Chemical Disasters, Agent Orange, and GMOs: Monsanto's Legacy Traced in Expose

Chemical disasters, Agent Orange, and the first genetically modified plant cell are among just some of the dark milestones belonging to the history of the biotech giant Monsanto highlighted in a new report released Wednesday by consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

The in-depth historical analysis Monsanto: A Corporate Profile presents a corporation "steeped in heavy industrial chemical production," who only recently began marketing itself through an "environmentally friendly, feed-the-world image"--an image that is contradictory to a century of toxic chemical production and a food supply saturated with un-labeled GE crops, herbicides, and artificial growth hormones.

Monsanto, as FWW shows, now holds vast "undue influence over lawmakers, regulators, and our food supply," and has caused great devastation to farmers around the world through its global seed monopoly.

"Despite its various marketing incarnations over the years, Monsanto is a chemical company that got its start selling saccharin to Coca-Cola, then Agent Orange to the U.S. military, and, in recent years, seeds genetically engineered to contain and withstand massive amounts of Monsanto herbicides and pesticides," said Ronnie Cummins, executive director of Organic Consumers Association in response to the report. "Monsanto has become synonymous with the corporatization and industrialization of our food supply."

"Even though you won't find the Monsanto brand on a food or beverage container at your local grocery store, the company holds vast power over our food supply," said Rebecca Spector, West Coast Director for the Center for Food Safety. "This power is largely responsible for something else we cannot find on our grocery store shelves -- labels on genetically engineered food. Not only has Monsanto's and other agribusinesses' efforts prevented the labeling of GE foods, but they spend millions to block grassroots efforts like California's Prop 37 in order to keep consumers in the dark."

The report arrives after President Obama signed last week what has been dubbed the "Monsanto Protection Act"--legislation critics say amounts to "corporate welfare" for biotechnology corporations like Monsanto that puts both farmers and the environment in jeopardy.

The law will essentially "bar US federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of genetically engineered (GE) crops even if they failed to be approved by the government's own weak approval process and no matter what the health or environmental consequences might be," Greenpeace wrote last week.

"At the end of March, the American public saw first hand the unjustifiable power that Monsanto holds over our elected officials when an unprecedented budget rider, dubbed the 'Monsanto Protection Act,' was tacked onto the spending bill to fund the federal government," Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now! stated following the release of Food & Water Watches new report. "This is an outrageous interference with our courts and separation of powers and we cannot sit back and allow our elected officials to continue to take orders from Monsanto at the expense of family farmers and consumers."

Monsanto's legacy continues... Read more here.

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