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<\/div>\nJEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 The manufacturer of a popular weedkiller won support Wednesday from the Missouri House for a proposal that could shield it from costly lawsuits alleging it failed to warn customers its product could cause cancer.<\/p>\n
The House vote marked an important but incremental victory for chemical giant Bayer, which acquired an avalanche of legal claims<\/a> involving the weedkiller Roundup when it bought the product\u2019s original St. Louis-area-based producer, Monsanto<\/a>.<\/p>\n The legislation now heads to the Missouri Senate with several weeks remaining in the annual legislative session. Bayer pursued similar legislation<\/a> this year in Idaho and Iowa, where it has mining and manufacturing facilities, but it fell short in both states.<\/p>\n Bayer disputes claims that Roundup\u2019s key ingredient, glyphosate, causes a cancer called non-Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma. But it has set aside $16 billion and already paid about $10 billion<\/a> of that amount to resolve some of the tens of thousands of legal claims against it.<\/p>\n Though some studies associate glyphosate with cancer, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said it is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans when used as directed.<\/p>\n The Missouri legislation<\/a> says that federally approved pesticide labeling \u201cshall be sufficient to satisfy any requirement for a warning label regarding cancer\u201d \u2014 effectively thwarting failure-to-warn allegations in future lawsuits.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are grateful that members of the Missouri House have supported farmers and science over the litigation industry,\u201d Bayer said in a statement Wednesday.<\/p>\n A coalition that includes Bayer has run ads on radio stations, newspapers and billboards supporting the legislation.<\/p>\n Farmers overwhelmingly rely on Roundup, which was introduced 50 years ago as a more efficient way to control weeds and reduce tilling and soil erosion. For crops including corn, soybeans and cotton, it\u2019s designed to work with genetically modified seeds that resist Roundup\u2019s deadly effect.<\/p>\n More than a dozen majority party Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the legislation as it passed the House on a 91-57 vote<\/a>. Some Democrats made personal pleas to vote no.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you vote for this bill, you are voting for cancer \u2014 and it will hurt my feelings, and I will not smile at you on the elevator,\u201d said state Rep. LaDonna Appelbaum, who is undergoing treatment for cancer.<\/p>\n Supporters said it was important to protect Bayer, whose North American crop science division is based in the St. Louis area, from lawsuits that could jeopardized the availability of Roundup. They cited concerns that Bayer eventually could pull Roundup from the U.S. market, leaving farmers dependent on alternative chemicals from China.<\/p>\n \u201cThis bill isn\u2019t about cancer, it\u2019s really about the process of what\u2019s taken place within the courts,\u201d said Republican state Rep. Mike Haffner, chair of the House Agriculture Policy Committee.<\/p>\n Topics<\/span> Lawsuits<\/a> Missouri<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Was this article valuable?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n