphosate, or in the international version glyphosate — is an amine identified for the first time in the 1950s by a chemical and pharmaceutical multinational 
Switzerland and then in the 70s re-synthesized by chance by the US giant Monsanto, a giant that was recently acquired by the German Bayer.
Monsanto patented the product under the Roundup trademark. This herbicide changed the agricultural scenario, helping to increase crops and feed today's highly populated world: it demonstrated formidable effectiveness in drying plants and at the same time very modest toxicity for humans; it penetrates very little into the soil, where it is degraded by natural bacteria.
The exclusivity of the patent expired in 2001 and, while many chemical companies around the world began to produce it in competition with competing names (for example with the Rodeo or Accord brands), at the same time a war of opposing lobbies began around this compound.
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