Although the co-op had provided voluminous records, Monsanto then sued it in federal court for patent infringement. In effect, Monsanto wanted the co-op to police its own customers. In the majority of cases where Monsanto sues, or threatens to sue, farmers settle before going to trial.
The cost and stress of litigating against a global corporation are just too great. The more the co-op has resisted, the more legal firepower Monsanto has aimed at it. Monsanto next petitioned to make potential damages punitive—tripling the amount that Pilot Grove might have to pay if found guilty.
After a judge denied that request, Monsanto expanded the scope of the pre-trial investigation by seeking to quadruple the number of depositions. Monsanto gave them two weeks to comply. Whether Pilot Grove can continue to wage its legal battle remains to be seen.
Whatever the outcome, the case shows why Monsanto is so detested in farm country, even by those who buy its products. The future of the company may lie in seeds, but the seeds of the company lie in chemicals. Monsanto was founded in by John Francis Queeny, a tough, cigar-smoking Irishman with a sixth-grade education.
A buyer for a wholesale drug company, Queeny had an idea. So he went into business for himself on the side. Queeny was convinced there was money to be made manufacturing a substance called saccharin, an artificial sweetener then imported from Germany.
Louis waterfront. With borrowed equipment and secondhand machines, he began producing saccharin for the U. The young company faced other challenges. Questions arose about the safety of saccharin, and the U. Department of Agriculture even tried to ban it. His persistence and the loyalty of one steady customer kept the company afloat. That steady customer was a new company in Georgia named Coca-Cola. Monsanto added more and more products—vanillin, caffeine, and drugs used as sedatives and laxatives.
In , Monsanto began making aspirin, and soon became the largest maker worldwide. During World War I, cut off from imported European chemicals, Monsanto was forced to manufacture its own, and its position as a leading force in the chemical industry was assured.
After Queeny was diagnosed with cancer, in the late s, his only son, Edgar, became president. Where the father had been a classic entrepreneur, Edgar Monsanto Queeny was an empire builder with a grand vision. Under Edgar Queeny and his successors, Monsanto extended its reach into a phenomenal number of products: plastics, resins, rubber goods, fuel additives, artificial caffeine, industrial fluids, vinyl siding, dishwasher detergent, anti-freeze, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides.
Its safety glass protects the U. Constitution and the Mona Lisa. Its synthetic fibers are the basis of Astroturf. During the s, the company shifted more and more resources into biotechnology. In it created a molecular-biology group for research in plant genetics.
The next year, Monsanto scientists hit gold: they became the first to genetically modify a plant cell. Louis, developed one genetically modified product after another—cotton, soybeans, corn, canola. From the start, G. Monsanto has sought to portray G. In its list of corporate milestones, all but a handful are from the recent era.
One of the benefits of doing this, as the company does not point out, was to channel the bulk of the growing backlog of chemical lawsuits and liabilities onto Solutia, keeping the Monsanto brand pure. For many years Monsanto produced two of the most toxic substances ever known— polychlorinated biphenyls, better known as PCBs, and dioxin. Monsanto no longer produces either, but the places where it did are still struggling with the aftermath, and probably always will be. Twelve miles downriver from Charleston, West Virginia, is the town of Nitro, where Monsanto operated a chemical plant from to A by-product of the process was the creation of a chemical that would later be known as dioxin.
The name dioxin refers to a group of highly toxic chemicals that have been linked to heart disease, liver disease, human reproductive disorders, and developmental problems. Even in small amounts, dioxin persists in the environment and accumulates in the body. In the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization, classified the most powerful form of dioxin as a substance that causes cancer in humans. In the U. The noise from the release was a scream so loud that it drowned out the emergency steam whistle for five minutes.
A plume of vapor and white smoke drifted across the plant and out over town. Within days, workers experienced skin eruptions. Many were soon diagnosed with chloracne, a condition similar to common acne but more severe, longer lasting, and potentially disfiguring.
Others felt intense pains in their legs, chest, and trunk. Court records indicate that plant workers became ill. In the meantime, the Nitro plant continued to produce herbicides, rubber products, and other chemicals. In the s, the factory manufactured Agent Orange, the powerful herbicide which the U. In several former Nitro employees filed lawsuits in federal court, charging that Monsanto had knowingly exposed them to chemicals that caused long-term health problems, including cancer and heart disease.
They alleged that Monsanto knew that many chemicals used at Nitro were potentially harmful, but had kept that information from them. Monsanto stopped producing dioxin in Nitro in , but the toxic chemical can still be found well beyond the Nitro plant site.
Repeated studies have found elevated levels of dioxin in nearby rivers, streams, and fish. Residents have sued to seek damages from Monsanto and Solutia. Earlier this year, a West Virginia judge merged those lawsuits into a class-action suit. Five hundred miles to the south, the people of Anniston, Alabama, know all about what the people of Nitro are going through. One of the wonder chemicals of the 20th century, PCBs were exceptionally versatile and fire-resistant, and became central to many American industries as lubricants, hydraulic fluids, and sealants.
But PCBs are toxic. A member of a family of chemicals that mimic hormones, PCBs have been linked to damage in the liver and in the neurological, immune, endocrine, and reproductive systems. The Environmental Protection Agency E. Today, 37 years after PCB production ceased in Anniston, and after tons of contaminated soil have been removed to try to reclaim the site, the area around the old Monsanto plant remains one of the most polluted spots in the U.
People in Anniston find themselves in this fix today largely because of the way Monsanto disposed of PCB waste for decades. Excess PCBs were dumped in a nearby open-pit landfill or allowed to flow off the property with storm water.
Some waste was poured directly into Snow Creek, which runs alongside the plant and empties into a larger stream, Choccolocco Creek. PCBs also turned up in private lawns after the company invited Anniston residents to use soil from the plant for their lawns, according to The Anniston Star. So for decades the people of Anniston breathed air, planted gardens, drank from wells, fished in rivers, and swam in creeks contaminated with PCBs—without knowing anything about the danger.
Studies by health authorities consistently found elevated levels of PCBs in houses, yards, streams, fields, fish, and other wildlife—and in people. This was a bill passed through the US government cleverly stuck between a bunch of funding projects that required approval in order to release funds to government members that removes all liability of negative environmental and human repercussions that could come from the production and use of Monsanto products.
This sort of bill is essential for a company like Monsanto that performs all of their own safety testing , and has never conducted extensive long term studies related to the possible long term side effects of their genetically engineered products. Monsanto has all of their angles covered, and as much as you want to hate them you have to respect how incredibly intricate and progressive they were in their agricultural evolution.
Stop blaming technology for a problem that corrupt companies abuse. You not only take away form the actual issue, but you lose the support and interest of the scientific community when you make it out as if they are somehow responsible for the decisions and intents of a massive super-corp. Although there are a handful of scientists responsible for GMO tech abuse—the rest of the scientific community is a sensitive bunch, and if you blame science for the issue you lose sciences support of your concerns.
Secondly, showing up to the front lines of street level protests can be a respectable first step, but without taking any real action on a personal level it could be all for naught. Grow your own fruit and vegetable garden, support local, organic farmers, and educate yourself on the sub-companies and products that Monsanto creates or has a hand in. The less money that makes its way into their greedy pockets, the less power they have.
Know the facts, determine the root cause of the problems you are trying to solve, and start with yourself—the rest is just lip service. Follow Tommy on Twitter: hybridtraining.
Register today! This announcement came the same day Monsanto reported a third quarter earnings loss due to lower seed sales and a drought that required more seeds to be shipped from South America. Forecast earnings for were also lower than analyst expectations. Unfortunately, now only Monsanto farmers will have access to this technology, which will only become more important as the agricultural industry continues to evolve and the climate continues to change.
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