A Federal Court judge has dismissed a class action lawsuit alleging weed-killer Roundup causes cancer, but said he could not rule out the possibility that further scientific research could reveal a compelling link.
In a decision delivered on Thursday, Federal Court Justice Michael Lee said that the evidence, viewed as a whole, was “not such as to sustain” a causal connection between Roundup, containing the active ingredient glyphosate, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Bottles of Roundup weed killer move along the production line at the herbicide manufacturing facility.Credit: Jasper Juinen
“One thing is plain: the science is not all one way,” Lee said. “One cannot foreclose the possibility that further research may reveal a compelling link.
“It suggests hubris and defies common sense to assume further scientific research and analysis could not mean more definitive conclusions may be able to be drawn … including buttressing the notion that Roundup products are possible carcinogens.”
Kelvin McNickle, who was not present in court, was the lead applicant in the case. The 41-year-old alleged he developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after using Roundup as a child at his family’s rural property in NSW and at work. He was diagnosed in May 2018.
McNickle was unable to attend the trial after his non-Hodgkin lymphoma recurred following a period of remission.
Lee said the key question was whether McNickle had discharged his legal onus of proving on the balance of probabilities that the use of or exposure to Roundup products could increase a person’s risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma or cause them to develop it.
This was “not proven in this proceeding on the balance of probabilities”, he said, but this was “not the same thing as saying affirmatively that it does not”.
He stressed that he was deciding the case on the evidence before him as selected by the parties.
Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup, maintained that “glyphosate, glyphosate-based formulations and Roundup products are not carcinogenic at all, and do not cause or increase an individual’s risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma,” Lee said of the company’s position in a preliminary judgment last year.
McNickle alleged that from July 1976 to July 2022, “glyphosate, glyphosate-based formulations and Roundup Products (which have glyphosate as a component) were carcinogenic to humans”, Lee said in that judgment. Monsanto’s primary position was to “reject this contention completely”, Lee said.
Source Agencies
