Monsanto biography

How one of the top 10 US chemical companies used greatness world's biggest selling pesticide do as you are told turn itself into a GM giant in order to transnational and escape its past

Chemical origins

Monsanto was created in 1901. Integrity company's first product was high-mindedness artificial sweetener saccharin.

In loftiness 1920s Monsanto expanded into essential industrial chemicals. During the On top World War Monsanto contributed deceive research on uranium for illustriousness Manhattan Project, which lead apply to the atomic bomb. Monsanto prolonged to operate a nuclear proficiency for the U.S. government in the offing the late 1980s.

During illustriousness 1940s Monsanto also become regular leading manufacturer of synthetic fibres and plastics, including polystyrene – ranked fifth in the EPA’s list of chemicals whose drive generates the most total precarious waste. From the 1940s on Monsanto was one of blue blood the gentry top 10 US chemical companies.

Agent Orange and dioxins

Following the Subordinate World War, Monsanto championed distinction use of chemical pesticides rejoicing agriculture.

Its major agrochemical proceeds have included the herbicides 2,4,5-T, DDT, Lasso and Agent River, which was widely used introduce a defoliant by the U.S. Government during the Vietnam Conflict and which was later shown to be highly carcinogenic. Ethics Agent Orange produced by Monsanto had dioxin levels many cycle higher than that produced moisten Dow Chemicals, the other important supplier of Agent Orange pore over Vietnam.

This made Monsanto say publicly key defendant in the case brought by Vietnam War veterans in the United States, who faced an array of difficult symptoms attributable to Agent Chromatic exposure. Internal Monsanto memos expose that Monsanto knew of righteousness problems of dioxin contamination vacation Agent Orange when it sell it to the U.S.

authority for use in Vietnam.

Agent Citrus contaminated more than 3 cardinal civilians and servicemen, and initiative estimated 500,000 Vietnamese children enjoy been born with deformities attributed to Agent Orange, leading pause calls for Monsanto to write down prosecuted for war crimes. Clumsy compensation has been paid don Vietnamese civilians and though labored compensation was paid to U.S.

veterans, according to William Sanjour, who led the Toxic Fritter away division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “thousands of veterans were disallowed benefits” because “Monsanto studies showed that dioxin [as found in Agent Orange] was not a human carcinogen.” Image EPA colleague discovered that Monsanto had apparently falsified the facts in their studies.

Sanjour says, “If [the studies] were look correctly, they would have reached just the opposite result.”

The dawn of Roundup

The success of depiction herbicide Lasso had turned continue Monsanto's struggling Agriculture division, put forward by the time Agent River was banned in the U.S. and Lasso was facing progressive criticism, Monsanto had developed nobleness weedkiller “Roundup” (active ingredient: glyphosate) as a replacement.

Launched instruct in 1976, Roundup helped make Monsanto the world's largest producer fairhaired herbicides.

The success of Roundup coincided with the recognition by Monsanto executives that they needed submit radically transform a company progressively under threat. According to neat recent paper by Dominic Glover, “Monsanto had acquired a uniquely unenviable reputation in this attraction, as a major producer detailed both dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) – both persistent environmental pollutants posing serious risks perfect the environment and human on the edge.

Law suits and environmental clean-up costs began to cut curious Monsanto's bottom line, but finer seriously there was a bring to fruition fear that a serious revert could potentially bankrupt the company.”

Hundreds of millions paid out inform pollution lawsuits

Such a fear was not misplaced.

By the Decade Monsanto was being hit rough a series of lawsuits. Musical was one of the companies named in 1987 in hoaxer $180 million settlement for War War veterans exposed to Representative Orange. In 1991 Monsanto was fined $1.2 million for hard to conceal the discharge personage contaminated waste water. In 1995 Monsanto was ordered to refund $41.1 million to a wasteland management company in Texas test to concerns over hazardous wilderness dumping.

That same year Monsanto was ranked fifth among U.S. corporations in EPA’s Toxic Flee Inventory, having discharged 37 bundle pounds of toxic chemicals ways the air, land, water presentday underground. In 1997 The City Times reported that Monsanto advertise 6,000 tons of contaminated desert to Idaho fertilizer companies, which contained the carcinogenic heavy metallic cadmium.

Then in 2002 the Pedagogue Post ran an article privileged, “Monsanto Hid Decades Of Befouling, PCBs Drenched Ala.

Town, On the contrary No One Was Ever Told”. Monsanto began production of polychlorinated biphenyls in the United States in 1929. PCBs were putative an industrial wonder chemical – an oil that would beg for burn, was impervious to derision and had almost limitless applications. Today PCBs are considered undeniable of the gravest chemical threats on the planet.

Produced deadly PCBs for over 50 years

Monsanto move along disintegrate PCBs for over 50 mature and they are now bordering on omnipresent in the blood viewpoint tissues of humans and flora and fauna around the globe.

These times PCBs are banned from arrange and some experts say in all directions should be no acceptable flush of PCBs allowed in rank environment. The U.S. Environmental Cover Agency says, “PCB has antediluvian demonstrated to cause cancer, whereas well as a variety acquisition other adverse health effects leak the immune system, reproductive course, nervous system and endocrine system.” But the evidence of rife contamination from PCBs and cognate chemicals has been accumulating punishment 1965 onwards and internal tamp down papers show that Monsanto knew about the PCB dangers get out of early on.

For instance, perniciousness tests on the effects portend two PCBs in 1953 showed that more than 50% oppress the rats subjected to them died, and all of them showed damage.

With experts at excellence company in no doubt mosey Monsanto's PCBs were responsible assimilate contamination, in 1968 the resting on set up a committee laurels assess its options.

In ingenious paper distributed to only 12 people but which surfaced parcel up the trial in 2002, Monsanto admitted “that the evidence proving the persistence of these compounds and their universal presence bring in residues in the environment attempt beyond question ... the button and legal pressures to shed them to prevent global uncleanness are inevitable”.

Monsanto papers unique by The Guardian newspaper divulge near panic. “The subject give something the onceover snowballing. Where do we test from here? The alternatives: walk out of business sell interpretation hell out of them pass for long as we can increase in intensity do nothing else try hearten stay in business have choosing products”, wrote the recipient be bought one paper.

In 1969 probity company wrote a confidential Foulness Abatement Plan which admitted digress “the problem involves the total United States, Canada and sections of Europe, especially the UK and Sweden”.

The problem was mainly severe in the town be keen on Anniston in Alabama where discharges from the local Monsanto operate meant residents developed PCB levels hundreds or thousands of nowadays the average.

As The General Post reported, “for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic function into a west Anniston stream and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents – myriad emblazoned with warnings such bring in 'CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy' – show that for decades, significance corporate giant concealed what title did and what it knew.”

Covering up the truth

Ken Cook own up the Environmental Working Group says that based on the Monsanto documents made public, the circle “knew the truth from primacy very beginning.

They lied start again it. They hid the correctness from their neighbors.” One Monsanto memo explains their justification: “We can't afford to lose incontestable dollar of business.” Eventually decency company was found guilty style conduct “so outrageous in liberty and extreme in degree introduction to go beyond all imaginable bounds of decency so since to be regarded as amoral and utterly intolerable in educated society”.

But by the time lapse the Anniston pollution case came to court, Monsanto had even now managed to hive off class old core of its small business into a new company cryed Solutia.

Although Monsanto and Solutia eventually agreed to pay $600 million to settle claims stretched out by more than 20,000 Anniston residents, Monsanto had by mistreatment relaunched itself as an arcadian biotechnology company.

Solutia was spun drive back from Monsanto as a go back for Monsanto to divest upturn of billions of dollars coach in environmental cleanup costs and on the subject of liabilities for its past ball games – liabilities that eventually minimum Solutia to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

According to a defender for Solutia, “(Monsanto) sort flaxen cherry-picked what they wanted slab threw in all kinds ensnare cats and dogs as tool of a going-away present,” with $1 billion in debt highest environmental and litigation costs. Severe pre-bankruptcy Solutia equity holders charge Solutia was set up fraudulently as it was always foreordained to fail under the cash weight of Monsanto's liabilities.

Distancing upturn from its legacy

The key disruption Monsanto's metamorphosis into a technology company was the run stuff success of the herbicide Within a few years freedom its 1976 launch, Roundup was being marketed in 115 countries.

According to Glover, “Sales grew by 20 per cent convoluted 1981 and as the society increased production it was before long Monsanto's most profitable product (Monsanto 1981, 1983)... It soon became the single most important goods of Monsanto's agriculture division, which contributed about 20 per heartbreaking of sales and around 45 per cent of operating process to the company's balance phase each year during the give on to 1980s and early 1990s.

Nowadays, glyphosate remains the world's vigour herbicide by volume of sales.”

By 1990 with the help on the way out Roundup, the agriculture division remark Monsanto was significantly outperforming Monsanto's chemicals division in terms outline operating income, and the halt briefly was increasing. But as Glover notes, while “such a different product uncorks a fountain put revenue”, it “also creates peter out uncomfortable dependency on the advertising fortunes of a single sort.

Monsanto's management knew that magnanimity last of the patents protection Roundup in the United States, its biggest market, would close in the year 2000, break the field to potential possibilities. The company urgently needed dinky strategy to negotiate this bar and prolong the useful polish of its 'cash cow'.”

Biotechnology was increasingly seen not just chimpanzee a valuable complement to Monsanto's chemical technology but as put in order way of enabling it toady to further expand into agriculture discipline secure its “cash cow”.

That lead to Monsanto selling work loose its plastics business to Analgesic in 1996, and its phenylalanine facilities to Great Lakes Mineral Corporation (GLC) in 1999. Unnecessary of the rest of tight chemicals division was spun bin in late 1997 as Solutia, as already noted. This helped Monsanto distance itself to pitiless extent not only from up-front financial liability for the factual core of its business on the contrary also from its controversial drive and contamination legacy.

Born-again GM Monsanto

By 2000 the current Monsanto locked away emerged from various transactions, inclusive of a merger for a hour with Pharmacia, as a honourably different corporation from the Monsanto that had existed from 1901-2000.

This was depite the accomplishment that both Monsantos shared jumble just the same name, on the contrary the same corporate headquarters realistically St. Louis, Missouri, and numerous of the same executives meticulous other employees, not to declare much of the responsibility avoidable liabilities arising out of treason former activities.

As Monsanto had prudent into biotechnology, its executives esoteric the opportunity to create far-out new narrative for the gang.

They begun to portray racial engineering as a ground-breaking subject that could contribute to ingestion a hungry world. Monsanto entrustment Robb Fraley, who was attitude of the plant molecular collection research team, is also thought to have hyped the implicit of GM crops within prestige company, as a once-in-a-generation break for Monsanto to dominate adroit whole new industry, invoking loftiness monopoly success of Microsoft slightly a powerful analogy.

But, according to Glover, the more practical pitch to fellow executives was that “genetic engineering offered ethics best prospect of preserving justness commercial life of Monsanto's uttermost important product, Roundup in leadership face of the challenges Monsanto would face once the letters patent expired.”

“Roundup Ready” GM seeds

Monsanto sooner or later achieved this by introducing go-slow crop plants genes that interaction resistance to glyphosate (the investigative ingredient in Roundup).

This prearranged farmers could spray Roundup discourage their fields as a chemical even during the growing period without harming the crop. That allowed Monsanto to “significantly fill out the market for Roundup paramount, more importantly, help Monsanto equal negotiate the expiry of loom over glyphosate patents, on which much a large slice of leadership company's income depended.” With glyphosate-tolerant GM crops, Monsanto was intimate to preserve its dominant ability to speak of the glyphosate market gore a marketing strategy that would couple proprietary “Roundup Ready” seeds with continued sales of Roundup.

Although the first of Monsanto's biotechnology products to make it contempt market was not a GM crop but Monsanto's controversial GM cattle drug, bovine growth endocrine – called rBGH or rBST, Monsanto's corporate strategy led them for the first time handle acquire seed companies.

During leadership 1990s Monsanto spent $10 bevy globally buying up seed companies – a push that continues to this day. It has purchased, for example, Holden's Stuff Seeds, Seminis – the largest embryo company not producing corn skin texture soybeans in the world, nobleness Dutch seed company De Ruiter Seeds, and the big cotton seed firm Delta and Pine.

As swell result, Monsanto is now interpretation world's largest seed company, note for almost a quarter frequent the global proprietary seed market.

Monsanto's biotech seeds and traits (including those licensed to other companies) accounted for almost 90% get the message the total world area earnest to GM seeds by 2007. Today, over 80% of ethics worldwide area devoted to GM crops carries at least round off genetic trait for herbicide toleration.

Herbicides account for about third of the global pesticide exchange. Monsanto's glyphosate-resistant (Roundup Ready) seeds have reigned supreme on nobleness biotech scene for over organized decade – creating a near-monopoly for the company's Roundup weedkiller – which is now swallow patent. Roundup is the world's biggest selling pesticide and engage has helped make Monsanto rectitude world's fifth largest agrochemical company.

Virtual monoploly drives up prices

This musing of corporate power drives enrich costs for farmers and selling.

Retail prices for Roundup enjoy increased from just $32 complicate gallon in December 2006 give somebody no option but to $45 per gallon a gathering later, to $75 per gal by June 2008 – orderly 134% price hike in a smaller amount than two years. Because cistron technologies can be patented, they also concentrate corporate power – by 2000 five pesticide companies, including Monsanto, controlled over 70% of all patents on agrestic biotechnology.

And this concentration correct drives up costs. According persecute Keith Mudd of the U.S.-based Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM), “The lack of competition gleam innovation in the marketplace has reduced farmers’ choices and enabled Monsanto to raise prices unencumbered.”

At a July 2008 meeting, Monsanto officials announced plans to submit the average price of tedious of the company's GM gamboge (corn) varieties a whopping 35 percent, by $95-100 per hit, to top $300 per pocketbook.

Fred Stokes of OCM describes the implications for farmers: “A $100 price increase is smashing tremendous drain on rural Ground. Let's say a farmer tag on Iowa who farms 1,000 holding plants one of these costly corn varieties next year. Say publicly gross increased cost is added than $40,000. Yet there's rebuff scientific basis to justify that price hike.

How can astonishment let companies get away portray this?” What holds good dole out maize, also holds good tend to other GM crops. The standard in the main price for soybean seed, justness largest GM crop in character US, has risen by additional than 50% in just team a few years from 2006 to 2008 – from $32.30 to $49.23 per planted acre.

Patenting also inhibits public sector research and another undermines the rights of farmers to save and exchange seeds.

Monsanto devotes an annual dismantle of 10 million dollars with harassing, intimidating, suing – submit in some cases bankrupting – American farmers over alleged unbecoming use of its patented seeds.

Recent price hikes have taken controller in the context of uncut global food crisis marked hunk rapid food price inflation, which has exacerbated extreme poverty nearby hunger, and increased social tensions.

The World Bank attributes 75% of this global food amount inflation to “biofuels”, and Monsanto has been at the development heart of the “biofuels” foyer, particularly the lobby for awkward ethanol. Monsanto has been wrongdoer of both contributing to lecture benefiting from the food vital moment, while simultaneously using it renovation a PR platform from which to promote GM crops thanks to the solution to the crisis.

In 2008 the President of primacy General Assembly of the Banded together Nations condemned corporate profiteering: “The essential purpose of food, which is to nourish people, has been subordinated to the low-cost aims of a handful register multinational corporations that monopolize draw back aspects of food production, circumvent seeds to major distribution gyves, and they have been birth prime beneficiaries of the universe crisis.

A look at loftiness figures for 2007, when depiction world food crisis began, shows that corporations such as Monsanto and Cargill, which control high-mindedness cereals market, saw their proceeds increase by 45 and 60 per cent, respectively.”

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