Monsanto can’t catch a break, not that it deserves one. The $50-billion mega-corporation, now owned by Bayer, has taken a beating this year, both in the courts and in the public eye.

On August 10, a jury ordered Monsanto to pay $289.2 million to a former groundskeeper who successfully argued that the company’s flagship weedkiller, Roundup, caused his cancer. A few days later, Monsanto lost its bid to keep glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, off of California’s Proposition 65 list of carcinogens.
 
Now this:  On September 6 (2018), a Manhattan judge threw out a subpoena filed by Monsanto against an activist group, going so far as to lecture Monsanto on the importance of free speech and democracy. 

The 168-page subpoena, issued on behalf of Monsanto from a New York court, would have forced the global activist organization Avaaz to hand over decade’s worth of internal campaign communications, including personal information belonging to millions of activists who signed petitions against Monsanto’s genetically modified crops and Roundup weedkiller.

Every day, for eight weeks, I sat in a San Francisco courtroom.

I listened as Dewayne “Lee” Johnson described, in excruciating detail, how non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a painful and potentially terminal cancer, robbed him of his health. 

I watched the spectacle of Monsanto’s lawyers trying to deny that Roundup weedkiller caused Lee’s cancer. 

I watched Monsanto’s hired guns tap dance and dissemble, as they tried to explain Monsanto’s herculean 40-year campaign to hide the truth about Roundup’s deadly cancer-causing properties.

I know that my many friends like you, who support OCA, have been doing your part for years to expose Monsanto and to bring down this criminal enterprise.

That’s why this $289-million verdict for Lee Johnson is your victory, too.

This recent win makes our joint mission much clearer: We must leverage the short-term victory and win the long game.

That’s why I’m asking for your support for the Organic Consumers Association. OCA needs to meet its fall fundraising goal of $200,000 by midnight, September 22. Please make a generous donation online, by phone or by mail—details here.

More than 50 city and county ordinances banning the use of the toxic weed killer glyphosate on local playgrounds, parks and schoolyards could be overturned by a provision championed by House Republicans in their version of the farm bill, an EWG analysis found. A four-page provision tucked away in the 748-page farm bill passed by the House of Representatives in June would likely preempt local governments from adopting their own pesticide regulations.

Bayer has slashed its earnings forecast Wednesday due to, amongst other things, a growing global legal battle surrounding the carcinogenic weedkiller Roundup. The weaker earnings forecast adds to a number of challenges facing the German drugmaker as it braces for years of legal wrangling over the cancer risks of glyphosate-based weedkillers.