The other day my wife casually mentioned that she was going to use a Monsanto product.  Nooooo!  I said.  Not Monsanto!  We must not send that evil company any of our hard-earned money!

I heard about the evil ways of Monsanto (the makers of Roundup) last year on the No Agenda podcast – they often rail against their business practices.  I didn’t think too much about it until I saw a documentary called The World According to Monsanto (it is quite easy to find the actual video, but I’ve instead linked to the filmmaker’s page).

There is a long list of ethically questionable activities that Monsanto allegedly participates in.  I can’t say for sure if they’re all 100% true or not, but I’ve observed enough about human nature and big business to know that it’s entirely possible a giant multi-national corporation could put power and profits ahead of such minor things as safety.

As you may know, Monsanto originally advertised Roundup as biodegradable and completely safe for the environment (“safer than table salt”).  Some years later, Monsanto was busted for falsifying the research and convicted of false advertising.  But not before the entire agricultural world became completely dependent on Roundup.

Perhaps more disturbing is Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” seeds, sold to farmers around the world.  These handy, genetically-altered seeds of soybeans, corn, canola, sugar beets and cotton are immune to Roundup.  That means with a field of Roundup Ready corn, you can indiscriminately dump Roundup over the whole field to kill everything that isn’t corn.  For commercial farmer’s, it’s awesome – but now we’re all ingesting God knows how much glyphosate every year.

Monsanto says it’s all perfectly safe and the FDA agrees:  GMO food was approved for use in the United States around the time of the first Bush administration.  The World According to Monsanto, however, goes into some detail about how Monsanto pressured the government into declaring it safe without a whole lot of supporting evidence.  Personally, I don’t think we’re going to know for sure whether it’s safe until decades from now when we can observe how many people start dropping dead for unknown reasons.  Or see how many babies are born with two or more heads.

An article in CorpWatch summarizes something else I find loathsome about Monsanto:  Seed Patents.  Monsanto holds patents for all these genetically-modified Roundup Ready seeds.  In olden times, a farmer would re-use this year’s seeds to plant next year’s crop.  That’s not allowed with Monsanto seeds:  The “terms of service” strictly forbid it.  You have to pay for the use of the seeds every year.  And if you’re caught “infringing their patent” by reusing seeds, they have an army of lawyers waiting to bring the hammer down.

Okay, no big deal, farmers can avoid all that trouble by buying regular seeds.  Good idea!  But wait:  As that article points out, Monsanto now controls most of the seed business.  It’s hard to find regular seeds anymore.  And if you manage to find seeds to start a regular crop, the wind could blow some of your neighbor’s Monsanto seeds into your fields – and then you have to pay for them or get sued into oblivion.  (Just for fun, here’s another article on CorpWatch about Monsanto bullying a farmer.)

It’s madness, I tell you!  The only way I know how to fight back against The Evil Monsanto is to avoid buying their products.  And maybe plant a garden with regular seeds so you don’t have two-headed children.