Monsanto and PCBs 580
blamanj writes: "While
this story isn't about the gadgetry that typically appeals to /.ers, it's worth a look. The Washington Post has acquired documents showing how a
Monsanto Corp. PCB plant polluted a small town in Alabama with full knowledge of what it was doing. Their own tests showed that when fish were placed into a local stream, "Their skin would literally slough off." They showed no concern for the residents, only about potential expensive regulations or bad publicity. Why is this relevant? Well, Monsanto is currently one of biggest proponents of GM (genetically modified) foods." Very thorough investigative article about how a corporation reacts when a profitable business line is threatened, or a cautionary tale about wonder technologies, take your pick.
Re:Corporate... (Score:2, Interesting)
Appalling, but not suprising. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Corporate... (Score:5, Interesting)
The best way to punish corporate fuckwits is not to impose financial penalties. That can be factored in as an expense and risk factor. These people should be made to live in their own filth. We should show them complete disregard for their lives, just as they have for others.
Why is it that if I kill someone by accident, I'll go to jail (most probably). But if some corporate idiot kills tens or hundreds of people in a cimmunity, he'll still get his bonus?
Monsanto and The PCB's... (Score:5, Interesting)
Good corporate citizenship it wasn't. Worse, at the level intimated in the article (if true,) that particular factory and its overseers were committing mass murder. One has to wonder about our corporate law structure on that note.
Are fines and clean-up measures a reasonable response?
Re:Corporate... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Guilt By Association, don't buy it (Score:5, Interesting)
A number of people have stated that this analogy is incorrect already, but none of them seem to be getting the point through to people, so let me try an analogy to show why these actions are in fact reason to question the GM production from Monsanto.
Let's say that you have a friend who you've known for a fair while and trust. You tell this friend a secret which is really important to you that it is kept secret and they break your trust by telling a whole bunch of people your secret with no reasonable justification for these actions. Needless to say you're pretty annoyed, you yell and scream etc, etc. Then you notice that your friend gets on really well with your girlfriend.
Now, there is no evidence to suggest that your friend is doing anything with your girlfriend and before this friend betrayed your trust you never would have even thought he would steal your girlfriend - but you never would have thought he'd breach your trust either. It's pretty clear in this situation that while you shouldn't jump to conclusions you probably shouldn't put blind faith into your friend who has clearly and blatantly betrayed your trust.
Now lets suppose that you know a corporation who makes weed killer and the weed killer works really well - you've been buying it for a fair while now. Suddenly you discover that in producing this weed killer the company has been dumping all kinds of dangerous chemicals into a river - affecting a significant number of people - with no good reason.
Then you notice that this corporation is producing genetically modified foods (which you regularly eat). Clearly it's not a time to go jumping to conclusions, but it's also not all that wise to continue to put your blind faith in the corporation.
Whether or not there is evidence that the GM foods produced by Monsanto are good, bad or indifferent is irrelevant. When a company shows this much flagrant disregard for the health and saftey of people, it is probably worth taking a closer look at their other areas of operation - not doing so is akin to burying your head in the sand.
Re:Baby boomers retiring... (OT) (Score:2, Interesting)
Your pension fund scheme is biased.
As more people retire, the need for cash will increase, and the funds will have to sell part of their assets to cover this need.
The scale of this is so big, that it will have an impact on the market. Numerous nett sellers will crush the stock prices.
My bet is that this will create a selling market starting in 3-7 years.
THEN, the economic crisis will begin, with people ceasing to buy thing to save money "in case of".
Remember that in the US, 60% of your GNP is internal consumer activity.
Once people stop buying goods, then you have the start of your deflation scenario.
Re:Corporate... (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing I've noticed in the UK, is since the privatisation of our railways, almost all incidents have been blamed on the driver - who is normally dead so can't fight back. This way nobody can sue the company. Hatfield was one of the first ones where they couldn't do that 'cos unless the driver stopped the train, got out, broke the rail himself, got back in, backed up to get some speed and then drove round the corner he couldn't possibly be at fault.
If corporations want the same rights as citizens, they should have the same responsibilities. Mind you, when they do send execs down (fraud or whatever), they get a nice open prison with full access to laptops, cellphones etc. so they can just carry on working. There is no justice.
Regulation Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Kill yourself! Drink Coke Light (Score:2, Interesting)
Try this Google Search [google.com] as a starting point. You might switch to Mineral Water (not genetically engineered) after reading some of that stuff.
Re:Genetically modified food has existed for ages (Score:4, Interesting)
In a larger sense, the tragedy of this industry is that the "science" that goes on loses much of its objectivity when research is results and profit driven, and not released for public scrutiny. We as the consuming public and we as educated people are forced to trust a faceless organization with limited liability and a very poor track record for honesty.
This has all happened before... (Score:2, Interesting)
PAH! (Score:2, Interesting)
this is nothing new! monsanto has been up to this kind of no-good for years. the company was founded near the turn of the century to bring saccharin to our country. saccharin, for those of you with your heads stuck perilously far up your asses, is the first artificial sweetener. oh yeah, it's been positively linked with lukemia and numerous other types of cancer and for some reason they still put it in EVERYTING sugar-free.. hmmm?
let's see... monsanto.. monsanto.. what else have they manufactured that causes cancer? how about agent orange? guilty.. it was their product and they've paid hundreds of millions to former employees stricken with rare forms of cancer and other strange diseases. rBGH is theirs too.. you know, the stuff that the uninitiated end up drinking in their milk because it's forcibly injected into our livestock. it's been shown to cause the production of a hormonal by-product called IGF-1 (proven to cause cancer in human cells) as well as udder infections and other disturbances in livestock. for this reason and others rBGH is banned in canada and europe.
this is outrageous! how can they get away with this!?! 1st, they have a legal department that rivals phillip-morris.. they're yet another sue-happy american corporation bent on manipulating information and political agenda for their own financial gain. 2nd, we live in a society where so many people bend to that kind of bullshit that you never get a chance to hear what's really going on (unless it's too late and someone else is serving the lawsuit).
..and monsanto is small potatoes..
if you're upset or interested enough to do some more reasearch on your own try this: go to google.com [slashdot.org] and type in 'CNMI' (commonwealth of the northern marianas islands)
also, there's a great book called 'If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates' by Jim Hightower.. those of you familiar with his work know that he can get a little far left in his rantings, but the book is packed with information and is a great read. (so great that i could only set it down when i became so disgusted that i was forced to)
i leave you with a quote from a previous rant of mine posted to a different site:
"In this country, literally 90% of the wealth is controlled by the richest
1% of the population. These are the people and organizations that finance
our political campaigns.. the people and organizations that own our
country. The United States frequently dispenses propaganda, domestically
and abroad, to justify 'military action' in wars that are waged to protect
the financial interests of American corporations. We covet our neighbors'
goods enough to kill innocents to prevent increases in our oil prices.
It's painfully obvious to me that the almighty U.S. dollar, which has
ensconced us in the position of the last world 'super-power', has perverted
our political processes and twisted our country into a monstrous entity.
Much of the world has good reason to fear and even hate us.
To say that the 1,400-some people dead of a heinous and cowardly act of
terrorism ought to be dead would be insane. However, I hope people can see
that the attacks on our nation's sanctity were not unprovoked."
-j0nah
Think Monsanto are bad? Check out Union Carbide! (Score:2, Interesting)
Union Carbide settled with the Indian government for $470 million, 1/10 of what Exxon were fined for their pollution of the Alaskan coastline. The chairman of Union Carbide is indicted for culpable homicide, but has absconded and is known to be living in a beach house in Florida.
Source: Bhopal.org [bhopal.org], NOT Union Carbide's own site [bhopal.com], which is much slicker and comes top of a Google search on union+carbide+bhopal.
Wow. I live near a Monsanto Plant. (Score:2, Interesting)
I dont like Monsanto.
Re:Wow.... (Score:1, Interesting)
BTW: I am posting as an Anonymous Coward since I am employed by an agency of the State of Alabama.
Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Interesting)
do anything but throw your hands up and say, "No changes!".
Agreed. However, since at this time, there have been few if any unbiased studies of the issues surrounding GM foods, we should be doing nothing (commercially) for now.
Unfortunatly, the commerciaql operations appear to be unwilling to cooperate with any unbiased evaluation (which raises a bit of suspicion at least). Instead, they wish to override our concerns by using such tactics as lobbying to make it illegal to state that a given food does not contain GM ingrediants.
It would also appear that Monsanto is primarily interested in producing exactly the least likely to be safe GM foods.
Re:Guilt By Association, don't buy it (Score:3, Interesting)
Did the high-lysine corn ever make it to the market? Did the low-isoflavin soy beans?
The high lysine corn would have improved nutrition. The low isoflavin soy beans would have improved storage (and decreased nutrition).
I heard lots of PR about the high lysine corn. I don't know that it was released. (The one that I heard of was deemed by the FDA to be too dangerous for human consumption. And it ended up in Taco Shells recently.) The low isoflavin soy beans I only heard of in Science News, and appearantly was on it's way into production.
So I am not particularly trusting of the good intentions of the GM food vendors. And guess what: the dangerous (allergy inducing) corn and the low isoflavin soy beans were both from Monsanto.
.
"We aren't evil..." (Score:2, Interesting)
Wrong - you are EVIL. Even though you inherited problems from your predecessor company - you are still responsible, both to your company and the community around you. It is part of what a good citizen, a good HUMAN does. Evil can take many forms - and in this case it is an outright rejection of the old fashioned notions of responsibility and accountability.
One libertarian's perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, you must understand that the majority of environmental damage is caused by government regulations, subsidies, intervention or on land owned by the government and leased to a corporation. A great website that speaks about free-market environmentalism is www.perc.org [perc.org].
A libertarian knows that Monsanto doesn't care so much BECAUSE they're so heavily in bed with the government -- and our government can subsidize or "free up" environmental rules for any corporation they want to, because we've given them the power to.
In a libertarian society, the federal government would have ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over environmental regulations -- people would be free to pollute as they please. But here is the restriction in a free society: if you pollute your own land, that land will now be useless for you, and have absolutely no value for you in the future. In a free-market society, government won't own land, so you can't lease it only to treat it badly and move on. Secondly, if you pollute your own land, and the pollution crosses over to someone else's property, airspace, or drinking water, YOU WILL BE LIABLE. Bar none.
Today, the government lets the polluters pollute, and really just keeps the big pro-earth groups happy with thousands upon thousands of regulations that have loopholes for government's greatest supporters. Get government out of this mess: the environment is not what you want to protect, you want to protect private property.
If you're worried that pollution done now might contaminate someone's property 100 years down the road, I can see where a little government intervention on a local level is necessary -- ON A LOCAL LEVEL. Let the city or county government enact rules as to what corporations or individuals can do now. If a corporation wants to, they can always move to a city that lets them do what they want to do (and the people of that city they move to made the decision to live there and accept it).
I know, its not a perfect answer -- BUT ITS FAR FAR BETTER than what we have now.
Re:One libertarian's perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
if you pollute your own land, and the pollution crosses over to someone else's property, airspace, or drinking water, YOU WILL BE LIABLE. Bar none.
When big polluters pollute, are they going to be so kind and say, "Oh, yes, that's our toxic waste in your drinking water. We dumped it six miles upstream on the piece of propery our shell corporation owns. It has nothing to do with the gas station beside the town resevoir."?
If you're worried that pollution done now might contaminate someone's property 100 years down the road, I can see where a little government intervention on a local level is necessary -- ON A LOCAL LEVEL. Let the city or county government enact rules as to what corporations or individuals can do now. If a corporation wants to, they can always move to a city that lets them do what they want to do (and the people of that city they move to made the decision to live there and accept it).
Cool. So pollution is going to respect political boundaries now? I live near the border of a no-nuke zone. Nuclear Waste Disposal Inc. moves to just the other side, buries their 200 plastic pails of heavy water perfectly legally, then closes down.
If what a company did was legal where they were, how do you sue them fifty years after they're defunct once the groundwater has carried the pollution over to you?
Get government out of this mess: the environment is not what you want to protect, you want to protect private property.
The environment IS what I want to protect, I don't give a shit about who owns it.
Because sooner or later, I'm the one who's going to be living in it.
Want to read something fun...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Economic World.
In a similar vein, though I haven't read it, there is a book called Emergence [amazon.com]...
You are hitting on something fundamental - the idea of complex systems, composed of a myriad of simpler, interchangable "units", being "alive", and sometimes "intelligent" (possibly in ways individual human being fail to understand - it is akin to the neuron vs. brain idea, or cell vs. body, or bee vs. hive). The complex system can be anything - groups, societies, corporations - but they all seem to have similar forms of emergent behavior, and some of this behavior can even be considered "intelligent".
What is even more curious, IMO, is that it seems like most of the time, this behavior, when it manifests itself in corporations, tends to degenerate into psychopathism, when they hit a certain number of units (people in the corporation). Individually, the people themselves may not be, probably aren't - in any way evil, or psychopathic - but the sum total of the corporation, when looking at "its" actions, seems to be...
I tend to wonder, if we follow this to an extreme conclusion - whether such entities can become "infected" with a "disease" - a "virus" in some manner - and further, what form would that "virus" or "disease" take...?