In a deal reached late last week with New York’s state attorney general Letitia James, Bayer has agreed to pay nearly $6.9 million to settle claims it misled consumers by advertising its Roundup herbicide as harmless and environmentally safe.

As per the settlement, Bayer will stop asserting that the glyphosate-based crop protectant harms nothing but weeds, poses no threat to the health of wildlife and is safer than detergent and soap.

James’s office, which has also pursued cases against former US president Donald Trump, said Bayer had failed to substantiate these repeated claims for the top-selling crop protectant it inherited in its $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto in 2018.

Besides violating New York laws prohibiting false and misleading advertising, the attorney general said Bayer had breached a 1996 Monsanto settlement with the state over its Roundup-related advertising.

New York plans to spend the settlement money on reducing the impact of pesticides on pollinators and aquatic species.

As pesticides can cause serious harm to the health of the environment and additionally pose a “deadly threat to wildlife,” James said companies that make them must be "honest with consumers” about the inherent dangers.

Even before Bayer bought out Monsanto, environmental NGOS pinpointed Roundup’s active ingredient as a carcinogen, and at least one study –  by the World Health Organization’s international agency for research on cancer (IARC)—  in 2015 backed that claim, labeling glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

Both Monsanto and Bayer have repeatedly rejected any connection between Roundup and cancer but Bayer has lost millions in lawsuits brought by plaintiffs blaming their non-Hodgkins leukemia on use of the herbicide.

Obviously pleased with seeing the litigation burden lightened somewhat, Bayer noted that the New York case did not bring forward any scientific conclusions as to whether or not glyphosate is a carcinogen.

As of February this year, some 109,000 of the 154,000 Roundup claims Bayer has faced had been settled or deemed ineligible, the Reuters news agency reports. In a major settlement reached in 2020, the company paid $10.9 billion to settle the bulk of those cases.