Monsanto’s corporate bullying 4-21-2008

21, April 2008                         Monsanto’s corporate bullying

While food shortages and costs continue to climb, agricultural companies, like Monsanto, post record profits.  Like their oil company cousins, Monsanto has quickly learned that scarcity can generate high profits. The stock has risen 95% percent during the past 12 months and a staggering 1,600 percent over the past five years. What is extremely troubling is Monsanto’s corporate bullying of local farmers and opposition to warning labels on milk cartons. Vanity Fair exposes these predatory practices in its recent article, “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear.” The company forbids farmers from storing and recycling their seeds which they have done for millennia and insists they buy fresh seeds every year to ensure the company’s high profitability. 

To increase milk production, ‘Monsanto cows’ are injected with an artificial hormone which may prove to be a health hazard.. There seems to be little doubt that most consumers would prefer to drink the old-fashioned milk. I urge concerned readers to write to the lawmakers and insist such ‘tainted’ products be clearly identified. Our nation is going through an epidemic health crisis and can no longer trust corporations to serve our best interests. In the meantime, I suggest concerned shoppers purchase milk cartons labeled, “No RBGH,” which means “no bovine growth hormone.”  Finally, ‘little David’, Ben and Jerry’, deserve credit for challenging Goliath Monsanto to label their products free of the growth hormone.