Bayer to drop Roundup from U.S. lawn and garden market
Herbicide and pesticide giant Bayer has announced it will replace glyphosate-based products in the U.S. residential lawn and garden market with alternative formulations in 2023 as part of a five-point plan to contain its litigation risk.
Glyphosate-based products will remain available to the agricultural sector.
The move comes as Bayer attempts to bring closure to long-running litigations in the U.S. Supreme Court alleging that cancers have been caused from exposure to the glyphosate product, Roundup.
More than 90 percent of the Roundup litigation claims have come from the U.S. residential lawn and garden market business.
Bayer has settled or resolved about 96,000 cases but about 30,000 remain outstanding.
In a statement, Bayer said the move to withdraw glyphosate-based products from the domestic-user market was exclusively to manage litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns.
As the vast majority of claims in the litigation came from lawn and garden market users, the action would largely eliminate the primary source of future claims beyond an assumed latency period.
The company said there would be no change in the availability of its glyphosate formulations in the US professional and agricultural markets.