Monsanto's Harvest of Fear

Cognitive Dissident writes "Intellectual property thuggery is not restricted to the IT and entertainment industries. The May 2008 edition of Vanity Fair carries a major feature article on the mafiaa-like tactics of Monsanto in its pursuit of total domination of various facets of agribusiness. First in GM seeds with its 'Roundup Ready' crops designed to sell more of its Roundup herbicide, and more recently in milk production with rBGH designed to squeeze more milk out of individual cows, Monsanto has been resorting to increasingly over-the-top tactics to prevent what it sees as infringement or misrepresentation of its biotechnology. As with other forms of IP tyranny, the point is not really to help the public but to consolidate corporate power. Quotes: 'Some compare Monsanto's hard-line approach to Microsoft's zealous efforts to protect its software from pirates. At least with Microsoft the buyer of a program can use it over and over again. But farmers who buy Monsanto's seeds can't even do that.' and '"I don't know of a company that chooses to sue its own customer base," says Joseph Mendelson, of the Center for Food Safety. "It's a very bizarre business strategy." But it's one that Monsanto manages to get away with, because increasingly it's the dominant vendor in town.' Sound familiar?"

And if you won't buy them voluntarily

[Rogerborg]

Darth Cheney will pwn your country and make you buy [grain.org].

Re:This ain't a charity

[Bronster]

they can keep planting the old garden variety ones

right until the modified crop contaminates their supply and they get sued for keeping the seeds [wikipedia.org].

Re:Pure Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-842180934463681887 [google.com]

please take the time to watch this video.
What everyone should know about monsanto and the ill will they do to our world.

Agribusiness is rotten to the core

[canUbeleiveIT]

I suggest checking out the documentary "King Corn."

The problem is mostly farm policy, which--like Social Security--seems to be too complicated a problem for our legislators to do anything about.

Re:This ain't a charity

[advocate_one]

Also recent trials have shown that GM seeds remain viable for up to ten years after the initial sowing... so even if you've stopped using their seed on your fields, the damned things can still germinate several years later and leave you liable, or your successor (if you've cashed up and sold on) liable to IP violation charges...

[farmonline.com.au]

A Swedish study has found viable GM canola seed persisted for up to 10 years under European conditions, but Dr Preston said Australian research had found canola seed persisted only for 3.5 years under local conditions.

This still presents challenges for farmers wanting to switch in and out of the GM/non-GM markets by sowing alternate crops, Dr Preston said.

If a farmer wants to sow non-GM canola following a GM canola crop, they will need to wait up to four years to be assured of not getting GM contamination.

note 4 years for Australian farmers, ten years for EU farmers...

The World according to Monsanto

[Anonymous Coward]

See The World according to Monsanto [google.com], an excellent French documentary (in English) for another in-depth look.

Re:This ain't a charity

[will_die]

The example you showed is NOT a case of crop contaimination.
If you read the decision, not the various sites put up supporting Mr Schmeiser, you find it came about because Mr. Schmeiser identified the round-up resisant plants, then isolated them so they would increase in strength and then saved those seeds. He was deliberatly breeding seeds he knew were contaminated.

TV Documentary / Book on Monstanto

[neutrino38]

There is a French Journalist Marie Monique ROBIN who wrote a book [amazon.fr] on Monsanto and its GMO Products. There was a TV documentary done by the same person. I watched it.

I must say that if I am rather favorable to controlled GMO use, the way monsanto designs their product and their method are frightening. Even if the documentary has a strong anti-GMO bias, the objection (on food safety law and on incomplete studies) are more than troubling.

This is much worse than Microsoft. It may be necessary to investagate deeply in Monsanto's practices and sanction the abuse in order to save the very GMO technology. These guys are defnitly bad.

Re:Pure Evil

[vil3nr0b]

Agreed. Obviously the parent did not have parents who had a farm. There are very few small farmers left. By this I am talking about those farming less than 2,000 acres. The number one rule for small farmers is not to get in bed with these fucks and any other person trying to sell magic products. They control seed prices with a strong arm and the same goes for farmers stuck selling chickens to Tyson.

F.Y.I.:

[TripMaster Monkey]

An excellent resource documenting the myriad evils of Monsanto can be found here [aye.net].

Re:TV Documentary / Book on Monstanto

[Anonymous Coward]

The documentary is here [google.com]

Re:Ya can't win

[hyades1]

Your ignorance on this matter is so profound I simply don't have time to disabuse you of it. Please do just a little research before shooting off your mouth like this. I'd suggest:

http://www.psrast.org/ [psrast.org]

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/03/14/gm-foods-part-one.aspx [mercola.com]

http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/gedanger.htm [sfsu.edu]

as places to start. If you have any real interest in informing yourself about the situation, that is.

Re:This ain't a charity

[Bill_the_Engineer]

How about this for an actual trial?

From the BBC News (May 21, 2004) [bbc.co.uk]:

Monsanto wins Canada seed battle

Monsanto has won a legal battle against a Canadian farmer it accused of growing a form of genetically modified rapeseed it had patented without paying for it.

Canada's Supreme Court on Friday ruled that Percy Schmeiser, who was found to be growing the GM rapeseed in 1998, had breached Monsanto's patent.

He had denied planting Monsanto seeds, saying they took root on his land through natural cross-pollination.

The case became a cause celebre among opponents of GM crops.

They claimed that a decision in Monsanto's favour would expose all farmers whose crops became accidentally pollinated by GM plants to lawsuits.

Re: rBGH and more...

[bhima]

This issue was discussed in the documentary "The Corporation". A short synopsis is (as I recall): Monsanto resorted to deceptive testing and reporting practices to secure approval from the FDA. They engaged in heavy and deceptive advertising for the product. They made it difficult or impossible for 3rd party investigators to verify the accuracy of their testing. They denied the results of more recent studies linking both rBGH to cancers and the presence in the milk of cows treated with it. They bought complicity and editorial cooperation from Fox News Corp. They sue companies who advertise milk free of their chmeicals... and then my memory sort of runs out.

Anyway the film is worth watching and if I recall correctly they didn't mind people sharing it.

Re:the pharmaceutical industry

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot.

Re:Pure Evil

[mh1997]

Remember the Monarch Butterflies? This company pursued research out in the open, without any environmental safeguards, and killed a large portion of the Monarch Butterfly population in recent years.

Wrong! The monarch caterpillers eat milkweed and only milkweed. Monarch butterflies only lay eggs on milkweed. (http://www.gpnc.org/monarch.htm) If anyone is killing the monarch butterfly, it is the average person that mows their lawn and pulls the weeds in that lawn. Monsanto modified corn to kill pests of various kinds and the monarch butterfly was reported incorrectly by the media to be one of those pests. The only pests that would be killed were those that ate the gm corn. Or I guess we could back the environmentally friendly crop dusting that has a tendency to kill birds, dogs, cats, mice, bugs, people, etc. that happen to be under the plane while it is dropping chemicals that drift with the wind. Are there problems with gm corn, I don't have all the answers, but the killing of monarch butterflies is not one of the problems.

Re:Pure Evil

[crashfrog]

The problem is, the parts of your post that aren't just your opinion simply aren't true. The business about monarch butterflies is a myth, an urban legend.

It doesn't even make ecological sense. Butterflies weren't exposed to the bT toxin in corn pollen because they don't eat corn pollen, it's well-known that milkweed is the food source for monarchs.

There's not a single serious entomologist - crop or otherwise - who puts any credence in the "Monsanto is killing teh butterflies!" nonsense. It's been universally discredited.

For those not aware, Monsanto has been avidly continuing to research ways to ensure that crops will die and not reproduce.

Right - as a safety protocol. I mean, it's amazing - the very same post where you complain about the possibilities and dangers of GM genes entering the wild, and Monsanto comes up with a way to allay that concern - and to you, that's just more evidence that they're "evil."

This company is messing around with the very code of life itself.

And so were the meso-American farmers who originally created corn, 7500 years ago. You don't seem to bat an eye when pre-industrial peoples are doing it for profit - or maybe you're just, as is indicated, completely ignorant about the history of crop husbandry and genetics - but the minute modern people are doing it for profit, suddenly that's "evil."

You're a reactionary, ignorant luddite.

An example might be getting rid of Dengue Fever, or the elimination of Malaria, etc.

How about feeding people? Starvation is the root cause of the top five causes of death, worldwide. It kills far, far more people than those two diseases. Combined.

We're talking genetics here.

Well, I am. God only knows what the fuck you're on about, but it certainly has no basis in scientific, genetic reality.

Re: rBGH and more...

[furbyhater]

The real problem with the growth hormones is that the fast growth usually makes cows ill if they aren't given an antibiotic agent at the same time to combat the secondary effects of the growth hormone. Therre have been reports of pus-contaminated milk because of diseases related to the growth hormones. Also, the permanent use of antibiotics creates antibiotics-resistant bacteria on the cows, that are just waiting to get a chance to cross over to humans. Moreover, since these cows are often fed with GM crop that "naturally" produces pesticides which stay inside the plants when they are harvested, the milk and meat from the cows gets contaminated with pesticides.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

on top of it, they convinced the indian government to outlaw seed saving. The farmers are obliged to use GM seeds (funny how the big producer/distributor of such seeds is Monsanto)

- wonder why so many Indian farmers are committing suicide with pesticide?

Many misrepresentations in article

[crashfrog]

Well, two major ones, at least:

First in GM seeds with its 'Roundup Ready' crops designed to sell more of its Roundup herbicide

"Roundup Ready" or glyphosphate-resistant crops actually weren't developed by GM techniques, but by regular selective breeding. And the point of RR is not that you use more pesticide, but actually that you use less - because you can treat the field at a stage when the plants are younger, and more susceptible to a smaller dosage, than you can when you have to wait for your crops to be hardy enough to withstand indirect exposure.

At least with Microsoft the buyer of a program can use it over and over again. But farmers who buy Monsanto's seeds can't even do that.'

No modern farmer "reuses" seeds, GM or no. Modern hybrids don't breed true, for one thing. And by planting part of the harvest, you miss out on protective seed-coat treatments, and terrestrial pests eat your crops before they've even sprouted.

For some reason Monsanto comes under fire from people who would rather distort the facts, or argue from a position of hostile ignorance, than debate the case on its merits. Monsanto does plenty of things I think are wrong, particularly their legal department, but figuring out ways for farmers to get larger yields with less pesticide use, less land use, and less water use certainly isn't one of them. For christ's sake, when did feeding people become something "evil"? What, you thought we could feed a world of 6 billion people organically? Forgetting for a moment the fact that organic crops are less safe, there's simply not enough arable land and water for that to be realistic.

Re:This ain't a charity

[the eric conspiracy]

You really should read the Wikipedia article on this topic. The crop that got Schmeiser sued was 95%+ RoundUp resistant rapeseed. The only way that could have happened was an intentional informed effort to bypass Monsanto's patents. Accidental wind blown contamination does not give anything close to that result.

Re:This ain't a charity

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should there be any consequences?

Monsanto got patent protection on the modifications they made to the plant. But patents are for a limited time.

Monsanto's patent on the original round-up ready canola expires 2 years from now (2010) [biotech-info.net], after which you can do whatever you want with that plant and its modifications.

They will have to innovate to keep their market.

This might be why the court decided to grant them 'insane' rights on the plant, because after the patent expires, it's a free-for-all.

Re:This ain't a charity

[MightyYar]

right until the modified crop contaminates their supply and they get sued for keeping the seeds.

While I happen to disagree with that ruling, I think that you are mis-characterizing it. That guy didn't just, whoops, accidentally pick up some roundup ready seeds. He actively and deliberately selected for the roundup ready trait. 95% of his field was growing roundup ready rapeseed. The guy knowingly used the roundup ready gene - he was certainly aware of it.

We can argue about how crazy patent laws are, but don't try to characterize that case as Monsanto suing a guy that harvested a field with some accidental cross-pollination.

In Missouri: a law to ban "BGH Free" labeling

[throatmonster]

There is currently a bill in the Missouri (USA) house, obviously written by Monsanto lobbyists, and brought to the floor by their bought-off legislators. The bill specifically prohibits organic milk producers from being able to label their product as BGH-Free, but fails to force any BGH-based milk from labeling their products as being produced with this substance.

Sorry, but that's evil. As a consumer, regardless of whether I like BGH or hate it, I have a right to know. There are enough people concerned about the possible effects of BGH that they want to steer clear. But if Monsanto gets their way with this bill, how will a Missouri consumer be able to know?

This is just one example of Monsanto's evil-ness. There are similar bills in other states in the US that are written by Monsanto lobbyists as well. It needs to be stopped. Yes, I've written my house representatives and told them I am against the bill.

Re:This ain't a charity

[MightyYar]

So fucking what?

In Canada, there is no difference between patents on rapeseed and patents on anything else. If you use someone else's invention, you are liable.

This guy took it a step further by knowingly and deliberately selected for the Monsanto trait. He actually killed off all of the non-Monsanto rapeseed deliberately.

I happen to agree with you, I think. But that doesn't mean that you and I get to set public policy in Canada.

Re:Pure Evil

[Fallen Seraph]

Monarch Butterflies? Really? Of ALL the amazingly psychotic and evil things Monsanto has done, THAT'S what makes you think they're evil? Personally, I find the creation and sale of Agent Orange to be more vile. It causes death and deformity in countless children, and affects countless more veterans of Vietnam and unknowing users of the herbicide. Internal memos showed that Monsanto was perfectly aware of its carcinogenic effects but did nothing to warn the public. Or how about the use of rBGH, a bovine growth hormone which cause the cows to grow sick and swollen in the udders. They produced more milk, but they didn't tell the farmers that the hormone could be passed onto consumers through the milk as well, and studies showed that the effect on humans is, surprise surprise, cancerous. This shit was sold in schools to children, and consumed by untold numbers throughout the country. When Fox news reporters tried to investigate this, Monsanto threatened to pull all of their advertising money from every single News Corp owned station. Fox chickened out, told the reporters to run an "edited" version, which didn't name Monsanto, didn't name rBGH, and didn't say it was cancerous. When the reporters tried to file for whistle blower status, the courts told them that "Publishing misleading news is not illegal" and denied them such status. And then, of course, the terminator seeds. Seeds that are genetically engineered to function for one harvest and one harvest only. The problem is that, first of all, this is absurd. you think the RIAA is bad? Imagine you purchase a CD and after you listen to each song once, the CD combusts in the drive ala Mission: Impossible, and you're told that you have to buy a new CD if you want to listen to those songs that you just bought again. and then there's cross pollination, where non-terminator seeds sometimes wander into neighboring farms. this is something that no farmer can really guard against, as this shit is carried by the wind and insects. So when Monsanto sees a farmer who's farm was cross-pollinated by plants from a neighboring Monsanto farm, they sue him for something he can't even do anything against. I agree that the GP's comment about Aushwitz is absurd, as there is no comparison. But that's not to say this isn't a different form of evil. and I will say this: If there is a corporation similar to the fictional Umbrella anywhere on Earth, it's Monsanto.

Re:Sigh

[Simon80]

Your comprehension fails - some farmers don't sign any contract, because the seeds come from plants that have spread out from other fields. So a farmer that hasn't entered into a contract is now unable to use seeds from plants on his own land for fear of being bullied by a huge corporation, because the seed might have come from a neighboring farm that uses their product.

Re:This ain't a charity

[the eric conspiracy]

Because I read the Canadian Supreme Court decision too.

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2004/Monsanto-V-Schmeiser-Ruling21may04.htm [mindfully.org]

I quote:

"The respondents are the licensee and owner, respectively, of a patent that discloses the invention of chimeric genes that confer tolerance to glyphosate herbicides such as Roundup and cells containing those genes. Canola containing the patented genes and cells is marketed under the trade name "Roundup Ready Canola". The appellants grow canola commercially in Saskatchewan. The appellants never purchased Roundup Ready canola nor obtained a licence to plant it. Tests of their 1998 canola crop revealed that 95-98 per cent was Roundup Ready Canola. The respondents brought an action against the appellants for patent infringement. The trial judge found the patent to be valid and allowed the action, concluding that the appellants knew or ought to have known that they saved and planted seed containing the patented gene and cell and that they sold the resulting crop also containing the patented gene and cell."

I am sorry, but this windblown nonsense is a crock of bullshit. 95-98% is clearly a deliberate action to circumvent.

If Monsanto was going after somebody who had a small percentage of contamination, I would be mad at Monsanto too. But this was clearly a cynical action and even worse a program to manipulate public opinion with a campaign of disinformation using politically motivated media sources.

Re:In Missouri: a law to ban "BGH Free" labeling

[will_die]

Problem with that is that BGH, Bolvine growth hormone, is a nature product found in all cow milk. There is no way to make BGH-free milk.
Now if they are talking about rBGH, recombinant BGH, which is injected in cattle to increase milk rate the reason for the law is to prevent consumer fear based on ignorance. If I put two glasses of milk in front of you, with from cows with rBGH injections and one without there is no way you can scientifically tell the difference.
The reason for the laws are that people are using fear and ignorance to stop a product. It is no more evil for this law then for laws that say you cannot advertise a brand of baby food by saying there are no ground up cat and dog meat in your product or you are the only local mortuary that has a 100% guarantee that your workers will not have sex with the corpses.
If they want to do additional advertisement get an organic label, which already means no rBGH or advertise that you do more testing then required by FDA. However both of those don't build on the fear and ignorance of the consumer and don't promote the goals of the anti-GM groups.

Re:Pure Evil

[gardenermike]

Milkweed grows in weedy areas, such as fencerows around farms. Monsanto engineered corn to be toxic to insects by splicing in DNA for a toxin from a bacterium known as Bacillus thuringiensis [wikipedia.org]. The pollen in the corn also happens to be toxic, and since corn is wind-pollinated, that pollen ends up all over everything around, including said milkweeds in fencerows. It's been doing a number on butterfly populations. The grandparent is correct, and the parent is just ignorant of the cause of the problem.

Re:Sigh

[Martin Blank]

At least some of those cases have been because the farmers knew that they had Monsanto seeds and continued to replant them, including the Canadian farmer who saved essentially only the Monsanto seeds and replanted virtually his entire farm with them, knowing what he had.