The US pesticide company DuPont is to stop selling its fungicide Benlate (benomyl) because of mounting legal costs and other factors.
According to Jim Borel, vice president and general manager of DuPont Crop Protection, the company is no longer willing to bear the high continuing costs of defending the product in the US legal system.
DuPont withdrew the dry flowable formulation, Benlate 50 DF, in 1991 following a series of incidents of damage to high value horticultural crops. The company was served with several hundred lawsuits in connection with these incidents, of which some 120 are still pending. DuPont has since spent or accrued US$1,300 million for settlements on legal costs. Benlate has also been implicated in damage to shrimp farms following run-off from banana plantations and has been cited in high-profile lawsuits involving birth defects (see PN33 p8).
Mr Borel conceded that DuPont had been influenced by the cost of maintaining Benlate. ‘We believe those resources are better applied to other areas of our business,’ he concluded.
Agrow, 4 May 2001.
[This article first appeared in
Pesticides News No. 52, June 2001, page 17]