The Miracles of Monsanto

[Guest guest]

It has become no small concern worldwide to family farmers, consumers, and

environmentalists that the Monsanto Company, given its history and its present

direction in attempting to establish itself as the world's leader in " life

sciences, " has chosen to " trademark, " or in other words " register with a

government agency to assure its use exclusively by the owner of the mark

" Food-Health-Hope. " 1

 

When corporate agribusiness sets out to transform our farms and ranches, the

traditional source of our food and fiber, into modern bioengineering workshops

designed to suit their narrow corporate interests, farmers and various other

producers of our food see themselves being sold into economic slavery.

Meanwhile, large numbers of the world community are gradually discovering that

the increasing quantitative and qualitative price for such self-serving

corporate gimmickry continues to escalate.

 

Striving to take the leadership in such a corporate-dominated age of

prescription agriculture and food, or " life sciences " is the Monsanto Company,

headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.

 

Setting out to forever change how food and fiber are produced, the 97-year-old

chemical firm has asserted that as a corporation it is " developing a way to use

Mother Nature to modify organisms to serve us better. We have a new business

focus: life sciences-a startup industry that addresses the food and health needs

of a rapidly expanding world while recognizing the importance of environmental

sustainability. We have a new outlook on life: a better life for our planet. " 2

 

Roughly translated, even Monsanto has come to recognize that agriculture and the

environment cannot continue to tolerate the massive amounts of chemical poisons

and fertilizers that are in use today. Since Monsanto has been a major and

profitable producer of such materials, it needs to find substitutes to continue

keeping its stockholders happy, while at the same time trying to convince the

world that biotechnology is a safe and sane alternative.

 

" Research and development isn't part of the strategy. Research and development

is the strategy, " Richard J. Mahoney, the company's former chairman and chief

executive officer, declared seven years ago.3 At that time there were thirty

biotech companies; today there are seven.4

 

As the May 27, 1998 The Wall Street Journal declared: " Monsanto Co. and DuPont

Co. are betting the farm in bids to transform themselves into the Coke and Pepsi

of genetically engineered crops. In the three years since the first transgenic

seeds were introduced, crop biotechnology has grown from a young science to a

hot business: About half of U.S. cotton fields, forty percent of soybean fields,

and twenty percent of corn fields this year are genetically altered. Now, in a

stunningly swift concentration of power, much of the design, harvest, and

processing of genetically engineered crops is coming under these two

companies. " 5

 

An example of that " stunningly swift concentration of power " came in the summer

of 1998 when Cargill Inc. (the nation's largest private corporation and one of

the world's leading grain traders) and Monsanto announced the signing of a

letter of intent to form a worldwide joint venture to create and market new

products enhanced through biotechnology for the grain processing and animal feed

markets.

 

Although it has been taking tremendous strides towards becoming the dominate

force in world-wide agricultural biotechnology, Monsanto's path to such total

control has become strewn with pitfalls.

 

Robert B. Shapiro, the current chairman of the board and CEO of Monsanto, was

recently given a taste of tofu cream pie by the " Anti-Genetix " splinter faction

of the Biotic Baking Brigade (BBB). He was hit in the face with the pie (a sweet

potato pie just missed its target) after giving the keynote address at the State

of the World Forum conference in the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco,

California.

 

The vegan tofu cream pie symbolized the millions of acres of Monsanto's

genetically engineered soybean crops and other " Frankenfoods " coming to harvest

in the 1998 season. The sweet potato pie was tossed in recognition of a October

25th The New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story, " Playing God in the Garden "

by Michael Pollan, which detailed the fraud, deception, and legacy Monsanto has

given the world, using the genetically-engineered " New Leaf Russet Burbank

Potato " as an example.6

 

Criticism of Monsanto's tactics has also come from within agribusiness itself.

Willy de Greef, head of regulatory and government affairs at Novartis Seeds in

Basel, Switzerland, has been one of many in the biotech industry to recently

attack their rival for the unprecedented consumer backlash in European countries

to genetically engineered food.

 

" We have a PR mountain to climb. You have a problem if the market leader has

firmly set ideas about how to do things, which others might not agree with. An

expensive failure can be made into an asset if you've learned from it, but

Monsanto still has some learning to do. " 7

 

Since 1997 when Monsanto's herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready soya beans were

first shipped to Europe mixed with ordinary soya, polls have shown that consumer

acceptance of engineered food has collapsed in Europe. Consumers interpreted the

move as a ploy to force biotech engineered soya down European throats and now

the entire industry is having to deal with the consequences of that

miscalculation.8

 

Likewise, outraged members of the British Parliament and many of the country's

environmentalists have accused U.S. President Bill Clinton of intruding in a

sensitive domestic matter. " It is quite wrong for the British Prime Minister to

be conspiring behind the back of the British public about American business

interests, " said Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat environment spokesman. What had

the British so angry is the report that Clinton personally intervened with

British Prime Minister Tony Blair to stop Britain from halting the controversial

production of genetically engineered foods.9

 

It is no accident that Clinton should be promoting genetically modified crops.

Their primary U.S. manufacturer, Monsanto, has been one of five companies

spearheading Clinton's welfare-to-work programs. Monsanto was among those

donating thousands of dollars in " soft money " to the Clinton 1996 election and

which the President singled out for praise during his State of the Nation

address in 1997.10 In addition, currently sitting on Monsanto's board of

directors is former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, U.S. Trade Representative, and

National Chairman for the 1992 Clinton-Gore Campaign -Mickey Kantor.11

 

Shortly after such condemnations from abroad, the Consultative Group on

International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) announced that it would " not

incorporate into its breeding materials any genetic systems designed to prevent

seed germination. " With that statement the Terminator-and related genetic seed

sterilization technology-has been banned from the crop breeding programs of the

world's largest international agricultural research network.

 

" This is in recognition, " CGIAR stated, " of

 

 

concerns over potential risks of its inadvertent or unintended spread though

pollen,

 

 

the possibilities of sale or exchange of inviable seed for planting,

 

 

the importance of farm-saved seed, particularly to resource-poor farmers;

 

 

potential negative impacts on genetic diversity and

 

 

the importance of farmer selection and breeding for sustainable agriculture. " 12

 

 

" It's a courageous decision. The CGIAR has done the right thing, for the right

reasons, " says Pat Mooney, Executive Director of Rural Advancement Foundation

International (RAFI), " a ban on Terminator is a pro-farmer policy in defense of

world food security. " 13

 

The CGIAR is a network of sixteen international agricultural research centers,

which collectively form the world's largest public plant breeding effort for

resource-poor farmers. The Terminator genetic engineering technique renders

farm-saved seed sterile, forcing farmers to return to the commercial seed market

every year. The technology is aimed primarily at seed markets in Africa, Asia,

and Latin America, where over 1.4 billion people depend on farm-saved seed and

on-farm plant breeding.14

 

Since the Terminator was developed jointly by the U.S. Department of Agriculture

(USDA) and Delta & Pine Land (now a Monsanto subsidiary), Mooney says the policy

is " a slap in the face to the U.S. government-a major CGIAR funder-and to

Monsanto because it soundly negates their claims that sterilizing seeds will

boost plant breeding in marginal areas and help feed the hungry. " 15

 

In the U.S. Monsanto has opened more than 475 seed piracy cases nationwide,

generated from over 1800 leads.16 According to Monsanto's Kate Marshall, more

than 250 of these cases are under active investigation by five full-time and a

number of part-time investigators, and Pinkertons, a private detective firm.

More than 100 cases have already been settled. For sometime now Monsanto has

been cracking down on farmers who " illegally " save and replant seeds containing

" patented technology. " 17

 

Defending Monsanto's action, Scott Baucum, chief of the company's seed piracy

enforcement arm, points out: " Monsanto invests many years and millions of

dollars in biotech research to bring growers new technologies sooner rather than

later. When growers save and replant patented seed, there is less incentive for

companies to invest in future technologies that will ultimately benefit

farmers. " 18

 

Farmers in the Karnataka state of India have targeted Monsanto's bollgard cotton

field trials and a test cotton field was reduced to ashes. In the neighboring

state of Andhra Pradesh, farmers destroyed Monsanto's bollgard field trial in a

village in the Warangal district.

 

Prior to this campaign, which has been called " Cremation Monsanto, " the state

legislature of Andhra Pradesh unanimously resolved to adopt measures to prevent

the entry of the Terminator gene in the guise of bollgard or through any other

means. Activists of Rytu Sangham (AP Farmers Association) also stormed

Monsanto's office in that state's capital, Hyderabad, on December 1, 1998. As a

result of all these actions the Andhra Pradesh state government has asked Mahyco

Monsanto Biotech (India) to stop all of its field trials being conducted in

seven districts of the state.19

 

In recent years cotton farmers in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnatak, and

Maharashtra have been committing suicide, unable to bear the burden of

increasing debts due to crop failures. The crop failures were essentially due to

spurious seeds and pesticides manufactured and sold by unscrupulous private

dealers who had lured farmers through credit. When the crops failed, farmers

unable to pay back their debts consumed those very pesticides to commit suicide.

Farmers in those states see the introduction of the so-called genetically

modified, pest-resistant varieties as further attempts at enslavement.20

 

These three states have historically been the major producers of cotton and

provided the raw material for India's famed cotton textiles exported throughout

the world for several hundred years before the British conquest. Britain

forcibly displaced indigenous varieties, irretrievably leading to the loss of

indigenous cotton genetic resources.

 

Cotton farmers in India have been fighting, both through civil disobedience and

even violent means, what is essentially a last-ditch battle to preserve not just

their traditional cultivation practices, but more significantly their

livelihoods which are at stake.21

 

Meanwhile, appearing before Canada's Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture

and Forestry on October 22, 1998, scientists from Health Canada's Human Safety

Division testified that not only have they been " pressured, " but " bribed " with

offers of between one and two million dollars to approve the controversial

recombinant Bovine Somatotrophin (rBST), intended to boost milk production in

dairy cattle.

 

" We have been pressured and coerced to pass drugs of questionable safety,

including rBST, " Dr. Shiv Chopra told the committee.22

 

rBST (called rBGH, recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone, in the U.S.) is an

artificial growth hormone that is estimated to increase milk production in cows

from ten to fifteen percent. The drug has been widely used in the U.S. since

being approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1993, but remains

unapproved in Canada and much of Europe. The Canadian Senate had been

investigating rBST for nearly a year and requested testimony from a group of

five scientists after they filed a grievance with a government internal labor

board that they were being pressured to sign off on a drug they felt had yet to

be sufficiently tested.23

 

In the U.S., the use of rBGH has been vigorously defended by Monsanto. In the

case of Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two award-winning investigative reporters at

the Fox-affiliate television station (WTVT-13) in Tampa, Florida, its use has

been defended at any cost.

 

The husband and wife investigative team who have blown the whistle on the story

say WTVT-13 and its corporate bosses preferred to cover-up rather than broadcast

honestly and accurately. The four-part story, documented in a lawsuit the

reporters have filed, reveals the widespread use of the rBGH hormone, which

Florida dairymen have been secretly injecting into their cows. Their story,

generally ignored by the nation's major media, is presented in full detail at a

special internet web site and can be viewed at http://www.foxbghsuit.com.24

 

Although approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1993, the

artificial hormone has been linked to cancer, is banned throughout Europe, and

unapproved in several other countries because of human health concerns.25

 

The reporters' never-broadcast report also revealed how Florida supermarkets

quietly reneged on promises not to sell milk from treated cows until the hormone

gained widespread acceptance by consumers. The major supermarkets now admit rBGH

has found its way into virtually all of Florida's milk supply.26

 

The reporters in their suit charge in detail that Fox Television (owned by

Rupert Murdoch's multi-national News Corporation) was strongly pressured by

Monsanto, and violated the state's whistle-blower act by firing the journalists

when they threatened to report the station's conduct to the Federal

Communications Commission and for refusing to broadcast false reports. The

journalists filed the suit after struggling with WTVT-13 executives for most of

1997 to get the story on the air, submitting over 70 drafts of a script, all

found " unacceptable " by the station.

 

" Every editor has the right to kill a story and any honest reporter will tell

you that happens from time to time when a news organization's self interest wins

out over the public interest, " said Wilson, the station's former senior

investigative reporter who helped Akre produce the story and is now one of the

plaintiffs.

 

" But when media managers who are not journalists have so little regard for the

public trust that they actually order reporters to broadcast false information

and slant the truth to curry the favor or avoid the wrath of special interests

as happened here, that is the day any responsible reporter has to stand up and

say, " No way! " That is what Jane and I are saying with this lawsuit, " Wilson

said.27

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to the current controversies surrounding Monsanto, its past

environmental and product safety record provides no feeling of security among

many when it comes to the development of new products.

 

 

Their agricultural chemical poison LASSO (which contains the highly toxic

alachlor) was banned in 1987 by Canada and Massachusetts after it was found that

traces of the chemical caused cancer in laboratory animals and was present in

local drinking water supplies.28

 

 

A leading manufacturer of Agent Orange, the defoliant containing dioxin used

during the war in Southeast Asia, Monsanto claimed it to be " the most tested

chemical substance in the world. " The company was ordered in 1984 to pay some 65

percent of the $180 million awarded to Vietnam war veterans exposed to the

dangerous chemical.29

 

 

After a dioxin spill near Sturgeon, Missouri in 1979, the company was found

guilty of negligence after the longest jury trial in American history. Monsanto

had failed to notify nearby residents of the spill and was ordered to pay over

$16 million in damages.30

 

 

After the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) had included it in their infamous

" Dirty Dozen Campaign, " Monsanto phased out its production of ethyl parathion in

1986. It was charged that the acutely toxic organophosphate, used mostly on

cotton, might be responsible for fully half of the chemical-poison related

deaths in Central America alone.31

 

 

Workers in a Nitro, West Virginia production facility received over $1 million

in 1988 after it was shown that workers were exposed to the dioxin contaminant

in the herbicide 2, 4 5-T, which Monsanto produced from 1948 to 1969.32

 

 

The family of a Monsanto employee who died of leukemia caused by exposure to

benzene was awarded $108 million after a jury found that the company knew of the

danger and failed to disclose the hazard.33

 

 

G.D. Searle, Monsanto's pharmaceutical subsidiary, produced a birth control

device marketed under the name Copper-7 Intrauterine Device, which has been the

object of hundreds of claims stemming from the problems it has caused women,

including sterility.34

 

 

A similar but less publicized controversy than that surrounding rBGH focused on

Monsanto's sugar substitute, aspartame, marketed under the name of NutraSweet

and Equal. The world's " first branded ingredient, " NutraSweet is sold

principally to Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and is used in 161 soft drinks and some 3000

other products. NutraSweet was developed by G.D Searle, which was purchased in

1985 for $2.7 billion by Monsanto. By 1989 Monsanto was clearly the industry's

leader in the production of artificial sweeteners with a 70 percent market

share.35

 

 

As Brian Toker has written in The Ecologist: " The 'second Green Revolution'

promised by Monsanto and other biotechnology companies threatens even greater

disruptions in traditional land tenure and social relations. In rejecting

Monsanto and its biotechnology, we are not necessarily rejecting technology per

se, but seeking to replace a life-denying technology of manipulation, control,

and profit with a genuinely ecological technology, designed to respect the

patterns of nature, improve personal and community health, sustain land-based

communities, and operate at a genuinely human scale. "

 

" If, " he adds, " we believe in democracy, it is imperative that we have the right

to choose which technologies are best for our communities, rather than having

unaccountable institutions like Monsanto decide for us. Rather than technologies

designed for the continued enrichment of a few, we can ground our technology in

the hope of a greater harmony between our human communities and the natural

world. Our health, our food, and the future of life on earth truly lie in the

balance. " 36

 

A.V. KREBS is author of The Corporate Reapers: The Book of Agribusiness (New

York: Essential Books, 1992) and is director of the Corporate Agribusiness

Research Project.

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT YOU CAN DOContact Your Representatives on Genetically Engineered Foods

Information available at the following web sites:

 

Campaign for Food Safety: www.purefood.org

Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods: www.thecampaign.org

 

Sample letter to your member of Congress

 

Representative ____________________

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, DC 20515

 

Re: Request for Legislation on Genetically Engineered Foods

 

Dear Representative ____________________

 

I am very concerned that I am eating genetically engineered foods without being

told, and without adequate safety studies. I am sending you this letter to

insist that legislation be passed into law that will impose a moratorium on

genetically engineered food until they are prove safe, and require genetically

engineered foods to be labeled as such, regardless of whether the food is in its

whole form or as an ingredient in processed foods. Public opinion polls show a

majority of Americans want these foods labeled (81 percent in a January 11,

1999, Time magazine poll).

 

Our regulatory agencies are being negligent in guaranteeing food safety and

protecting the rights of the American public to know what they are eating. I am

asking you to act legislatively to stop this neglect of the public interest.

 

I do not want to eat genetically engineered foods for a variety of reasons. But

without labeling I am denied the ability to make that choice. So I am asking you

to pass legislation to label all genetically engineered foods. Similar labeling

legislation has already been passed in Europe and Australia. This is an issue of

consumers' safety and basic right to know.

 

Please write back to me and let me know if you intend to work to pass such

legislation.

 

Thank you.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

 

 

NOTES:

1. See Monsanto website: http://www.monsanto.com

 

2. Ibid., agricultural section, " Solutions for Tomorrow's World: Meeting the

Challenge of Sustainable Agriculture, " 1999.

 

3. Richard Koenig, " Tricky Roll-Out: Rich in New Products, Monsanto Must Only

Get Them on Market, " The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 1990.

 

4. Steve Baker, " Agriculture is About To Get Very Small, " video presentation to

Clemson University extension agents, Agribank, May 1998.

 

5. Scott Kilman and Susan Warren, " Old Rivals Fight for New Turf, " The Wall

Street Journal, May 27, 1998.

 

6. Michael Pollan, " Playing God in the Garden, " The New York Times Sunday

Magazine, October 25, 1998.

 

7. Andy Coghlan, " Mutiny Against Monsanto Growing Over Genetically Engineered

Food, " New Scientist, October 28, 1998.

 

8. Ibid.

 

9. " Clinton Leant on Blair to Allow Modified Foods, " The Independent (London),

September 6, 1998.

 

10. Ibid. The 1996 Federal Election Commission Disclosure Report lists Monsanto

as a donor to Clinton's 1996 campaign.

 

11. Monsanto, DEF14A Report, 1998.

 

12. Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), " Terminator Seed Rejected

by Global Network of Agriculture Experts, " news release, November 2, 1998.

 

13. Ibid.

 

14. Rickarda Steinbrecher and Pat Roy Mooney, " Terminator Technology: The Threat

to World Food Security, " The Ecologist, September 1998.

 

15. " Terminator Seed Rejected by Global Network of Agriculture Experts. "

 

16. Rick Weiss, " Gene Police Raise Farmers' Fears, " The Washington Post,

February 3, 1999.

 

17. " Monsanto, Pinkertons Clamp Down on Farmers Who Save Genetically Engineered

Seeds, " Corporate Crime Reporter, November 2, 1998.

 

18. Ibid.

 

19. Bharat Dogra, " Agriculture-India: Warning Against Transgenic Seeds, "

Institute for Policy Studies, December 22, 1998.

 

20. Manav Chandra, " Agriculture-India: Debt Drives Indian Farmers to Suicide, "

Institute for Policy Studies, January 18, 1999.

 

21. Letter from D. Parthasarathy, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences,

Indian Institute of Technology, December 3, 1998.

 

22. James Baxter, " Scientists 'Pressured' to Approve Cattle Drug: Health Canada

Researchers Accuse Firm of Bribery in Bid to OK 'Questionable' Product, " The

Ottawa Citizen, October 23, 1998.

 

23. Peter Montague, " How Monsanto Listens to Others Opinions, " The Ecologist,

September 1998.

 

24. Lisa Napoli, " Reporters Who Say They Were Silenced, " The New York Times, May

23, 1998.

 

25. Hans Larsen, " Milk and the Cancer Connection, " International Health News,

April 28, 1998.

 

26. Larry Lebowitz, " Hormone-Free Milk? There's No Guarantee " Ft. Lauderdale

Sun-Sentinel, April 4, 1998.

 

27. See website: http://www.foxbghsuit.com

 

28. Clean Water Action News, April 1999; University of California Environmental

Toxicology Newsletter, Vol. 17, No. 2, June 1997.

 

29. Keith Schnieder, " Betting the Farm on Biotech, " The New York Times, June 10,

1990.

 

30. Brian Tokar, " Monsanto: A Checkered History, " The Ecologist, September 1998.

 

31. Ethyl parathion is still banned in the state of California; Leonard P.

Gianessi, testimony on the implementation of the Food Quality Protection Act,

before the subcommittee on Department Operations, Nutrition, and Foreign

Agriculture of the Committee on Agriculture of the U.S. House of

Representatives, June 25, 1998.

 

32. " Monsanto: A Checkered History. "

 

33. Ibid.

 

34. Searle settled in court, paying plaintiffs and families of deceased

substantial sums; Copper-7 has since been discontinued. Carrying Capacity

Clearinghouse Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 10, December 1992.

 

35. Recent research has linked aspartame to cancer. J.W. Olney, " Increasing

Brain Tumor Rates: Is there a Link to Aspartame? " Journal of Neuropathology and

Experimental Neurology, Vol. 55, No. 11, November 1996.

 

36. " Monsanto: A Checkered History. "

 

 

Institute for Food and Development Policy Backgrounder

Summer 1999, Vol. 5, No. 2

 

http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/1999/s99-v5-n2.html

 

 

 

The complete " Whole Body " Health line consists of the " AIM GARDEN TRIO "

Ask About Health Professional Support Series: AIM Barleygreen

 

" Wisdom of the Past, Food of the Future "

 

http://www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/AIM.html

 

 

 

 

 

The New Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.