As Lawsuits and Losses Pile Up, Bayer Seeks to Demonstrate Transparency

Bayer, the multi­na­tional phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and agri­cul­ture giant, has announced a new trans­parency ini­tia­tive that will allow the pub­lic to visit one of its lab­o­ra­to­ries where pes­ti­cide safety tests are done.

The move comes as jurors in a Delaware fed­eral court awarded $265 mil­lion to a Missouri farmer who con­tended that a Bayer pes­ti­cide, dicamba, dam­aged sup­pos­edly resis­tant crops after being blown onto them by the wind. Bayer said it plans to appeal the rul­ing.

The com­pany also faces more than 140 addi­tional law­suits related to dicamba in the American Midwest alone and is already in the process of set­tling thou­sands of law­suits related to Roundup, the for­merly pop­u­lar weed­killer, which has since been sus­pected of caus­ing can­cer.

Both Roundup and dicamba are prod­ucts of Monsanto, which was pur­chased by Bayer in 2018.

“By expand­ing the scope of our efforts in trans­parency, we are rein­forc­ing our com­mit­ment to con­tin­u­ally rais­ing the bar on trans­parency stan­dards around our agri­cul­tural inno­va­tions in every area where we work,” Bob Reiter, Bayer’s head of research and devel­op­ment in its crop sci­ence depart­ment, said in a press release.

Starting in April 2020, the pub­lic will be able to visit Bayer’s labs and test fields in Monheim, Germany, to observe the company’s sci­en­tists con­duct lab­o­ra­tory stud­ies, which are required for reg­u­la­tory approval of new pes­ti­cides.

“[Visitors will be able to observe] one real reg­u­la­tory safety study in depth which will be con­ducted at one field loca­tion and one ana­lyt­ics lab,” Charlotte Morr, the crop sci­ence data trans­parency man­ager at Bayer, said. ​“The pro­gram will show the process of safety test­ing under ​‘good lab­o­ra­tory prac­tice’ con­di­tions with the involve­ment of qual­ity assur­ance staff.”

Visitors at the upcom­ing pro­gram will observe how a spe­cific Bayer pes­ti­cide will be applied for a reg­u­la­tory study, accord­ing to ​“good lab­o­ra­tory prac­tice” stan­dards – an inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized sys­tem for qual­ity con­trol mea­sures used in non-clin­i­cal exper­i­ments.

The next day, pre­vi­ously har­vested crops will be ana­lyzed for pes­ti­cide residues in the lab. This is to ensure that the use of Bayer’s prod­ucts is safe for con­sumers when applied accord­ing to the label-instruc­tions.

Known as the OpenLabs ini­tia­tive, Bayer hopes that by open­ing up the process it can con­front the skep­ti­cism and lack of trust that farm­ers, sci­en­tists and the gen­eral pub­lic have long har­bored toward indus­try-funded stud­ies and sci­ence.

Sebastien Sauvé, a pro­fes­sor at the University of Montreal, is among those who have expressed wari­ness of the reli­a­bil­ity of indus­try-funded stud­ies, in gen­eral.

“When perus­ing the sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture on pes­ti­cides, it is dif­fi­cult to screen out what has been designed objec­tively and what has been funded by indus­try with a poten­tially biased intent,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Conversation. ​“The recent oblig­a­tion of sci­en­tists to declare con­flicts of inter­est has been essen­tial to trust the results.”

Bayer can­not yet say which of its prod­ucts will be tested dur­ing the event because the tests have not been sched­uled yet.

“Depending on the time of the year, the appli­ca­tion of a prod­uct or the har­vest of the crop will be pre­sented,” Morr said. ​“In spring, it will be the prod­uct appli­ca­tion process.”

“We are depen­dent on the weather con­di­tions and the growth stage of the plants,” she added. ​“The process of test­ing is in the focus of the pro­gram rather than the crops or prod­ucts tested.”

Depending on how this first trial goes, Bayer may expand the pro­gram to other loca­tions. Bayer cur­rently oper­ates in 90 dif­fer­ent coun­tries, although not all of these loca­tions are involved with its agri­cul­tural activ­i­ties.

“We will eval­u­ate the poten­tial to expand this pro­gram to other sites and study types based on the expe­ri­ences from our residue study pilot in Monheim,” Morr said. ​“We are com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ally enhanc­ing trans­parency stan­dards around the process used to assess the safety of our prod­ucts and we are also com­mit­ted to talk­ing openly about our inno­v­a­tive and sus­tain­able solu­tions in agri­cul­ture with the inter­ested pub­lic.”

• Bloomberg Law


• The Conversation


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