Category Archives: Law

Monsanto under investigation by at least 7 US States

According to The Organic and Non-GMO Report, April 2010 :

At least seven US state attorneys general are investigating whether Monsanto Company has abused its market power to lock out competitors and raise prices on seed. Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and two other unidentified states are in a working group to investigate the biotech giant.
The states are probing whether Monsanto violated laws by offering rebates to seed distributors for excluding rival seeds, imposing limits on combining the product with other genetic modifications, or offering cash incentives to switch farmers to more expensive generation of seed varieties.
The state investigations add to pressure on Monsanto. The US Justice Department is investigating the company’s marketing practices, and DuPont Company has accused Monsanto of anti-competitive practices in licensing litigation.

And Monsanto’s stock price is down more than 30%, from $93.35 in May to a 52 week low of $63.75 Friday.

Interesting developments.

DoJ vs. Monsanto Seed Monopoly

More on some welcome news,, this time from William Neuman in the New York Times:

The Justice Department began an antitrust investigation of the seed industry last year, with an apparent focus on Monsanto, which controls much of the market for the expensive bioengineered traits that make crops resistant to insect pests and herbicides.

Why?

Critics charge that Monsanto has used license agreements with smaller seed companies to gain an unfair advantage over competitors and to block cheaper generic versions of its seeds from eventually entering the market. DuPont, a rival company, also claims Monsanto has unfairly barred it from combining biotech traits in a way that would benefit farmers.

Monsanto of course claims to be unfairly maligned, and its CEO, Hugh Grant, says:

“We were the first out of the blocks, and I think what you see now is a bunch of people catching up and aggressively competing, and I’m fighting with them,” Mr. Grant said. He said farmers chose the company’s products because they liked the results in the field, not because of any untoward conduct on Monsanto’s part.

Reality seems to differ: Continue reading →

DoJ vs. Monsanto

Well, it’s a start, as reported by Jack Kaskey for BusinessWeek, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Soybeans Probed by Justice (Update4),

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) — Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed producer, said the U.S. Justice Department formally requested information on its herbicide-tolerant soybean seed business as part of an investigation.
The Justice Department issued a civil investigative demand seeking confirmation that competitors and farmers will have access to first-generation Roundup Ready soybean seeds following patent expiration in 2014, St. Louis-based Monsanto said today in a statement. The company has provided access to “millions of pages of documents” as it cooperates with inquiries into its business and the industry.

After Monsanto’s stock price fell, analysts tried to put a good spin on this:

The department’s focus on Roundup Ready soybeans “likely indicates no DOJ interest in the remainder of Monsanto” operations, Vincent Andrews, a New York-based analyst at Morgan Stanley, said today in a report. He rates the shares “overweight.“

He wishes.

Meanwhile, it’s not just DoJ: Continue reading →

The World Inside Monsanto

In a review of the 2008 film, The World According to Monsanto,, Kimberley D. Mok remarks:

The film documents the beginnings of the company as a chemical start-up in the early 1900s, producing saccharin, caffeine and vanillin. As we watch Robin Google up unclassified documents and interview a bevy of officials, scientists and farmers, we see that today’s Monsanto is a giant multinational wielding its considerable financial, political and marketing clout to influence government officials, ruthlessly sue farmers using patent laws – all the while surreptitiously lobbying to keep their potentially toxic products unlabelled or falsely advertised.
Monsanto claims that their genetically modified seeds will solve the food crisis, especially in developing countries, where it will provide significant economic benefits, higher quality and better yield. Nevertheless, the film compellingly shows the unsettling possibilities of genetic contamination of conventional or local varieties of seeds by their genetically-engineered cousins, pointing to a horrific future where global plant biodiversity is nil and farmers are not able to grow anything but genetically contaminated food.

The future? Already Monsanto seeds grow 93% of soybeans and 80% of corn in the U.S. and people claim “we couldn’t do agriculture in Argentina” without RoundUp. The Biotechnology Industry Organization even claims that the popularity of herbicide-resistant crops showed their value outweighs any associated detriments.

Any associated detrimeents, such as birth defects or sickness in animals and humans.

Nevermind that organic farming yields are often better than with agrochemicals.

Surely the company that brought us DDT (banned by U.S. Congress 1972), Agent Orange (Agent Orange Act of 1991 makes U.S. veterans exposed to it eligible for treatment and compenstation), and PCBs (“CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy”) wouldn’t soak the world in anything toxic?

How Monsanto Leverages Patents to Dominate World Food Supply

Soybean pods by jwinfred

Christopher Leonard of the Associated Press says (14 Dec 2009) Monsanto seed biz role revealed:

Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.’s business practices reveal how the world’s biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Why should you care?

Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family’s dinner table. That’s because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto’s patented genes.

Where does Monsanto get such power? Continue reading →

Soy 93% Corn 80% Monsanto

In addition to the problems produced by the pesticides Monsanto seeds are developed to be immune to, Peter Whoriskey writes in the Washington Post about how 93% of soybeans and 80% of corn grown in the U.S. now comes from Monsanto-developed seeds. And during the decade in which that has happened:

…for farmers such as Lowe, prices of the Monsanto-patented seeds have steadily increased, roughly doubling during the past decade, to about $50 for a 50-pound bag of soybean seed, according to seed dealers.

In a blog post about this subject:

Many farmers are fed up with Monsanto’s ruthless use of litigation. All over the United States, the wind is carrying Monsanto’s genetically altered seeds into neighboring fields. Monsanto regularly sends out investigators to visit farms and to test whether any Monsanto strains have shown up on those farms. If they have, then Monsanto proceeds to sue the living daylights out of those farmers.

A commenter makes the monoculture point:

They don’t have to be more susceptible to crop diseases. They have extremely low genetic diversity, so a disease that strongly affects that strain of plant will be able to spread over millions of acres of nearly identical targets.
This is exactly what happened to the Irish during the potato famine. The Inca, who discovered the potato, had thousands of varieties. Some resisted blight, some resisted insects, others performed better in dry years, etc.

Monoculture Monsanto cotton crops have already failed in India. Continue reading →

France Rounds Up Monsanto

France Finds Monsanto Guilty of Lying:

France’s highest court has ruled that U.S. agrochemical giant Monsanto had not told the truth about the safety of its best-selling weed-killer, Roundup. The court confirmed an earlier judgment that Monsanto had falsely advertised its herbicide as “biodegradable” and claimed it “left the soil clean.”

It’s about time some court decided that. Now let’s hear some U.S. court say the same thing.

Maybe with more of a fine than this:

The company was fined 15,000 euros (£13,800; $22,400).

Oh, wait:

Earlier this month, Monsanto reported a fourth quarter loss of $233m (£147m), driven mostly by a drop in sales of its Roundup brand.

Now that’s getting closer to an appropriate size. Largely driven by the state of the economy no doubt. How about a court-imposed fine of that size or larger? Monsanto has a market cap of $43.6 billion so larger would be appropriate.

Ohio v. Big Ag: Issue 2

The Humane Society of the United States wants you to know:

Six Reasons to Vote NO on Ohio’s Issue 2
1. Issue 2 seeks to stop animal welfare improvements. Agribusiness interests are trying to change the Ohio constitution so they can continue cruel and inhumane practices on factory farms—confining animals in tiny cages and crates so small they can’t even turn around. Issue 2 proposes an industry-dominated power grab to protect the status quo: hens crammed into cages so tightly they can’t even spread their wings, breeding pigs confined in tiny barren crates and calves chained by their necks inside veal crates. We wouldn’t force our pets to live in filthy, cramped cages for their whole lives, and we shouldn’t force farm animals to either. All animals, including those raised for food, deserve humane treatment.
2. Issue 2 threatens our food safety and health. Factory farmers have put our health at risk by recklessly telling us that it’s okay to keep animals in overcrowded, inhumane conditions. Cramming tens of thousands of animals into tiny cages fosters the spread of animal diseases that may affect people. For example, the American Journal of Epidemiology reported that people who eat eggs from hens confined in cages are 250% more likely to contract Salmonella. The extreme confinement of animals is also a major factor in the emergence of diseases like H5N1 and H1N1 (bird and swine flu). Passing Issue 2 would be bad for animals—and bad for us.

The other four reasons are good, too.

Ah, capitalism run amuck! Big agribusiness is trying to take over an entire state by getting its citizens to legalize the worst aspects of factory farming. I don’t live in Ohio, but if this referendum succeeds there, it will show up in other states.

Monsanto made Fox rewrite 80 times about RBGH in Florida cows

Randy LoBasso wrote in philly2philly.com on 29 June 2009 that Fox News Wins Lawsuit To Misinform Public – Seriously:

Here’s the rundown: On August 18, 2000, journalist Jane Akre won $425,000 in a court ruling where she charged she was pressured by Fox News management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information.
The real information: she found out cows in Florida were being injected with RBGH, a drug designed to make cows produce milk – and, according to FDA-redacted studies, unintentionally designed to make human beings produce cancer.
Fox lawyers, under pressure by the Monsanto Corporation (who produced RBGH), rewrote her report over 80 times to make it compatible with the company’s requests. She and her husband, journalist Steve Wilson, refused to air the edited segment.

That wasn’t the end of it. An appelate court granted Fox a license to lie:

In February 2003, Fox appealed the decision and an appellate court and had it overturned. Fox lawyers argued it was their first amendment right to report false information. In a six-page written decision, the Court of Appeals decided the FCC’s position against news distortion is only a “policy,” not a “law, rule, or regulation.”

So Fox has legally been able to continue to lie on behalf of Monsanto.

Drug War Backfires on Roundup

What happens when the U.S. pays the Bolivian government to spray Roundup on coca crops as part of the “War on Drugs”?

The effort has lead to coca growers cutting down national forests — where such spraying is often against the law — to produce their illicit crops. But Mother Nature may be rebelling against drug policy as well. coca plants appear to be either evolving on their own (or with the help of coca farmers’ active selection) — or they are possibly crossing with Roundup Ready crops already on the ground — to produce a glyphosate-resistant crop known as Boliviana negra.

This doesn’t make the Bolivian government or people happy, nor the U.S. government, but:

…drug growers who do have the new strain certainly don’t want the status quo to end, because currently the U.S. government is doing their weeding for free.

What to do?

When you put together the studies referenced above, which show that spraying glyphosate is harmful to humans and the environment and that it does not hamper the production of coca or weeds, the answer to almost everyone’s problems is eliminating Monsanto.

To the drug Roundup: just say no.

Canopy Roads of South Georgia

Outside the city; off the main roads.