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Press-Information CBG 23.04.20

Investigator & Watchdog Group Warn Bayer:

Change Course or Face Possible Bankruptcy

Bonn, Germany, 23 April--In their message to the 2020 Bayer shareholders meeting on April 28, leaders of The Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT) and Coordination against BAYER-Dangers (CBG) warn that unless the company takes measures to come clean from the dark past of Monsanto—a company they purchased two years ago—emerging liabilities could ultimately force them into bankruptcy. Large jury awards for plaintiffs who used Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and suffered from Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) caused Bayer’s stock value to plummet by more than 35% and could ultimately cost them up to $12 billion. But Jeffrey Smith, IRT’s founder, asserts “this is just the first chapter.”

Smith, who has been exposing Monsanto’s dark side for a quarter of a century, warned Bayer four years ago against making the purchase. In an open letter, he listed the WHO’s classification of Roundup’s active ingredient as a “probable carcinogen” among several “unprecedented liabilities” that threatened to collapse Monsanto’s core business. In a 2-minute video prepared for Bayer’s 2020 Annual General Meeting, Smith states that Roundup is now linked to more than 30 diseases. “The number of potential plaintiffs with other Roundup-related diseases is so great,” Smith says, “if just a fraction received a payout proportional to the anticipated NHL settlement, it could bankrupt the company.”

Although Bayer says it’s committed “to its social and ethical responsibilities as a corporate citizen,” Marius Stelzmann, managing director of CBG, challenges the claim. “It's time to stop the false advertising, to acknowledge the carcinogenicity of glyphosate, and most of all, to compensate the victims.”

Due to more potential lawsuits, however, Smith says that they must go further. “Bayer must demonstrate to juries that it has gone overboard to be the good corporate citizen that Monsanto refused to be.”

He describes two requirements:
1. If Bayer refuses to discontinue Roundup, they must immediately fund independent, comprehensive, intergenerational studies on the full Roundup formulation. If they demonstrate safety, the company may become insulated from future lawsuits. If studies show harm, then Bayer must remove Roundup.

2. Bayer must release all evidence of Monsanto’s dark behavior, or juries will blame Bayer for hiding the truth and extract huge penalties.

Punitive damages intended to punish Monsanto for malicious behavior comprised 95% of $2.424 billion jury awards for just 4 plaintiffs. Although judges reduced the amount, it was the jury’s anger that ruled the day. Lawyers presented overwhelming evidence of how Monsanto covered up harm, rigged research, ignored scientific findings, manipulated regulatory agencies, ghostwrote studies, and attacked independent scientists and critics.

Smith says, “Bayer must come clean or they will reap Monsanto’s bad corporate karma..”

Coordination against BAYER-Dangers will host live, online protest actions against the annual BAYER AGM:

Sunday, April 26th, 6.00 o’clock pm
Live International Panel
Speakers:
• Jeffrey Smith, USA
Institute for Responsible Technology
• Brad Harris, USA
Glyphosat-Betroffener
• Lena Luig
INKOTA
• Anna Schönberg
Aktion Unterholz
• Marius Stelzmann,
Coordination gegen BAYER-Gefahren
• Falko Schröder,
Fridays For Future Leverkusen
• Sarah Wiener, Österreich
TV chef, Member of EU Parliament

Tuesday, April 28th 9 o’clock am
Corona-safe Protest Action at BAYER Headquarters
#StopBayerMonsanto
Tuesday, April 28th 9 o’clock am – 6 o’clock pm
Live online International Protest

Both events can be found at the aforementioned time via these links:

https://www.facebook.com/events/221445129119081/
http://www.cbgnetwork.org/7604.html

Contact:
Marius Stelzmann (CBG) +49211/33 39 11
info@cbgnetwork.org

Mike Burton (IRT) +1 540 250 0111
Mike@ResponsibleTechnology.org