Pesticide manufacturer Bayer-Monsanto ordered to compensate a French farmer

Farmer Paul François (our photo) led a legal standoff against Monsanto for fifteen years.

REUTERS/Emmanuel Foudrot

Text by: RFI Follow

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Bayer-Monsanto will have to compensate a French farmer, Paul François, poisoned by the herbicide Lasso.

Information revealed, this Thursday, December 8, by our colleagues from

and Radio France.

On November 7, the Lyon court sentenced the multinational to pay him just over 11,000 euros.

A disappointment for this man, now 58, who has been fighting for years against Monsanto. 

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In total, fifteen years of procedure and on arrival, 11,135 euros while Paul François claimed more than one million euros.

It is therefore a victory with a bitter taste for this French farmer.

A victory ?

A victory all the same because the multinational is well and truly condemned, a first in France for a manufacturer of pesticides.

In

, the Court of Cassation had definitively concluded that Bayer-Monsanto was responsible for the intoxication of Paul François.

In 2004, while this grain farmer from Charente was cleaning the tanks of his Lasso sprayer, he inhaled the vapors of the herbicide.

He then falls ill, then is hospitalized and will end up having to hire staff to help him run his operation.

" 

Derisory

 " amount

It now remained for the courts to set the amount of compensation.

The Lyon court considered that the damage suffered was only temporary and did not retain the chronic disorders suffered by Paul François.

The judges also withdrew the sums that the farmer has already received from his insurance, hence this amount of just over 11,000 euros that Paul François considers "

" in the face of "

".

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