5@5: Jury awards second plaintiff in Roundup trials $80M | EU lawmakers back single-use plastics ban

$80M awarded to man who jury says got cancer after Roundup exposure

The second phase of the most recent trial against Bayer-owned company Monsanto has ended with the jury in San Francisco awarding $75 million to Edwin Hardeman, after determining that the herbicide Roundup caused the plaintiff’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The ruling shows that last year’s case in which Dewayne Johnson was awarded $289 million in punitive and compensatory damages was not a one-off. Bayer maintains that glyphosate-based herbicides are not carcinogenic. Read more at The San Francisco Chronicle …

EU lawmakers back ban on single-use plastics, set standard for world

Single-use plastic items (e.g. straws, forks, knives, cotton buds) will be effectively banned in the European Union by 2021. Currently, the EU recycles “only a quarter of the 25 million [tons] of plastics waste it produces per year.” Especially now that China has stopped accepting other countries’ refuse, it’s up to legislators to end the stream of waste and come up with circular solutions. Read more at Reuters …

Dramatic sardine population decline means likely West Coast fishing ban

The “modern-day sardine collapse,” as one scientist puts it, has virtually guaranteed a ban on commercially harvesting the small schooling fish this spring. The collective weight of fish this year is “well below the 150,000-metric-ton threshold required before commercial fishing can be allowed,” and biologists are blaming changing ocean conditions as one contributing factor. Read more at The San Francisco Chronicle …

Tariffs force Alaska seafood industry to look beyond China

Alaska’s seafood industry has begun to look for markets beyond China after a 25 percent Chinese tariff on Pacific Northwest seafood was introduced in the summer of 2018. However, there is currently a “$5.5 million, three-year federal agricultural trade promotion grant awarded in January [that can be used] to develop nontraditional markets such as Japan, Southeast Asia and parts of South America.” Read more at Washington Times …

Arkansas passes bill to prevent sale of ‘cauliflower rice’

Rice, according to a new Arkansas bill, can only mean “‘the whole, broken, or ground kernels’” from the species Oryza sativa L. or Oryza glaberrima, or from “one of the four grass species in the Zizania or Porteresia genus (i.e., wild rice).” This measure was intended to protect Arkansas’ rice industry, which produce over 40 percent of American rice and has created roughly 20,000 jobs in the state. Read more at Munchies …