Vietnam supports the San Francisco jury's judgment over Monsato, said Deputy Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Phuong Tra in a regular press conference on August 23.Earlier this month, a jury of San Francisco city found Monsanto liable in a lawsuit filed by a man who alleged the company’s glyphosate-based weed-killers, including Roundup, caused his cancer and ordered the company to pay US$289 million.
Deputy Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Nguyen Phuong Tra
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"We believe Monsanto should be responsible for compensating Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange for the damages caused by the company's herbicides," she noted.
Monsanto, a unit of Bayer AG following a US$62.5 billion acquisition by the German conglomerate, faces more than 5,000 similar lawsuits across the US.
The company was one of the producers of Agent Orange, a defoliant used by US troops in the Vietnam War. The US army sprayed some 80 million liters of the defoliant over Vietnam from 1961 to 1971. Agent Orange, which contained the deadly chemical dioxin, was the most commonly used herbicide.
Dioxin, a highly toxic chemical in the defoliant, has been related to many major health problems such as cancer, mental disabilities and birth defects.
