Tag Archives: Monsanto

Least ethical company in the world?

Guess which company came in worst of all in Swiss firm Covalence’s survey of least ethical companies? Hint: it’s Forbes’ Company of the Year.
Monsanto, the Missouri-based agriculture giant, ranked dead last in the Covalence ethical index. The company, which leads the world in the production of genetically-engineered seed, has been subject to myriad criticisms. Among them: the company is accused of frequently and unfairly suing small farmers for patent infringement.
Worse than Philip Morris, Chevron, or Halliburton. Quite an accomplishment!

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 →

Non-GMO Uprising Predicted by supermarket trade publication

Jeffrey M. SMith writes in the Food Freedom blog that Supermarket News Forecasts Non-GMO Uprising:
For a couple of years, the Institute for Responsible Technology has predicted that the US would soon experience a tipping point of consumer rejection against genetically modified foods; a change we’re all helping to bring about. Now a December article in Supermarket News supports both our prediction and the role the Institute is playing.
“The coming year promises to bring about a greater, more pervasive awarenes” of the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our food supply, wrote Group Editor Robert Vosburgh, in a trade publication that conventional food executives and retailers use as a primary source of news and trends in the industry. Vosburgh describes how previous food “culprits” like fat and carbs “can even define the decade in which they were topical,” and suggests that GMOs may finally burst through into the public awareness and join their ranks.

Vosburgh credits two recent launches with “the potential to spark a new round of concern among shoppers who are today much more attuned to the ways their food is produced.” One is our Institute’s new non-GMO website, which, he says, “provides consumers with a directory of non-GMO brands . . . developed ‘for the 53% of Americans who say they would avoid GMOs if labeled.’”

More than half of Americans? And that’s before most Americans learn that GM corn causes liver and kidney damage in rats and RoundUp causes human birth defects. Perhaps Monsanto is the new RJ Reynolds….

But that doesn’t mean big food won’t fight back. The Supermarket News article ends by taking the Forbes line that all Monsanto needs is better PR: Continue reading →

Monsanto Corn Causes Liver and Kidney Damage in Rats

The researchers used Monsanto’s own data, which was for a period of ingestion of only 90 days, and reached these conclusions:
We therefore conclude that our data strongly suggests that these GM maize varieties induce a state of hepatorenal [liver and kidney] toxicity. This can be due to the new pesticides (herbicide or insecticide) present specifically in each type of GM maize, although unintended metabolic effects due to the mutagenic properties of the GM transformation process cannot be excluded [42]. All three GM maize varieties contain a distinctly different pesticide residue associated with their particular GM event (glyphosate and AMPA in NK 603, modified Cry1Ab in MON 810, modified Cry3Bb1 in MON 863).
Why should GM foods have this sort of effect?
These substances have never before been an integral part of the human or animal diet and therefore their health consequences for those who consume them, especially over long time periods are currently unknown.
Humans generally have centuries of experience with most other foods, and have rejected or developed appropriate preparation methods for those that are toxic.

Plus until recently humans weren’t in the habit of eating pesticides that had been deliberately engineered to be toxic to other species. Especially without testing first to see if they might be toxic to humans….

One of the four authors of this research paper in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Biological Sciences, Gilles-Eric Seralini, had already established that Glyphosate Formulations Induce Apoptosis and Necrosis in Human Umbilical, Embryonic, and Placental Cells. In other words, RoundUp causes human birth defects. So if Monsanto’s pesticide doesn’t get you or your children directly, it can still get you in your food. And maybe not just in food containing corn, given that chickens fed feed including Monsanto corn show abnormal gene expression. Maybe somebody will study people who eat chickens fed Monsanto corn and see what effects that has.

But remember, while the evidence mounts that Monsanto is poisoning the world’s food supply, Forbes just named Monsanto company of the year! All this other stuff is just economic externalities, and profit is all that matters!

Abnormal Chicken Feed

Jeremy Hsu writes that “Organic Feed Shown to Affect Genes in Chickens”:
Two generations of chickens were fed either organically cultivated feed or normal feed.
Um, organic feed is normal feed. It’s that other stuff that’s abnormal. And so are chickens raised on it:
Scientists then sampled RNA, the partner molecule for DNA during gene expression, from the small intestines of five organically fed chickens and five conventionally fed chickens. The results showed significant differences in gene expression among 49 genes.

The top ingredient in chicken feed is corn. The abnormal variety of which mostly comes from seed patented by Forbes’ Company of the Year: Monsanto.

Hm, what about humans raised chickens raised on abnormal feed? What do those 49 chicken genes do, anyway?

…the Dutch researchers note that seven of the 49 genes were involved in helping the chickens synthesize cholesterol, when just 30 genes are involved in the overall cholesterol biosynthesis.
Well, that can’t be important, can it?

Forbes: All Monsanto needs is Better PR

Forbes notes Monsanto has engineered a soybean with Omega-3 fatty acids:
Monsanto needs crowd-pleasers like this to get past its image problems. In economic terms, the company is a winner. It has created many billions of dollars of value for the world with seeds genetically engineered to ward off insects or make a crop immune to herbicides: Witness the vast numbers of farmers who prefer its seeds to competing products, and the resulting $44 billion market value of the company. In its fiscal 2009 Monsanto sold $7.3 billion of seeds and seed genes, versus $4 billion for second-place DuPont ( DD – news – people ) and its Pioneer Hi-Bred unit. Monsanto, of St. Louis, netted $2.1 billion on revenue of $11.7 billion for fiscal 2009 (ended Aug. 31). Its sales have increased at an annualized 18% clip over five years; its annualized return on capital in the period has been 12%. Those accomplishments earn it the designation as FORBES’ Company of the Year.

— The Planet Versus Monsanto, Robert Langreth and Matthew Herper, 12.31.09, 04:40 PM EST Forbes Magazine dated January 18, 2010

Why, sure, making lots of money is not just good thing, it’s the only thing! Certainly more valuable than any associated detriments. Detriments such as human birth defects studied in France, and Argentina, in addition to birth defects, diseases, and mass die-offs in amphibians, birds, and insects. Those detriments are just economic externalities.

Hey, monoculture is a sign of success, according to Forbes: 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
There is a Creative Commons license attached to this image. AttributionNoncommercialNo Derivative Works
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.