Readers React: Monsanto got what it deserved with the $289-million verdict over glyphosate

To the editor: While the science behind the $289-million verdict against chemical and seed-maker Monsanto might not be sound, as Michael Hiltzik exhaustively explains, the politics and sentiment are deeply rooted.

This is a company that mercilessly pushed its product and its genetically modified seeds on American agriculture, ruining anybody who would not conform. We have Monsanto to thank for Clarence Thomas, the former lawyer for the company who now sits on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The real shame is that Bayer, a somewhat respectable German firm, bought this poison pill and will be held accountable for damages caused by the practices and products that Monsanto pushed. The ones who should be paying are the Monsanto executives who cashed out just before the bomb dropped.

Niels Goerrissen, Harbor City

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To the editor: Thanks to Hiltzik for speaking up for science. Regardless of how you feel about Monsanto, the science is clear on glyphosate and cancer.

Organizations like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, the World Health Organization, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, Health Canada, New Zealand’s National Poisons Centre and the European Chemicals Agency have each found no link to cancer.

The sole outlier has been the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, which was reported to have fudged its findings to show that glyphosate poses a cancer risk (but not a link). It put glyphosate in the same risk category as working night shifts, and you don’t see 24-hour operations being sued for causing cancer.

Richard Green, Ventura

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