Cancer was caused by chemicals sprayed on family farm, Manitoba man alleges in lawsuit

Posted on June 11, 2024 by Peggy

A man who grew up on a farm in southern Manitoba whose land was in part leased for crop research and development is now suing the companies that carried out that work, alleging the chemicals they used near his home gave him cancer.

Kevin Wayne Giesbrecht was diagnosed with Stage 4 follicular non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in December, an illness he says in a statement of claim filed on June 3 in Manitoba’s Court of King’s Bench was “directly and proximately caused” by his exposure to chemicals over two decades on his family’s farm near the town of Carman, Man.

His parents leased and lived on 45 acres of land there on three occasions: once in 2008 to Hyland Seeds, owned by Corteva Agriscience Canada Company, and twice more in 2013 and 2020 to Monsanto Canada, which was later acquired by Bayer, “one of the largest pharmaceutical companies and biomedical companies in the world,” the lawsuit says.

Giesbrecht, along with his common-law spouse Jennifer Diane McAlpine, alleges those companies sprayed herbicides including Roundup that are made with glyphosate, a synthetic compound the lawsuit says was determined in 2015 by the World Health Organization to be probably carcinogenic to humans.

The lawsuit claims the companies “wilfully concealed” the nature of the chemicals they were using, and that they never informed Giesbrecht’s family of the names or types of chemicals being tested.

“It was unconscionable for the Defendants to conceal the risks associated with the Chemicals. In doing so, the Defendants prevented Giesbrecht from discovering the full extent of the harm he was suffering,” the court document says.

“Giesbrecht had no choice in his Exposure to the Chemicals as he was a minor and lived on the Farm. In some cases, he was not even warned about the timing of the Defendants’ Use of the Chemicals, including when they would be spraying the Chemicals.”

Giesbrecht lived on that farm from 2002 until 2012, and often visited during the summers in other years. The family home on the farm is within 100 metres of the fields the defendants leased, the lawsuit says, and Giesbrecht would have been exposed to the chemicals while walking to school, horseback riding or sitting or playing around his home. The chemicals were also sprayed near the family garden, which Giesbrecht ate vegetables from.

None of the allegations have been proven in court, and no statement of defence has been filed.

A Bayer spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Tuesday that it had not been served with the lawsuit, and that it stands behind the safety of its glyphosate products that “have been used safely and successfully in Canada and internationally for nearly 50 years.”

“Leading health regulators in Canada and around the world have repeatedly concluded that glyphosate is not a carcinogen and that glyphosate products are safe when used according to label directions,” the statement said.

Corteva did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

In a 2019 statement, Health Canada said “no pesticide regulatory authority in the world currently considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed.”

The organization said it continues to monitor for new information related to the compound and “will take appropriate action if risks of concern to human health or the environment are identified.”

‘Egregious and outrageous’ conduct alleged

The lawsuit says Giesbrecht, who now lives in Calgary, continues to get chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatment for his cancer.

It alleges the defendants were “wilfully blind or reckless” as to the risks of being exposed to the chemicals and that they breached a duty of care they owed to Giesbrecht by spraying on or near the farm while he was present and telling him “it was safe to be out on the Farm when it was not.”

It also says the land leases were signed with the “express or implied condition” that the companies would follow safety protocols, including following environmental rules around applying and disposing of hazardous chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides and only apply those chemicals to the leased land, not elsewhere on the farm.

The lawsuit also claims the defendants “knew or ought to have known that glyphosate is carcinogenic,” and that they “made concerted efforts to conceal, deny, undermine, manipulate, discredit, suppress, and delay the scientific discourse on the causation between glyphosate and cancer.”

Giesbrecht is seeking damages for his cancer symptoms, including chronic pain and discomfort, as well as nausea, fatigue, headaches and loss of appetite for up to a week after each treatment.

The lawsuit says he previously lived an active lifestyle and is now unable to do any strenuous physical activity, and that he incurred costs from medical expenses, lost employment income and had to cancel vacations while undergoing treatment.

It also seeks punitive damages for what the lawsuit called the “egregious and outrageous conduct of the Defendants, and in particular their reckless disregard for Giesbrecht’s health and life” through exposure to chemicals. The court document says punitive damages “would help deter the Defendants and others from similar conduct in the future.”