Poudre Valley Co-op named in lawsuit against Monsanto’s RoundUp

LARIMER COUNTY — A pair of plaintiffs are suing agriculture giant Monsanto and Poudre Valley Co-Operative Association Inc. over the possible cancer-causing ingredients in its RoundUp weedkiller.

In a suit filed last Friday in U.S. District Court in Denver, Fort Collins resident Charlotte Bishelli claims to have developed Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after using RoundUp for nine years.

Lone Tree resident Clinton Blyth, the other plaintiff filing a federal suit, said he used RoundUp for at least 40 years and was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2006 and 2015. He is also suing the Fort Collins-based Poudre Valley farm co-op that sold the weedkiller.

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Monsanto denied Blyth’s allegations in a filing Monday, saying the product poses no risk to human health and the company did not mislead customers on possible health risks.

Poudre Valley Co-Op president Gordon Ledall declined to comment when reached by phone Tuesday.

A third RoundUp-related lawsuit was also filed Friday by a couple in El Paso County.

Monsanto, which was acquired by German pharmaceutical and pesticide maker Bayer AG last year for $63 billion, has battled a slew of lawsuits across the United States from farmers saying they developed cancer after being exposed to glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp.

RoundUp is widely used by farmers to clear pest plants in crop fields with seeds that are genetically modified by Monsanto to resist glyphostate’s plant-killing mechanism of action. However, it’s been linked as a carcinogen by thousands of plaintiffs across the country, a claim Bayer and Monsanto have vigorously denied.

The lawsuits join a group of more than 13,400 separate lawsuits against Monsanto and Bayer across the country alleging similar causes of cancer. Bayer has lost three separate jury trials in California so far, with damages ranging into the millions. The company is appealing those judgements.

Studies and government positions are mixed on RoundUp’s links to cancer. The World Health Organization said in 2015 that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic,” and University of Washington researchers said in February that glyphosate exposure increases lymphoma risk by 41 percent, but the European Chemicals Agency and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency do not consider the substance harmful to humans.