Monsanto
In the annals of biotechnology, one name comes up again and again, both for its standing in the industry and its consistently controversial practices over the last several decades: Monsanto Company.
If you’ve never heard of Monsanto, that’s mainly because the company produces very few commonly-known products under its own name. However, the end-products, from Kellogg’s to Ambien, fill the shelves of nearly any store you can find. Probably the only thing the don’t sell is tiffany like jewelry, but don’t be surprised if that changes. And Monsanto’s careful strategy of mergers, acquisitions, and endless tactical restructuring has resulted in any number of companies that are Monsanto in everything but name.
The company’s most well-known products pretty much speak for themselves: saccharin, caffeine, sulfuric acid, plastics, Agent Orange, aspartame, PCBs, nuclear weapons, DDT, phenylanine, Terminator seeds, Roundup herbicide, recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rGBH).
Monsanto’s history of legal issues is just as striking. DDT and Agent Orange were obvious targets during the 1970′s and 80′s, due to the particularly egregious and widespread damage and suffering. Amazingly, Monsanto managed to escape any real responsibility, winning or settling cases concerning saccharin, dioxin, PCBs, mercury poisoning, et al., in the US, UK, Canada, and elsewhere.
In addition, Monstanto has also been responsible for bribing government officials, making false advertising claims (typically concerning product safety), forcing products on or displacing unwilling communities, using child labor, coercing use of contaminated soil, and generally intimidating and threatening individuals and small businesses for nothing more than a tiny perceived or potential effect on the company’s profits.
The most common current scheme involves systemic economic and governmental coercion to adopt Monsanto GM seeds, which require Monsanto herbicides and fertilizer, which invariably has devastating consequences on the livelihoods and environment of local farmers (not to mention eliminating competition and genetic variation in the area).
Litigious Monsanto is assisted, no doubt, by copious lobbying and the many direct connections between Monsanto and the Federal Governments of at least two countries (including Justice Clarence Thomas, Donald Rumsfeld, Linda J. Fisher, Dr. Michael Friedman, Michael R. Taylor — all of whom who have worked for the US Federal Government, usually in the EPA or FDA, and as executives at Monsanto). Both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration have consistently allowed Monsanto to pollute, poison, and generally bully its way through any criticisms, through a combination of large lawsuit settlements and lobbying bribes drawn from the company’s nearly-unlimited coffers.
A Monsanto executive is on record stating that the company firmly believes that its only responsibility is to make money, and issues of “safety” (i.e., ensuring that a product does not cause death, disease, suffering, and widespread environmental and social catastrophe) are simply someone else’s concern (specifically, in this quote, the FDA’s concern — a perverse claim, considering the FDA has been run by former Monsanto executives for decades).
Not content with an impenetrable defense, the company has also demonstrated a pattern of aggressive, preemptive legal action regarding copyright and patent laws. This extends to suing dairy farmers for saying that they do not use bovine growth hormone, and suing farmers whose crops have been infiltrated by GM seeds.
It’s difficult to tell how much of the opposition to Monsanto comes from ‘Frankenstein fears’ of progress and change, and how much comes from a natural knee-jerk resistance to big government and big corporations. However, there’s plenty of reason to believe that the promise of biotech can be realized without the constant coercion, corruption, and destruction of life and liberty that has emerged as Monsanto’s standard operating procedure.
Human Rights Watch author Kim Kuh has been a civil rights lawyer, a mom, and a model for formal gowns (and even (http://prom-dresses.net/)prom dresses) in her other life.
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