Frankfurt (AFP)

Bayer now faces 42,700 US petitions filed against the Monsanto subsidiary's glyphosate herbicide, which was updated Wednesday and poisons the integration of the US pesticide and seed specialist into the German chemicals group.

The judicial threat is accelerating with this new score, carried out "to 11 October 2019", which updates the figure of 18,400 procedures communicated in late July. In April, Bayer reported only 5,000 cases.

The group attributes the increasing number of recourse to a rise in television commercials broadcast by lawyers to search for applicants.

"The number of proceedings does not say anything about their admissibility", however insisted the boss of the group, Werner Baumann, during a conference call.

Bayer has so far been sentenced three times to compensate Californian cancer claimants, even though the amounts owed by the group were greatly reduced by a judge's second examination.

Bayer's appeals will be studied next year to "support" the mediation process ordered by a federal judge in California, which would allow the group if successful to settle its litigation without going through lengthy trials.

Baumann said on Wednesday that "Bayer will accept a mediation result only if it makes economic sense" and "put an end" to the case.

- Heavy bill -

"I think that only a small number of applicants will be compensated" in the end, "those for whom there is a link" of direct causality "between cancer and glyphosate," told AFP Markus Mayer, analyst at Baader Bank.

On the basis of an even larger projection of petitions, Meyer estimated in July that an agreement could cost Bayer between $ 15 and $ 20 billion.

The group continues to challenge the very principle of its responsibility, hammering for months that no regulator in the world has concluded the dangerousness of glyphosate since its launch in the mid-1970s.

Bayer, the German inventor of aspirin, took the biggest gamble in its history last year by swallowing Monsanto for $ 63 billion, focusing on the increasing use of chemistry to feed a planet increasingly populous and disturbed by climate change.

But the group has since struggled with the controversial reputation of its US target, both in the trade of GM seeds and that of pesticides, targeted by different legal procedures and issues of political debate in many countries.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an offshoot of WHO, considered in 2015 that glyphosate was "probably carcinogenic", a focal point of the procedures. However, this is an assessment of the absolute hazard of the product, not the risk of exposure to current doses.

- Refocusing -

On the operational side, Bayer confirmed its annual targets "despite a decline in growth forecasts" in the global economy.

Sales climbed 5.4% to 9.8 billion euros and operating income excluding special items increased 7.5% to 2.3 billion euros.

Net profit was down sharply by 64% in the third quarter of 2019, but suffers a comparison with the same period of 2018, which was inflated by a major divestment.

Bayer completed a series of divestitures in August to tighten pharmacy and agrochemicals business with the sale of the US $ 7.6 billion Animal Health business to Elanco.

In early August, the company announced the sale for 3.5 billion euros of its shares in the operator of industrial parks in the Currenta chemistry.

For the year, Bayer expects a turnover of about 43.5 billion euros.

© 2019 AFP