In Defense of Monsanto

In Defense of Monsanto Written by HUDSON LOFCHIE Science Editor Published on January 16, 2013 The California Aggie

I want to talk about something today, and I hope that it does not result in my office getting burned down. But I work in a basement, so I guess its not that much of an issue. Genetically modified crops — devil incarnate or world savior? Solution to the hunger problem, or a capitalist venture? Each of these holds a little bit of truth, and I want to explore a side of the debate that isn’t normally discussed in the press — GM crops as the good guys. When talking about genetically modified crops, Monsanto is, for the most part, the centerpiece of conversation. Debates, if they can even be called that, are riddled with hearsay, rumors, myths, “I read this” or “I heard that.” It seems to me that most people simply have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. And those who do have some knowledge on the subject are focusing on all the wrong things.

As bad press and political heat goes, Monsanto is on the sharp end of it more often than not. The “liberal” media paints Monsanto as a mean, heartless company, set on destroying any and all competition. So Monsanto has some rather shrewd business practices … all successful companies do. They have some of the most consistently stable stock prices on Wall Street, and have earned massive investments from both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. So what is it about Monsanto that the public finds so appalling? Most of the arguments I have heard against this company are that Monsanto destroys the small farmer. While many small farmers are bankrupt by lawsuits with Monsanto, it is merely the result of Monsanto defending its intellectual property … to the death. Monsanto makes a large percentage of its money from licensing patented genes to other companies. They have contracts with Dow Chemical, Syngenta, Novartis and many others. Monsanto is truly ruthless in its negotiations when licensing out its patents, and it should be. No one is forcing these companies to license with Monsanto, no one is forcing farmers to buy Monsanto seeds. But good products cost more, and consumers (farmers and other corporations in this case) are willing to pay the premium that Monsanto charges for good products. Good products cost more. That’s business. That’s how the world works. There is some humor I find in this situation, and that is the complete hypocrisy of the hoards of internet users who rush to vilify Monsanto. How many of the people writing about this company are typing on a computer made by Apple and manufactured by Foxconn? A computer made in factories with such terrible working conditions that Foxconn had to install bars on the windows to prevent suicides due to low pay and illegal overtime. Employees even need to sign away the right for their family or any of their descendants to sue the company in the case of death. I myself am guilty of owning multiple Apple products. I am willing to pay that premium because Apple products are beautiful and functional. How many of these writers are wearing Nike shoes, manufactured by children paid pennies per day? I find it completely asinine that these individuals who claim to hold themselves to such a high moral standard are so selective in their moral battles. They buy a $2,000 computer and then blog about the unfairness of big corporations. Now don’t get me wrong — I do understand that there is a fundamental difference between bad labor practices for something you wear or use, like a computer, and a genetically modified food product that you assimilate into your body. There is an intimacy related to food that does not exist with shoes or computers; the food that you eat is broken down on a molecular level and literally becomes part of you. After doing my homework for this column, I came to the realization that there are, in fact, many reasons to hate, or at least avoid, Monsanto. First, the excessive enforcement of patents. Monsanto has customers sign end-user license agreements (EULAs) that prevent the replication and even the study of their seeds. These EULAs forbid independent research and can block unflattering findings from being published. Another frowned upon practice is the implementation of the Terminator and the Zombie. The infamous Monsanto patent #5,723,765, a.k.a., the Terminator gene, is for a gene that makes all seeds of Monsanto crops completely sterile. The Zombie gene is similar to the Terminator gene except that sterility can be reversed by spraying a chemical, made by Monsanto, that triggers fertility. One of the last points I want to make is that the general public has an uncanny knack for remembering every mistake in history and forgetting the good parts. Monsanto is often condemned as as the manufacturer of Agent Orange and the other “Rainbow Herbicides” during the Vietnam War. What surprises me yet again about the public is that they cry murder for a chemical that was meant to kill crops, and had the unfortunate side effect of stillbirths and infant deformations, but that same public seems to develop complete amnesia regarding companies who design products with the sole purpose of taking life. There are easily close to a hundred weapons manufacturers just in the United States. And finally, I want to talk about consumer stupidity. Hate me, don’t hate me; I really don’t care, but it is my honest opinion that the average consumer is not educated enough to know what a GMO is, or educated enough to make decisions about GMO legislation. I read dozens of bloggers’ posts about GMOs and many of them are under the idiotic impression that GMO is a chemical that is added to plants. Monsanto may have questionable-at-best legal practices, but they have achieved the ultimate corporate success — government support the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the times of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Our government turns a relatively blind eye toward Monsanto’s activities because Monsanto has branded itself as “agents of a future prosperity that will trickle down to all.” Let’s for one moment imagine a world without Monsanto. Without the Golden Rice engineered by Monsanto, millions of malnourished individuals would die every year of Vitamin A deficiency, and nearly half a million more from blindness caused by Vitamin A deficiency. I am by no means suggesting that Monsanto is a good company. Their level of social standards leave much to be desired. What I am saying is that if you want to launch a campaign of hate and protest against a multinational, multi-billion dollar company, at least educate yourself enough to know what you are talking about. And ask yourself this: Is it worth sacrificing the hundreds of thousands of lives saved every year by Monsanto’s products just to destroy the company that bankrupt the small farmer down the street? HUDSON LOFCHIE can be reached at [email protected].

May 15, 2013 Monsanto: More Saint than Sinner By Ross Pomeroy REAL CLEAR POLITICS

Monsanto is the Devil Incarnate, a ruthless corporation hell bent upon forcing their unnatural food down our open gullets. The soy and corn they sow are more likely to transmogrify us into imps than sustain us.

At least that's what a lot of people seem to believe these days. Poring over Monsanto's well documented past, the company's haters might have a point. The company was instrumental in manufacturing the much maligned insecticide DDT as well as the herbicide Agent Orange. The latter may have caused as many as 400,000 deaths in Vietnam from its use by the U.S. military as a chemical warfare agent. Moreover, the company has been criminally complacent in many cases of environmental pollution, including a sinister occurrence in Alabama in which the company "drenched" a town in toxic industrial coolants for 40 years.

Yes, Monsanto has done some bad things, and unfortunately for them, their relentless dedication to being a successful company has stifled public forgiveness.

Monsanto showers politicians with contributions and employs a cadre of well-connected lobbyists. These actions recently secured passage of what's been misleadingly dubbed the "Monsanto Protection Act," which simply prevents unpredictable court decisions from restricting the sale and distribution of genetically modified seeds. Right or wrong, this provided its critics with more ammunition.

Moreover, Monsanto mercilessly defends its intellectual property. Since the mid-1990s the corporation has filed suit against 145 individual farmers for patent infringement, never losing a single case.

This trend continued on Monday, when the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against an Indiana farmer who attempted to circumvent Monsanto's rules. The small-time farmer now must pay the multibillion-dollar company a sum of $80,000. This surely won't endear any new fans to the controversial company, instead providing more material to the Monsanto hatemongers, who have littered the Internet with tales of treachery and diatribes against supposedly insidious genetically modified organisms.

But their story is far from the whole story.

Back in 1970, Monsanto chemist John Franz invented a herbicide called glyphosate. In the half-century that has since passed, the substance has been heralded as a "once-in-a-century herbicide," leading to substantially higher crop yields without damaging the environment. Scrutiny over the years has revealed the herbicide to be less acutely toxic than Tylenol and to degrade quickly in the soil. In order for farmers to make full use of the herbicide, Monsanto engineered strains of various crops to be immune to glyphosate. Now, American farmers average 160 bushels of corn per acre each year, up from 109.5 in 1979.

Monsanto has also been key to the development of golden rice, a genetically modified strain which provides a significant amount of Vitamin A per serving. Vitamin A deficiency plagues many parts of the developing world, resulting in as many as one million deaths and 500,000 cases of irreversible blindness annually (PDF). If widely planted, golden rice could very well abate this tragedy.

Monsanto's noble efforts have garnered the adoration of numerous, notable do-gooders, including philanthropist Bill Gates and agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Peace Prize winner whose dwarf wheat revolutionized agriculture, saving an estimated one billion lives from starvation. Before he died in 2009, Borlaug extolled Monsanto's use of genetic modification, believing science to be the best hope for feeding a growing world population.

"We've been genetically modifying plants and animals for a long time. Long before we called it science, people were selecting the best breeds," he said in an interview with Houston Chronicle.

Let's be honest, Monsanto is simply the "evil corporation of the day." Microsoft, Nike, Wal- Mart, and McDonalds have all taken turns.

Monsanto has certainly done some sinful things, but the good they've wrought far outweighs the bad. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't be in business.

Ross Pomeroy is the assistant editor of RealClearScience. Follow him on Twitter @SteRoPo.

Monsanto Wins Lawsuit Filed By U.S. Organic Farmers Worried About Seed Contamination

Reuters

Posted: 06/10/2013 2:50 pm EDT Updated: 08/10/2013 5:12 am EDT

By Carey Gillam

June 10 (Reuters) - Monsanto Co. on Monday won another round in a legal battle with U.S. organic growers as an appeals court threw out the growers' efforts to stop the company from suing farmers if traces of its patented biotech genes are found in crops.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a previous ruling that found organic growers had no reason to try to block Monsanto from suing them as the company had pledged it would not take them to court if biotech crops accidentally mix in with organics.

Organic farmers and others have worried for years that they will be sued by Monsanto for patent infringement if their crops get contaminated with Monsanto biotech crops.

In its ruling Monday, the appellate court said the organic growers must rely on Monsanto assurances on the company's website that it will not sue them so long as the mix is very slight.

"Monsanto's binding representations remove any risk of suit against the appellants as users or sellers of trace amounts (less than one percent) of modified seed," the court stated in its ruling.

Monsanto officials applauded the ruling.

"The assertion that Monsanto would pursue patent infringement against farmers that have no interest in using the company's patented seed technology was hypothetical from the outset," the company said in a statement issued Monday.

Monsanto has developed a reputation for zealously defending patents on its genetically altered crops, which include patented "Roundup Ready" soybeans, corn and cotton, genetically altered to tolerate treatments of its Roundup weedkiller.

The crops are widely used in the United States and Latin America. It has proven difficult to keep the genetic alteration from contaminating non- biotech crops, as recently occurred in a wheat field in the U.S. state of Oregon.

The group of more than 50 organic farmers and seed dealers sued Monsanto in March 2011 seeking to prohibit Monsanto from suing them if their seed and crops become contaminated.

Monsanto officials specifically refused to sign a covenant stating it would not sue the growers, but the court said the website statement was sufficient and would be binding.

Andrew Kimbrell, a lawyer with the Center for Food Safety, which joined as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the decision made no sense.

"It is a very bizarre ruling that relies on a paragraph on a website," he said. "It is a very real threat to American farmers. This is definitely appealable."

In its ruling Monday, the court noted that records indicate a large majority of conventional seed samples have become contaminated by Monsanto's Roundup resistance trait.

Monsanto filed 144 patent-infringement lawsuits against farmers between 1997 and April 2010, and won judgments against farmers it said made use of its seed without paying required royalties.

Many U.S. farmers have said their fields were inadvertently contaminated with Monsanto's biotech seeds without their knowledge. The issue has been a topic of concern for not only farmers, but also companies that clean and handle seed.