For nearly a decade, thousands of plaintiffs have sued Monsanto alleging that the chemical glyphosate used in Roundup caused their cancer and that the company had covered up the risks. Since then, Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018, has paid out more than $10 billion to settle approximately 100,000 Roundup claims, and faces the potential of further costly lawsuits and jury verdicts, given the thousands of people who have used and continue to use the product.

One of the lynchpins of Monsanto's defense, and regulations that have deemed the weedkiller safe, is a 2000 scientific review conducted by three scientists that found Roundup safe. However, the study was retracted last month by the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, citing serious ethical concerns about the paper basing its conclusions largely on unpublished studies conducted by Monsanto. There were also indications that the authors had received financial compensation from Monsanto for their work. There was no disclosure of a conflict of interest on the part of the authors beyond a mention in the acknowledgments that Monsanto had provided scientific support. As a result, Dr. Martin van den Berg, the journal's editor in chief, said he “had lost confidence in the results and conclusions of this article.”

Now the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being asked to reconsider the safety of the product given that the retracted paper appears in the bibliography of EPA’s risk assessment on glyphosate. An EPA spokesman said the agency was aware of the article’s retraction and noted EPA’s assessment of glyphosate’s risks had not relied solely on the study, and that the agency did not intend to rely on it going forward.

What this all will mean for the future of the product, and the future of the litigation over its use, will be worth watching in 2026.