Despite having disbursed billions in Roundup settlement agreements, Bayer and Monsanto continue to remain entangled in thousands of Roundup lawsuits. A U.S. Court of Appeals decision in February 2024 decreed that the manufacturers must persist in confronting these legal actions, notwithstanding Bayer and Monsanto’s assertions that federal insecticide laws shielded them from failure to warn claims.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Bayer AG is now deciding whether to employ the “Texas Two-Step,” a controversial legal maneuver that would force the settlement of any claims now or in the future through the U.S. bankruptcy system.
While the company has won more trials recently than it has lost over the past four months, Roundup jury verdicts have totaled around $4 billion.
In response to a series of expensive jury verdicts concerning the herbicide, Bayer executives are reportedly seeking guidance from legal firms and advisors on persuading a bankruptcy judge to suspend upcoming trials this year. According to individuals familiar with the matter but who preferred to remain anonymous due to its confidential nature, the aim is to negotiate a settlement for over 50,000 cases.
The legal tactic’s name comes from a Texas state law that allows a business to manage mass lawsuits by dividing itself in two and loading one business entity with its assets while loading another with legal or financial liabilities.
In 2021, Johnson & Johnson attempted to spin off liability unsuccessfully using the Texas Two-Step in suits over talcum powder. 3M Company also tried to use the strategy last year during a lawsuit by veterans against the company’s allegations of defective earplugs.
“Given the recent rulings on Texas Two-Step bankruptcies, I’m pretty sure Bayer knows this is a long-shot bid for a settlement,” Bruce Markell, a former federal bankruptcy judge who now teaches law at Northwestern University, told Bloomberg. “But they may feel like they don’t have any other choice.”
While facing tens of thousands of lawsuits, Bayer attempted to consolidate litigation through a settlement program in 2021. However, a federal judge rejected the company’s efforts.
Bayer has lost about 70 percent of its market value since its $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto, from which it inherited Roundup, in 2018.
An unassuming brown bovine from the south of Brazil has made history as the first transgenic cow capable of producing human insulin in her milk. The advancement, led by researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Universidade de São Paulo, could herald a new era in insulin production, one day eliminating drug scarcity and high costs for people living with diabetes.
“Mother Nature designed the mammary gland as a factory to make protein really, really efficiently. We can take advantage of that system to produce a protein that can help hundreds of millions of people worldwide,” said Matt Wheeler, professor in the Department of Animal Sciences, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at U. of I. He is also affiliated with the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, The Grainger College of Engineering, the College of Veterinary Medicine, the Beckman Institute, and the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.
Wheeler is lead author on a new Biotechnology Journal study describing the development of the insulin-producing cow, a proof-of-concept achievement that could be scaled up after additional testing and FDA approval.
Wheeler’s colleagues in Brazil inserted a segment of human DNA coding for proinsulin — the protein precursor of the active form of insulin — into cell nuclei of 10 cow embryos. These were implanted in the uteruses of normal cows in Brazil, and one transgenic calf was born. Thanks to updated genetic engineering technology, the human DNA was targeted for expression — the process whereby gene sequences are read and translated into protein products — in mammary tissue only.
“In the old days, we used to just slam DNA in and hope it got expressed where you wanted it to,” Wheeler said. “We can be much more strategic and targeted these days. Using a DNA construct specific to mammary tissue means there’s no human insulin circulating in the cow’s blood or other tissues. It also takes advantage of the mammary gland’s capabilities for producing large quantities of protein.”
When the cow reached maturity, the team unsuccessfully attempted to impregnate her using standard artificial insemination techniques. Instead, they stimulated her first lactation using hormones. The lactation yielded milk, but a smaller quantity than would occur after a successful pregnancy. Still, human proinsulin and, surprisingly, insulin were detectable in the milk.
“Our goal was to make proinsulin, purify it out to insulin, and go from there. But the cow basically processed it herself. She makes about three to one biologically active insulin to proinsulin,” Wheeler said. “The mammary gland is a magical thing.”
The insulin and proinsulin, which would need to be extracted and purified for use, were expressed at a few grams per liter in the milk. But because the lactation was induced hormonally and the milk volume was smaller than expected, the team can’t say exactly how much insulin would be made in a typical lactation.
Conservatively, Wheeler says if a cow could make 1 gram of insulin per liter and a typical Holstein makes 40 to 50 liters per day, that’s a lot of insulin. Especially since the typical unit of insulin equals 0.0347 milligrams.
“That means each gram is equivalent to 28,818 units of insulin,” Wheeler said. “And that’s just one liter; Holsteins can produce 50 liters per day. You can do the math.”
The team plans to re-clone the cow, and is optimistic they’ll achieve greater success with pregnancy and full lactation cycles in the next generation. Eventually, they hope to create transgenic bulls to mate with the females, creating transgenic offspring that can be used to establish a purpose-built herd. Wheeler says even a small herd could quickly outcompete existing methods — transgenic yeast and bacteria — for producing insulin, and could do so without having to create highly technical facilities or infrastructure.
“With regard to mass-producing insulin in milk, you’d need specialized, high-health-status facilities for the cattle, but it’s nothing too out of the ordinary for our well-established dairy industry,” Wheeler said. “We know what we’re doing with cows.”
An efficient system to collect and purify insulin products would be needed, as well as FDA approval, before transgenic cows could supply insulin for the world’s diabetics. But Wheeler is confident that day is coming.
“I could see a future where a 100-head herd, equivalent to a small Illinois or Wisconsin dairy, could produce all the insulin needed for the country,” he said. “And a larger herd? You could make the whole world’s supply in a year.
Three South African workers filed a lawsuit against Minnesota company Boehnke Waste Handling LLC, seeking what they claim to be unpaid minimum and overtime wages, damages, and penalties, citing the Fair Labor Standards Act.
According to reports, Boehnke Waste Handling pumps, transports, and spreads livestock manure onto crop fields as fertilizer. The company employs foreign workers through the federal H-2A visa program, which requires suitable housing, safe working conditions, travel reimbursement, and minimum wage for farmworkers.
While Boehnke’s pay rates reported reflected a minimum wage of $15.37 per hour in 2022 and $17.34 in 2023, the lawsuit filed Friday alleges that the three workers, employed at various times during three years, were not compensated fairly for their time spent traveling to and from remote worksites.
The suit also states that during their employment, the plaintiffs routinely worked more than 40 hours per week, but their employer did not pay overtime wages for all the overtime hours worked.
The workers allege that their housing included rooms in the defendant’s machine shop that were exposure to manure and machine fumes but didn’t have windows. It also said that when two of them brought their concerns to their employer, they claim that Boehnke terminated their employment in retaliation before the end of their work contracts.
Boehnke Waste Handling is seeking 17 visa workers for farm-related work, encompassing the removal, pumping, application, and treatment of manure, alongside equipment maintenance and repairs. This opportunity was outlined in a January job description on the Department of Labor’s website.
However, the lawsuit notes that although the employer is supposedly listed as a fixed site employer on H-2A applications during 2021-2023, Boehnke Waste Handling primarily operated as an H-2A labor contractor, who furnished the plaintiffs for a fee to complete various duties at farms and ranches in the surrounding area.
Workers also claim that as a large part of their work, they handled manure and equipment specified for hauling manure, which included handling hazardous waste and working around “lagoons” as part of the work they completed. Plaintiffs insisted was not part of their outlined farm duties and placed them in hazardous situations completing work not outlined in their contracts.
In 2022, Purdue University researchers documented eight deaths related to manure storage and handling. Many of these incidents occurred during the repair of manure-handling equipment.
Multiple news outlets have reached out to Boehnke Waste Handling for comment, but the company has not responded to those requests nor has it made any public statements about the lawsuit.
The workers are represented by attorneys at the Agricultural Worker Project of Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, a legal aid organization.
The largest fire in Texas history, the Smokehouse Creek Fire, is now 100 percent contained after scorching 1,058,482 acres and structures and killing at least three people and thousands of cattle over three weeks.
Smaller fires, such as the Windy Deuce, Wellhouse, Grape Vine Creek, and Mills Creek, burned 179,000 acres but were also reported as entirely contained by the Texas A&M Forest Service.
According to CBS News, officials now believe that powerlines started the fire. Xcel Energy has admitted that some of its equipment may have contributed to the fire.
The road to recovery for the Panhandle will likely be a long one. The Texas Tribune reported that over 7,000 head of cattle are estimated as a dead, but the final numbers could reach up to 10,000 as ranchers decide whether severely injured cattle need to be euthanized.
“Their hooves are burned off, their utters are burnt beyond — they can’t nurse their babies,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told CBS News. “We’ll actually end up having to put a lot of cattle down just because they won’t be able to make it, even though they survived.”
While the losses are not anticipated to impact the cattle market as a whole in the U.S. (there are over 11 million head of cattle in Texas alone), the losses are no less devastating for local ranchers.
One rancher told Miller that they lost 700 cows. Another young couple, just starting, lost all 200 head of their herd.
It’s not just cattle that have been lost. The fires have devastated precious rangeland and crops, particularly cotton. Ranchers with cattle who survived the blaze struggle to find themselves without power, as 120 miles of powerlines have been burned down. Ranchers have difficulty getting to their livestock, and seven grain and seed dealers were burned down.
Aside from losing precious forage and other resources, flames also burned down miles of fencing. Roberts County Judge Mitchell Locke told the Texas Tribune that downed fences make estimating livestock losses difficult.
“Because the fences are gone, the cattle might be 10 miles away from where they originally were, or they might be dead,” said Locke.
The Canadian FFA Chapter lost its entire ag farm to the Smokehouse Creek Fire. The chapter’s agriculture advisor, a fire chief, has shared images and videos from the blaze, including scenes of Jack Craft, the Canadian FFA chapter’s president, fighting the blaze.
The Randal FFA Chapter has designed a shirt that they are selling for $20. The proceeds will go to the Canadian FFA to help rebuild their program.
Other relief efforts in the region are ongoing. Videos and photos of caravans of supplies and hay can be found across social media, while the U.S. Small Business Administration has set up disaster loan outreach centers in the towns of Canadian and Borger for people affected by any of the Panhandle wildfires.
Texas’ agriculture relief fund has received over $800,000 in donations for farmers and ranchers devastated by the fire, while areas to donate livestock supplies have also been established around the Panhandle.