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"Toms to the left o me, bombs to the right
World good night. he got destruction in his appetite
On a platter a planet to him it doesn't matter
3 and 2 at the plate up go the greedy batter"
-Chuck D
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Corporations Suck Report: Monsanto
by Green Earth Al
Monsanto is a multinational company which claims to be in
the business of "helping farmers produce more and better
food, care for their lands and protect the environment."
CS Disclaimer: This article is a mixture of facts and opinions.
Anything that is represented as a fact is a fact to the best of
my knowledge. Anything that is represented as opinion is my
opinion (which I am entitled to). I assert that nothing in this
article has been fabricated by me, I have no investments, long or
short, in this company and no motivation for writing this article
other than wanting to see corporations begin to put the best
interests of people before profits.
Corporations-Suck.com's report on the Monsanto Company
Monsanto. Just another one of the huge agri-businesses that is
trying to soften it's image of late. Now that the huge agri-business
interests have consolidated so much American farm land, priced farming
out of reach for family farmers and brought enormous tracts of America's
heartland under corporate control, there is a concerted agribusiness
effort afoot to make these companies look like the most benificent
companies ever to serve mankind. ADM (supermarket to the world) leads
the charge with huge advertizing campaigns to make ADM look like Santa
Claus, and I'm sure Monsanto would be right in there with them if they
had the advertising budget. Most people haven't a clue what any of these
agribusinesses do but they do get bombarded with commercial clips
letting them know that these companies improve their health and love
the environment.
Sounds like a big load of fly food to me.
One of Monsanto's principal product lines is Round up herbicide.
Herbicide is just a word that means they kill plants. Obviously
they don't mean they just kill plants indescriminantly, round-up is
supposed to be a weed & grass killer. Seems to me though that Monsanto
kills a lot more than just weeds, and in fact a lot more than just
plants.
- Drug war in Columbia:
Monsanto has a contractual agreement with the United States government
to supply herbicides for use in the war on drugs. Whether you think the
war on drugs is failing or succeeding it is demonstrably true that large
quantities of taxpayer money is going toward spraying herbicide over
Columbia, and lots of Columbian cocain is still being imported to the U.S.
Is the spraying having some effect? Sure. But is it having the intended
effect and are there any unintended drawbacks?
Last January CBS's 60 minutes did a report on the aerial spraying in
Columbia. They were unable to find out exactly what is being sprayed over
Columbia because that is a governmental secret but, according to the CBS
report, local agronomist, Elsa Nivia, produced research which indicated
a concentration level of roundup that is 26 times higher than what is
recommended for agricultural use.
Worse still, the pilots are not able to reliably identify what is a
coca crop and what isn't from the air. In addition to spraying
coca crops that yeild cocaine, they have sprayed a great many food crops
and even a great many people. Have they compensated any of these poor
Columbian farmers for the destruction of food crops? Doubtful. Nor do they
seem to show any concern for the people who are sprayed.
Incidents of fever, diahrea, and allergies doubled in the surrounding
areas. A disturbing skin rash has surfaced in the same regions but
Monsanto and the U.S. State Department vehemently deny that there is
any relation to the spraying (though they can offer no explaination
for what else it might be). What's more, the round up herbacide has
been proven carcinaogenic with continued exposure and has been labeled
with a warning that instructs you not to spray it anywhere where it
might seep into groundwater or drinking water. There seems to be very
little concern however, about whether impoverished Columbians drink
high concentrations of herbicide or not. All of Columbia can get
lymphoma and die so long as Monsanto gets its money and the U.S.
government gets to look like it's tough on drugs.
- Recombinant Cows & Frankenfood
Monsanto has also lead the charge to have Recombinant Bovine Growth
Hormone(rbgh) and Genetically modified foods thrust upon the public and
rebuffed any attempts from concerned citizens to label such foods. Some
of these issues are complex and because of their complexity the
agricorporations like to make it sound like concerned people are just
chronic complainers. More recently the agribusinesses have gotten even
more aggressive and started to charge concerned citizens with endangering
the world's food supply with baseless alarmist rhetoric. I am, however,
one of those concerned citizens and I don't find my concerns to be
baseless or trivial.
Take RGBH for example. This hormone makes cows grow faster and
produce more milk. I'm not sure whether these hormones make their way
into the milk and what effect such hormones might have on humans who
drink the milk but I do know that getting a cow to produce more milk
than it was ever designed to produce creates medical hardships for the
cow. Most notably, udder infections. Now agribusiness, in their 'low
cost fixit' mentality will keep pumping in the RGBH but now also start
pumping in antibiotics to fight the udder infections. These antibiotics
DO make their way into the milk and are fed to humans. The result of
this is that weaker germs and bacteria, and possibly beneficial bacteria
are killed off in both humans and cows which breeds more and more
dangerous and more drug-resistant germs with every passing generation.
And that's to say nothing of the fact that it's just not very nice to
give cows udder infections in the first place.
Genetically modified foods are another contentious issue. The corporations
claim that the food yeild has grown so much and there's no science that can
show any harm from the genetic modifications. Well, there can be no doubt that
food yeilds have increased. It's hard to say how much is attributable to
the genetic modifications but it's a safe bet that quite a bit of it is. But
the reason why science can't prove any danger is that science isn't allowed
to prove there's any danger. Science takes time first of all, and rather
than allowing any time for testing these foods are just thrust on people
without their knowledge. Beyond that though, any studies done that show
negative results are suppressed. It's difficult to even guess what kinds
of studies have been done on modified foods because agribusiness has such
lobbying power in Washington we have no way of knowing who has studdied
what. Unless the studies end up showing these foods are completely safe
we'll never hear about them. Any studies that have any negative results
that do find their way to the light of day have lots of money thrown into
discrediting them.
If the agribusiness corporations don't want to just accept damaging
reports with open arms that's understandable. But why the refusal to
do controlled peer review and testing of their own within the public eye?
Why do they seem to have a sweep it under the rug mentality about any
concern that anyone brings up? Why do they insist on preventing the
labeling of genetically modified foods so that consumers could decide
for themselves whether they care or not?
Seems pretty obvious to me that people's concerns don't mean squat
compared to their profit margins and shareholder value.
- Heavy Metal in the Hudson
For the better part of a century General Electric and Monsanto
have been dumping polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Hudson
River. PCBs began to be mass produced and used in electronics in
the 1920s and 30s. They were handy because they didn't conduct
electricity and they were very durable. Well now they're very
durable all along the bottom of the Hudson river.
Like other heavy metals, PCBs have been shown to diminish intelligence
in unborn children who are exposed, as well as children who are exposed
during critical development cycles in early childhood. Prolonged exposure
has been shown to cause cancer in animals and humans. In the 1970s
legislation was passed in the United States banning the production of PCBs
except for in a closed environment. This ban stopped most of (but not all)
of the introduction of new PCBs but did absolutely nothing about the
PCBs that have already been disbursed into the environment.
The Hudson river is not the only place where Monsanto has leaked PCBs.
There are sites all along the great lakes and contamination along the st.
Lawrence river. But since PCBs can become airborne they can travel all
over the Earth. There are now measurable PCB levels in rain. That
carries PCBs to our Oceans and our oceans carry them all over the globe.
Even when used for their intended purpose in electronics they eventually
become environmental polutants. People throw these electronics away, they
end up in landfills where they are consumed and absorbed by wildlife and
work their way into the food chain that way. But no matter how much of a
threat PCBs prove to be to the Earth's ecosystems there is to be no appology
and not so much as an admission of guilt on the part of Monsanto or General
Electric. General Electric in particular has spent millions of dollars in
advertising to convince the people up and down the Hudson river--through
tv, radio ads and infomercials-- that our best course of action is to just
leave the PCBs at the bottom of the Hudson.
Money is important. Marine life, habitats, healthy babies and YOU
are not important.
-Corporations Suck
- http://www.corporations-suck.com/monsanto.shtml
sources and further information:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/10/60minutes/main323944.shtml
http://www.monitor.net/rachel/r144.html
http://www.ethicalinvesting.com/monsanto/news/10033.htm
http://www.uark.edu/studorg/freepres/news/04052001_monsanto.htm
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/1818/3_2GeneticEngineeredFood.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072600-03.htm
http://wildlife.usask.ca/english/tox-4.htm
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2001/01july-august/julyaug01corp1.html
http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/news/010723/monsanto.shtml
http://www.monsantosucks.com
http://www.roundup.com
http://www.monsanto.com
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