After more than a year of talks the German drugs and pesticides maker reached agreement with around 75% of the current Roundup plaintiffs, involving some 125,000 filed and unfiled claims overall, it said in a statement on Wednesday.
The settled cases account for about 95% of those currently set for trial, it added.
"The Roundup settlement is the right action at the right time for Bayer to bring a long period of uncertainty to an end," Bayer Chief Executive Werner Baumann said.
"Bayer wisely decided to settle the litigation rather than roll the dice in [an] American court," said settlement mediator Ken Feinberg.
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The company said it would make a payment of between $8.8 and $9.6 billion to resolve the current Roundup litigation - including an allowance expected to cover unresolved claims - and $1.25 billion to support a separate class agreement to address potential future litigation.
Dr. Dena Grayson, doctor and Democrat politician was among those to highlight the thousands of claims which Bayer still has to address.
🚨BREAKING: Bayer to pay >$10 billion to settle tens of thousands of claims that #Roundup causes #cancer (non-Hodgkin lymphoma).
— Dr. Dena Grayson (@DrDenaGrayson) June 24, 2020
Bayer still faces at least 25,000 claims from plaintiffs who have not agreed to be part of the settlement.😎https://t.co/TxkLTW7rsv
Bayer bought Monsanto, which manufactures the glyphosate-based product, in 2018 for $63 billion and has repeatedly defended the weed-killers safety, pointing to studies that show glyphosate is safe.
The company said it will continue to sell Roundup and has no plans to add a cancer warning label on the product.
A review by the World Health Organisation found glyphosate "probably carcinogenic".
Last year the German government approved a ban on glyphosate as from 2023.
France is to ban a number of products containing glyphosate by the end of 2020, but President Emmanuel Macron has pulled back on a pledge to completely ban the chemical in January 2021 saying it would be too hard on farmers.
(with agencies)
