US biotech giant guilty of poisoning farmer

A FRENCH court has found US biotech giant Monsanto guilty of the chemical poisoning of a farmer, a judgment that could lend weight to other health claims against pesticides.

In the first such case heard in court in France, grain grower Paul Francois, 47, said he suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto’s Lasso weedkiller in 2004.

He blamed the agri-business giant for not providing adequate warnings on the product label.

The ruling was given by a court in Lyon yesterday, which ordered an expert opinion of Francois’s losses to establish the amount of damages.

“It is a historic decision in so far as it is the first time that a [pesticide] maker is found guilty of such a poisoning,” François Lafforgue, Mr Francois’s lawyer, said.

Monsanto said it was disappointed by the ruling and would examine whether to appeal the judgment.

Previous health claims from farmers have failed because of the difficulty of establishing clear links between illnesses and exposure to pesticides.

Mr Francois and other farmers suffering from illness set up an association last year to make a case that their health problems should be linked to their use of crop protection products.

The Francois case goes back to a period of intensive use of crop-protection chemicals in the European Union. The EU has since banned a large number of substances considered dangerous.

The Francois claim was easier to argue than others because he pinpointed a specific incident – inhaling the Lasso when cleaning the tank of his crop sprayer.