Friday, August 17, 2018

When and How Did Monsanto Become a Dirty Word

When I was finishing high school, Monsanto built a new chemical plant just downstream from our home on Chocolate Bayou.  I briefly considered going to work there, and have former classmates who have now retired from there.  It was considered a good place to work.
Over the last decade or so, there has been a concerted effort to destroy Monsanto.  
It probably began with Viet Nam vets who suffered the effects of Agent Orange, a defoliant developed by Monsanto, but it has ranged far and wide from there.
There is a highly organized, well funded campaign against Genetically Modified Organisms even though there is no evidence that GMOs have ever hurt anybody, and lots of evidence to the contrary.  The main culprit, and main target of the no GMO crowd is - you guessed it - Monsanto.  They are guilty of developing seeds that - among other things - allow crops to grow where they never could before, so they obviously deserve to burn in Hell.
The German chemical/pharmaceutical giant Bayer recently bought Monsanto (and plans to phase out the Monsanto name) and they got hit by the latest attack.  Bayer stock dropped 10% after a jury in (where else?) California awarded a former groundskeeper $289 million after he claimed to have developed cancer from repeated exposure to Round-Up. This in spite of the fact that the EPA has consistently found no link between the product and cancer.  
Now Quaker  is being sued for $5 million because traces of Round-Up were found in their oat meal.

No comments:

Post a Comment