By Patricia Weiss and Ludwig Burger
FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Bayer has told U.S. lawmakers it could stop selling Roundup weedkiller unless they can strengthen legal protection against product liability litigation, according to a financial analyst and a person close to the matter.
Bayer has paid about $10 billion to settle disputed claims that Roundup, based on the herbicide glyphosate, causes cancer. About 67,000 further cases are pending for which the group has set aside $5.9 billion in legal provisions.
The German company has said plaintiffs should not be able to take Bayer to court by invoking U.S. state rules given the federal U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly labelled the product as safe to use, as have regulators in other parts of the world.
“Without regulatory clarity (Bayer) will need to exit the business. Bayer have been clear with legislators and farmer groups on this,” analysts at brokerage Jefferies said in a note on Thursday, citing guidance Bayer’s leadership provided in a meeting.
Bayer, which acquired Roundup under the $63 billion takeover of Monsanto in 2018, said: “We are exploring every possibility to end this litigation.” It declined to comment further.
Disclosing glyphosate sales numbers for the first time, Bayer on Wednesday said the product, one of the most widely used weedkillers in U.S. field farming, generated 2.6 billion euros ($2.8 billion) in revenue last year.
“Bayer could reach a point in the future where the company is forced to discontinue the sale of the product in the United States,” a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, requesting anonmyity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
As it released fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, the company said it was working to “significantly contain” litigation by 2026.
It has repeatedly said it is working with farmers’ associations to lobby U.S. federal and state legislators. It is also preparing to again petition the Supreme Court for legal protection, following a failed attempt in 2022.
Bayer, however, has not previously threatened to withdraw the product from the U.S. market, although it replaced glyphosate in U.S. consumer products with different weedkilling substances.
One of the world’s largest seeds and pesticides makers, Bayer competes with Corteva, BASF and China’s Syngenta.
It is the only glyphosate producer in the United States, where the U.S. farming sector, which also imports cheaper generic glyphosate from China, relies on modified soy and corn that are resistant to its weedkilling effect.
The glyphosate litigation, which Bayer inherited from a Monsanto deal that was masterminded by Anderson’s predecessor, has weighed heavily on the stock, together with factors, including a drug development setback in 2023 and a weak agriculture markets.
Bayer said at the time of its results release on Wednesday it would internally separate the glyphosate business from the rest of the Crop Protection division.
When asked in an analyst call whether the glyphosate business could be sold, divisional head Rodrigo Santos said: “We’re going to continue to discuss in the future, evaluating all the alternatives that we have for the business. That’s always what we do”.
(Editing by Gerry Doyle and Barbara Lewis)
