The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and The
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BY THE WINNER OF THE 2009 RACHEL CARSON PRIZE SCIENCE $26.95 U.S. MONSANTO “As this powerful book makes clear, Monsanto’s innovations create more TO ACCORDING THE WORLD T he result of a remarkable three-year investigation problems than they solve—above all by helping to concentrate the food system in that took award-winning journalist and documen- ever fewer hands, with baleful consequences for the world’s small-scale farmers. tary filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin across four It’s the kind of reporting we need more of, and one hopes it will be at least a continents (North and South America, Europe, and Asia), The World According to Monsanto tells partial antidote to all the slick commercials with smiling peasants.” MARIE-MONIQUE ROBIN is an award-winning the little-known yet shocking story of this agribusi- —BILL McKIBBEN, author of Deep Economy French journalist and filmmaker. She received the ness giant—the world’s leading producer of GMOs 1995 Albert-Londres Prize, awarded to investigative “We are what we eat, and what we eat is rapidly being determined by (genetically modified organisms)—and how its new journalists in France. She is the director and one company, Monsanto. Monsanto’s seed and food dictatorship is based on “green” face is no less troubling than its PCB- and producer of over thirty documentaries and inves- Agent Orange–soaked past. tigative reports filmed in Latin America, Africa, corrupting regulatory processes, corrupting science, and destroying democracy. Europe, and Asia. We needed a book that told us the story in detail, with courage—The World Robin reports that, following its long history of According to Monsanto does just that.” manufacturing hazardous chemicals and lethal GEORGE HOLOCH has translated more than —VANDANA SHIVA, author of Earth Democracy and Stolen Harvest herbicides, Monsanto is now marketing itself as a twenty books, including Eric Hazan’s Notes on the THE WORLD ACCORDING TO “life sciences” company, seemingly convinced about Occupation (The New Press). “An alarming and uncompromising investigation.” the virtues of sustainable development. However, —Le Monde Marie Monsanto now controls the majority of the yield of the world’s genetically modified corn and soy— “Sends chills down the spine. After reading this, we can no longer MONSANTO ingredients found in more than 95 percent of afford to turn a blind eye.” - Monique Robin American households—and its alarming legal and —Le Point political tactics to maintain this monopoly are the POLLUTION, CORRUPTION, subject of worldwide concern. THE NEW PRESS AND THE CONTROL OF OUR FOOD SUPPLY www.thenewpress.com Released to great acclaim and controversy in France, AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE WORLD’S throughout Europe, and in Latin America, The World Jacket photograph by DAJ/GETTY MOST CONTROVERSIAL COMPANY According to Monsanto is sure to change the way we Author photograph by Guillaume de Crop think about food safety and the corporate control of Jacket design by Ann Weinstock our food supply. THE NEW PRESS Marie-Monique Robin 23472_00_i-xii_1-358_r7ln.qxp 2/19/10 1:26 PM Page i The World According to Monsanto h 23472_00_i-xii_1-358_r7ln.qxp 2/19/10 1:26 PM Page ii Also by Marie-Monique Robin Voleurs d’organes: Enquête sur un trafic Les Cent Photos du siècle Le Sixième Sens: Science et paranormal (with Mario Varvoglis) Escadrons de la mort, l’école française L’École du soupçon: Les dérives de la lutte contre la pédophilie h 23472_00_i-xii_1-358_r7ln.qxp 2/19/10 1:26 PM Page iii The World According to Monsanto Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World’s Food Supply MARIE-MONIQUE ROBIN Translated from the French by George Holoch h 23472_00_i-xii_1-358_r7ln.qxp 2/19/10 1:26 PM Page iv The New Press gratefully acknowledges the Florence Gould Foundation for supporting the publication of this book. © 2008 by Éditions La Découverte / Arte Editions English translation © 2010 by The New Press All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher. Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to: Permissions Department, The New Press, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013. First published as Le monde selon Monsanto by Éditions La Découverte, Paris, 2008 Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2010 Distributed by Perseus Distribution LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Robin, Marie-Monique. [Monde selon Monsanto. English] The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and the control of the world’s food supply / Marie-Monique Robin ; translated by George Holoch. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59558-426-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Monsanto Company. 2. Agricultural innovations—United States—Social aspects. 3. Agricultural chemicals industry—Social aspects. 4. Agricultural chemicals—Environmental aspects. 5. Agricultural chemicals industry—Corrupt practices. 6. Social responsibility of business. 7. Food supply. 8. Human rights and globalization. I. Title. HD9482.U64M6613 2009 338.7'6600973—dc22 2009008621 The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large, commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing industry. The New Press operates in the public interest rather than for private gain, and is committed to publishing, in innovative ways, works of educational, cultural, and community value that are often deemed insufficiently profitable. www.thenewpress.com Composition by NK Graphics This book was set in Fairfield Printed in the United States of America 24681097531 h 23472_00_i-xii_1-358_r7ln.qxp 2/19/10 1:26 PM Page v To my parents, Joël and Jeannette, farmers who taught me to love the good things of the earth, and so to love life. h 23472_00_i-xii_1-358_r7ln.qxp 2/19/10 1:26 PM Page vi h 23472_00_i-xii_1-358_r7ln.qxp 2/19/10 1:26 PM Page vii Contents Preface: A Book for Public Health by Nicolas Hulot ix Introduction: The Monsanto Question 1 PART I: ONE OF THE GREAT POLLUTERS OF INDUSTRIAL HISTORY 1. PCBs: White-Collar Crime 9 2. Dioxin: A Polluter Working with the Pentagon 30 3. Dioxin: Manipulation and Corruption 48 4. Roundup: A Massive Brainwashing Operation 69 5. The Bovine Growth Hormone Affair, Part One 89 6. The Bovine Growth Hormone Affair, Part Two 108 h 23472_00_i-xii_1-358_r7ln.qxp 2/19/10 1:26 PM Page viii PART II: GMOs: THE GREAT CONSPIRACY 7. The Invention of GMOs 131 8. Scientists Suppressed 153 9. Monsanto Weaves Its Web, 1995–1999 178 10. The Iron Law of the Patenting of Life 201 11. Transgenic Wheat: Monsanto’s Lost Battle in North America 225 PART III: MONSANTO’S GMOs STORM THE SOUTH 12. Mexico: Seizing Control of Biodiversity 243 13. In Argentina: The Soybeans of Hunger 256 14. Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina: The “United Soy Republic” 273 15. India: The Seeds of Suicide 290 16. How Multinational Corporations Control the World’s Food 307 Conclusion: A Colossus with Feet of Clay 318 Notes 331 Index 359 h 23472_00_i-xii_1-358_r7ln.qxp 2/19/10 1:26 PM Page ix Preface A Book for Public Health Nicolas Hulot As I progressed in my reading of Marie-Monique Robin’s book, a flood of weighty questions overwhelmed me, filling me with anxiety that I might sum up in a single question: how is this possible? How can Monsanto, that em- blematic firm of global agrochemistry, have made so many fatal mistakes, and how can it have marketed products so harmful to human health and to the environment? How has the company succeeded in conducting its busi- ness as though nothing had happened, constantly extending its influence (and its wealth), despite the tragedies its products have caused? How has it so quietly managed to continue its activities unconcerned and fool everyone? Why has it been able to carry on despite the heavy legal penalties it suffered and despite the bans imposed on some of its products (unfortunately, after they had already caused a good deal of irreparable harm)? This book discloses a reality that hurts the eyes and grips the heart: that of a calmly arrogant company heedlessly profiting from the suffering of vic- tims and the destruction of ecosystems. As the pages go by, the mystery is re- vealed. They show the prospering of a company whose history “constitutes a paradigm of the aberrations in which industrial society has become mired.” You may often shake your head in disbelief, but the demonstration is limpid, and we understand where Monsanto gets its power, how its lies have won out over the truth, and why many of its allegedly miraculous products in the end turned out to be nightmares. In other words, at a time when the North American company has taken on an even more totalizing ambition than h 23472_00_i-xii_1-358_r7ln.qxp 2/19/10 1:26 PM Page x x preface before—imposing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on farmers and food consumers around the world—this indispensable book raises the ques- tion, while there is still time, of whether it is necessary to allow a company such as Monsanto to hold the future of humanity in its test tubes and to im- pose a new world agricultural order. Consider the facts. How did Monsanto become one of the major indus- trial empires on the planet? By accomplishing nothing less than the large- scale production of some of the most dangerous products of modern times: PCBs, which were used as coolants and lubricants, are devastatingly harm- ful to human health and the food chain and were banned after massive con- tamination was observed; dioxin, a few grams of which is enough to poison a large city and the manufacture of which was also banned, was developed from one of the company’s herbicides, which was the basis for the grimly fa- mous Agent Orange, the defoliant dropped on Vietnamese jungles and vil- lages (which enabled Monsanto to secure the largest contract in its history from the Pentagon); bovine growth hormones—the first test products for GMOs—are intended to cause the animal to produce beyond its natural ca- pacities regardless of the known consequences for human health; the weed killer Roundup used to be presented in endless advertising as biodegradable and favorable to the environment, a claim flatly contradicted by legal deci- sions in the United States and in Europe.