Tag Archives: Monsanto

Monsanto Downturn

Andrew Pollack writes in the New York Times that After Growth, Fortunes Turn for Monsanto:
As recently as late December, Monsanto was named “company of the year” by Forbes magazine. Last week, the company earned a different accolade from Jim Cramer, the television stock market commentator. “This may be the worst stock of 2010,” he proclaimed.
I remember that! The month after Forbes did that, Covalence did a survey that ranked Monsanto the least ethical company in the world. Worse than Philip Morris, Chevron, or Halliburton!

About that time we discovered Monsanto Corn Causes Liver and Kidney Damage in Rats, and that Monsanto’s GM soy causes sterility and five times higher infant mortality in hamsters.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating Monsanto’s seed business. At least seven U.S. states started their own investigations, and later the U.S. EPA fined Monsanto $2.5 million for selling seeds illegally in Texas counties where they were banned.

Since then we’ve learned that Pesticides Linked to ADHD. Specifically organophosphate pesticides. Like Glysophate (RoundUp). And that indicators of pesticides, including organophosphates, are found in the urine of 95% of school children. We already knew that Glysophoate causes birth defects in humans.

Anyway, could all this bad news have some effect on Monsanto’s share price? Continue reading →

Monsanto and Blackwater

Jeremy Scahill write in the Nation about Blackwater’s Black Ops:
Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the “intel arm” of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.
What’s the connection between Total Intelligence Solutions and Blackwater, the company famous for its activities as a military contractor in Iraq, and now known as Xe? According to the story, both are owned by Blackwater’s founder, Eric Prince, pictured to the right.

-jsq

Monsanto rep meeting with president of Peru

Illustrating access at the highest levels of government, a representative from Monsanto meets with Alan García, president of Peru:

García is the large man sitting in front of the flag. The Monsanto rep. is the short man sitting to García’s left.

It’s not clear when this meeting took place, but it may have been the one referred to in this 11 Oct 2007 story, which says: Continue reading →

Monsanto Fined $2.5 Million

Jimmy Mengel EPA Slaps Monsanto with Record Fine, Million Dollar Settlement the Largest in Series of Penalties:
The agricultural giant was found to have been selling genetically modified cotton seeds without labeling them as such. Between 2002 and 2007, Monsanto’s seeds were illegally sold in several Texas counties where the seeds are explicitly banned.

The seeds — known as Bollgard and Bollgard II — were genetically engineered to produce the insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), and Texas officials were concerned that using the seeds would lead to pest resistance.

But that didn’t stop Monsanto from bamboozling buyers into purchasing the illegal seeds.

Here’s the bad news: Monsanto’s market cap is $29.5 billion, so the fine is less than a hundredth of a percent of that.

Still, the fines keep going up. Maybe eventually they’ll get big enough to sting.

Or we could just trust the company that made Agent Orange and DDT.

Or we could remember this: Continue reading →

Cultivating Organic Peanuts

Leeann Drabenstott Culbreath found this YouTube version of a Georgia Farm Monitor report on an Organic Peanut Field Day:

Note the cultivator. The host had to explain what it was and show it several times so people would understand it. Yes, that’s how farmers used to control weeds before pesticide vendor propaganda convinced people of things like “don’t throw dirt on peanuts.” The cultivator throws dirt on weeds next to the peanuts, thus suppressing the weeds and releasing the peanuts.

Gretchen remarks:

Organic growing isn’t a specialty market, it’s a matter of safety. Chemicals sprayed on peanuts, soy beans, cotton and corn are TOXIC. Good management and kindness to the earth can grow crops in a sustainable way. Just say no to chemical spraying.
Peanut growers may not like manual labor, but they’re having to resort to that anyway, because their pesticides have produced the mutant pigweed, which pesticides don’t kill. Spraying more and different herbicides doesn’t do it, either. The only way is physical removal of the pigweed. And a cultivator can do that without manual labor (the report mentions that). Oh yeah: and you don’t have to pay for pesticides to apply with a cultivator.

So, it’s time to stop poisoning our air, water, plants, animals, and people and move away from petrochemical pesticides. Organic is the way to go, and we know how to get there.

-jsq

Suicide in India and How to Stop It

Vandana Shiva writes in Huffington Post about India:
200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997.
In just one Indian state:
1593 farmers committed suicide in Chattisgarh in 2007. Before 2000 no farmers suicides are reported in the state.
Why?
In 1998, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved.

Corporations prevent seed savings through patents and by engineering seeds with non-renewable traits. As a result, poor peasants have to buy new seeds for every planting season and what was traditionally a free resource, available by putting aside a small portion of the crop, becomes a commodity. This new expense increases poverty and leads to indebtness.

And that’s not all: Continue reading →

Monsanto Price Drop

Monsanto’s stock price is down almost $4, or more than 7% today. Why?
Monsanto Price Drop ST. LOUIS, May 27, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Monsanto Company (NYSE:MON – News) today announced it is repositioning its Roundup® business in the face of fundamental structural changes that have caused upheaval in the glyphosate industry. Focusing its glyphosate products on supporting the core seeds-and-traits business, the company plans to drastically narrow its Roundup® brand portfolio to offer farmers a simple, quality product that meets their needs at a price closer to generics.

“By reducing the uncertainty associated with Roundup, we free Monsanto to grow on its fundamentals,” Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant said. “What matters to our long-term growth is our seeds-and-traits business, which is on track.”

I think that’s CEO-speak for demand is down, competition is up, and Monsanto is retrenching in hopes of saving its core glysophate business. So sad.

More clarification from the CEO: Continue reading →

Haitian: Monsanto seeds are a new earthquake

Beverly Bell writes in truthout that Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds:
In an open letter sent May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the executive director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti “a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds … and on what is left our environment in Haiti.”
Fortunately, the Haitian government agrees:
For now, without a law regulating the use of GMOs in Haiti, the Ministry of Agriculture rejected Monsanto’s offer of Roundup Ready GMOs seeds. In an email exchange, a Monsanto representative assured the Ministry of Agriculture that the seeds being donated are not GMOs.
Well, who could doubt Monsanto? Apparently some influential Haitians. They even get that it’s not just about the chemicals:
Haitian social movements’ concern is not just about the dangers of the chemicals and the possibility of future GMOs imports. They claim that the future of Haiti depends on local production with local food for local consumption, in what is called food sovereignty. Monsanto’s arrival in Haiti, they say, is a further threat to this.
Maybe people in other countries will also act to preserve what is left of our environment.

Hamster Roundup: sterility and infant mortality


Image by Adrisbow Photography
Jeffrey Smith writes in Huffingtonpost about Genetically Modified Soy Linked to Sterility, Infant Mortality in Hamsters:
“This study was just routine,” said Russian biologist Alexey V. Surov, in what could end up as the understatement of this century. Surov and his colleagues set out to discover if Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) soy, grown on 91% of US soybean fields, leads to problems in growth or reproduction. What he discovered may uproot a multi-billion dollar industry.

After feeding hamsters for two years over three generations, those on the GM diet, and especially the group on the maximum GM soy diet, showed devastating results. By the third generation, most GM soy-fed hamsters lost the ability to have babies. They also suffered slower growth, and a high mortality rate among the pups.

Not just a little higher: five times highher infant mortality.

And it’s not necessarily the soybeans themselves: Continue reading →

Beta Agonists and Bovine Growth Hormone

Martha Rosenberg writes in CounterPunch, If You Liked Bovine Growth Hormone, You’ll Love Beta Agonists:
As much as twenty percent of Paylean, given to pigs for their last 28 days, Optaflexx, given to cattle their last 28 to 42 days and Tomax, given to turkeys their last 7 to 14 days, remains in consumer meat says author and well known veterinarian Michael W. Fox.

Though banned in Europe, Taiwan and China–more than 1,700 people were “poisoned” from eating Paylean-fed pigs since 1998 says the Sichuan Pork Trade Chamber of Commerce– ractopamine is used in 45 percent of US pigs and 30 percent of ration-fed cattle says Elanco Animal Health which manufactures all three products.

What effects could these drugs have?

According to Temple Grandin, Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, the “indiscriminant use of Paylean (ractopamine) has contributed to an increase in downer non-ambulatory pigs,” and pigs that “are extremely difficult to move and drive.” In Holsteins, ractopamine is known for causing hoof problems, says Grandin and feedlot managers report the “outer shell of the hoof fell off” on a related beta agonist drug, zilpateral.

A article in the 2003 Journal of Animal Science confirms that “ractopamine does affect the behavior, heart rate and catecholamine profile of finishing pigs and making them more difficult to handle and potentially more susceptible to handling and transport stress.”

Surely such animal drugs would have no effects on human? Well, except they’re used to treat children for asthma. Not the sort of thing you really want in the food and water supply.

Rosenberg asks how did this happen, and points out the answer: massive lobbying by big agribusiness.

The FDA’s approval of a drug for food that requires impervious gloves and a mask just to handle is reminiscent of the bovine growth hormone debacle.

And in that debacle, Monsanto didn’t just lobby the FDA, it lobbied the press, including making Fox rewrite a story 80 times.