Retail giant Costco has reportedly decided to drop Roundup products after a couple who blamed their cancer on the weed killer won the lawsuit.
A California jury ordered Monsanto to pay a whopping $2bn to Alberta and Alva Pilliod, who said that their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was caused by Roundup.
Each of them was awarded $1bn punitive damages, in addition to another combined $55m given in compensatory damages.
Now Costco is dropping the weed killer from its stores, founder of Moms Across America Zen Honeycutt revealed on her website.
Honeycutt started a petition for the wholesale corporation to break ties with Roundup.
She said: “I called the headquarters, and after two days of messages and calls, I did finally confirm with three people that Costco was not ordering Roundup or any glyphosate-based herbicides for the incoming spring shipments.”
A Costco spokesperson told PEOPLE that the big box store doesn’t “have a statement available about the decision.”
Two more Change.org petitions created by Moms Across America call for Lowe’s and Home Depot to drop Roundup products from their stores.
Roundup contains a potentially harmful herbicide, glyphosate, to kill broadleaf plants as well as grasses.
However, Bayer, Monsanto’s subsidiary that manufactures Roundup, maintains that they’ll appeal to the decision as the weed killer is safe.
In the first court verdict against Monsanto, the company was ordered in August 2018 to pay $289m, later reduced to $200m, to a golf course greens-keeper who blamed the weed killer for his terminal cancer.
After the ruling came, tens of thousands of cases flooded against Monsanto. According to the latest estimates, the company is currently facing more than 13,000 lawsuits.
In March, the company was again ordered to pay $80m to another man.
After the recent $2 billion verdict came, Bayer said in a statement that none of their products has any link with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“Bayer is disappointed with the jury’s decision and will appeal the verdict in this case,” the company said in the statement.
“There is not reliable scientific evidence to conclude that glyphosate-based herbicides were the ‘but for’ cause of their illnesses as the jury was required to find in this case.”
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