NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Business

More than $15 billion wiped from Bayer after Roundup case

NZ Herald
14 Aug, 2018 03:24 AM4 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

New Zealand's Environmental Protection Authority says it still believes Roundup is safe to use, despite a US court ruling. Photo / AP

New Zealand's Environmental Protection Authority says it still believes Roundup is safe to use, despite a US court ruling. Photo / AP

More than £8 billion ($15 billion) was wiped off the value of the German company behind Roundup after a court ruled the weedkiller caused cancer.

Shares in pharma and chemicals group Bayer fell 11 per cent on the stock market in Frankfurt – slashing its value from £78b to £69.5b.

The slump came after Bayer's US subsidiary Monsanto was ordered to pay £226 million damages to school groundsman Dewayne Johnson who claimed its weedkillers gave him non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2014.

The firm is appealing the verdict, insisting glyphosate, a key ingredient in its weedkillers, is not carcinogenic.

The US case

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The lawsuit brought by Johnson was the first to go to trial among hundreds filed in state and federal courts in the United States saying Roundup causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which Monsanto denies.

Jurors in state Superior Court agreed the product contributed to Johnson's cancer and the company should have provided a label warning of the potential health hazard. Johnson's attorneys sought and won US$39m ($59m) in compensatory damages and US$250m of the US$373m they wanted in punitive damages.

Plaintiff Dewayne Johnson reacts after hearing the verdict in his case against Monsanto at the Superior Court of California in San Francisco on Friday. Photo / AP
Plaintiff Dewayne Johnson reacts after hearing the verdict in his case against Monsanto at the Superior Court of California in San Francisco on Friday. Photo / AP

"This jury found Monsanto acted with malice and oppression because they knew what they were doing was wrong and doing it with reckless disregard for human life," said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a member of Johnson's legal team.

"This should send a strong message to the boardroom of Monsanto."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Monsanto has denied a link between the active ingredient in Roundup — glyphosate — and cancer, saying hundreds of studies have established that glyphosate is safe.

Johnson used Roundup and a similar product, Ranger Pro, as a pest control manager at a San Francisco Bay Area school district, his lawyers said. He sprayed large quantities from a 50-gallon tank attached to a truck, and during gusty winds, the product would cover his face, said Brent Wisner, one of his attorneys.

Once, when a hose broke, the weed killer soaked his entire body.

Johnson read the label and even contacted the company after developing a rash but was never warned it could cause cancer, Wisner said. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2014 at age 42.

Discover more

Business

Man who claims Roundup weed killer caused cancer awarded $440m

10 Aug 11:22 PM
New Zealand

NZ Roundup use questioned after US court's $440m cancer ruling

11 Aug 11:32 PM
New Zealand

Roundup case: Scientists caution against knee-jerk NZ ban

13 Aug 04:27 AM
New Zealand

Could traces of Roundup be in a key source of New Zealand's drinking water?

02 Oct 03:28 AM
Monsanto has been ordered to pay $440 million. Photo / AP
Monsanto has been ordered to pay $440 million. Photo / AP

"The simple fact is he is going to die. It's just a matter of time," Wisner told the jury in his opening statement last month.

But George Lombardi, an attorney for Monsanto, said non-Hodgkin's lymphoma takes years to develop, so Johnson's cancer must have started well before he began working at the school district.

The US Environmental Protection Agency says Roundup's active ingredient is safe for people when used in accordance with label directions.

However, the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organisation, classified it as a "probable human carcinogen" in 2015. And California added glyphosate to its list of chemicals known to cause cancer.

New Zealand's position

In agricultural New Zealand, where debate about the use of glyphosate has increased over recent years, the Environmental Protection Authority considered Roundup safe to use and the US ruling hadn't changed that position.

However, Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage said she'd be asking the agency to consider adding Roundup to its hazardous substance reassessment list in the light of the decision.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Sage's move has been backed by University of Canterbury toxicologist Professor Ian Shaw, who noted the World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) had already classified glyphosate as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

Dewayne Johnson, centre, hugs one of his attorneys, next to lawyer and member of his legal team Robert F Kennedy Jr., right, after the verdict was read. Photo / AP
Dewayne Johnson, centre, hugs one of his attorneys, next to lawyer and member of his legal team Robert F Kennedy Jr., right, after the verdict was read. Photo / AP

New Zealand conducted its own review of the IARC re-classification and concluded glyphosate was unlikely to be a human carcinogen or genotoxic, which swayed authorities not to reconsider the regulatory status of glyphosate-containing herbicides.

Shaw was critical of the New Zealand review's findings, particularly as the work didn't appear to have covered the possibility of non-genotoxic carcinogenesis, or that some chemicals that caused cancer didn't directly alter genes.

"I do not think we should base our regulatory decisions on a US court case, but I do think that the evidence that glyphosate is possibly a carcinogen in humans is robust."

-With Daily Mail, AP

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Business

Premium
Media Insider

'Not normal': Nude Lotto skier tops ad complaints; RNZ ratings woes - ex-news boss called in

10 Jul 05:02 PM
Premium
Opinion

Matthew Hooton: The case for abolishing regional councils in NZ

10 Jul 05:00 PM
Premium
Shares

Market close: NZ shares flat as Australian regulator clears path for Fonterra consumer sale

10 Jul 06:22 AM

Audi offers a sporty spin on city driving with the A3 Sportback and S3 Sportback

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Business

Premium
'Not normal': Nude Lotto skier tops ad complaints; RNZ ratings woes - ex-news boss called in

'Not normal': Nude Lotto skier tops ad complaints; RNZ ratings woes - ex-news boss called in

10 Jul 05:02 PM

Tears as Stuff editor leaves; big ad account switches agencies; who will buy iconic mags?

Premium
Matthew Hooton: The case for abolishing regional councils in NZ

Matthew Hooton: The case for abolishing regional councils in NZ

10 Jul 05:00 PM
Premium
Market close: NZ shares flat as Australian regulator clears path for Fonterra consumer sale

Market close: NZ shares flat as Australian regulator clears path for Fonterra consumer sale

10 Jul 06:22 AM
Top 5 takeaways from Samsung's super-slim foldable phone and watch event

Top 5 takeaways from Samsung's super-slim foldable phone and watch event

10 Jul 05:00 AM
Gold demand soars amid global turmoil
sponsored

Gold demand soars amid global turmoil

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP