The Progressive Mind - Monsanto Charged with Chemical Poisoning | Care2 Healthy Living

11.10.12

The Progressive Mind - Monsanto Charged with Chemical Poisoning | Care2 Healthy Living: It’s not every day that we learn about a victory for Mother Earth. But thanks to a 47-year old farmer and a French court there has been a victory against U.S. biotechnology giant Monsanto. And, I’d say that’s a triumph for Mother Earth as well. The company lost a court battle earlier this year and was charged as guilty of chemical poisoning. This judgment could lend credence to other health claims against Monsanto and pesticides in general.

Paul Francois, a French farmer sued Monsanto after he suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches, and stammering after inhaling the company’s Lasso weedkiller in 2004. He cited insufficient product label warnings as part of the problem.

“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,” Fran�ois Lafforgue, Paul Francois’s lawyer said in an interview with Reuters. In the same interview, Monsanto’s lawyer Jean-Philippe Delsart states: “Monsanto always considered that there were not sufficient elements to establish a causal relationship between Paul Francois’s symptoms and a potential poisoning.”