Genetic Engineering

The fallout from a controversial Californian court decision which found the commonly used herbicide Roundup causes cancer, is now being felt in Australia.

Hundreds of users of Roundup here are preparing legal cases against chemical giant Monsanto, the manufacturer of the weed killer. Their cases add to the already 17,000 cases launched in the United States.

Regenerative practitioners say that healthy soil eventually leads to reducing synthetic chemicals. But some advocates say those chemicals have damaging effects and should be addressed. The phrase is on everyone’s lips. Major food and apparel companies, presidential candidates, farmers, both conventional and organic, even chemical giants are touting “regenerative agriculture” as the be-all and end-all solution to reversing climate change.

For the third straight year, a volatile pesticide is damaging crops across the Midwest and South, despite federal and state efforts to lessen the drift. Since 2017, farmers have sprayed an increasing amount of the weedkiller, called dicamba, on soybean and cotton crops genetically engineered by agribusiness company Monsanto to withstand being sprayed by the herbicide.

Dozens of lawsuits potentially worth tens of millions of dollars in damages are in the works in Hawaii targeting Monsanto Co. and its weed-killer Roundup, lawyers who have filed two of the lawsuits said. Michael Green, who filed a federal products liability suit earlier this month against Monsanto, said he expects to file at least six or seven more suits in the next several weeks alleging Roundup caused his clients to develop a form of cancer called non-Hodgkins lymphoma.