Is Monsanto Evil? A 10th grader investigates -VDO
May 9, 2010
By Power Point Paradise
High school student Amelia chose Monsanto as the subject of her year-long 10th grade project. Her goal was to research the company and ultimately answer the question, “Is Monsanto Evil?”
[Below the You Tube Video is the text of the video, give or take a few mistakes due to the low volume of the sound track.]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3UVYdRTQoU
Is Monsanto Evil?
According to their website, “Monsanto is an agricultural company. We apply innovation and technology to help farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. We help farmers grow yield sustainably do they can be successful, produce healthier foods, better animal feeds, and more fiber, while also reducing agriculture’s impact on our environment.”
As you can see they appear to be a very environmentally friendly and responsible company. They have a building operating out of St. Louis. They were company of the year in Forbes Magazine, and have over 27.000 employees and a gross revenue of about 2.109.000.000 $
They seem like the perfect company according to their self projected image, but the question is, “Are they really?” [MUSIC]
The Vietnam war began in the late 1950-ies and ended on April 30 1975. During this period from 1951 until 1968, the United States dropped 80 million liters of Agent Orange over Vietnam covering over 6 million acres. Agent Orange is an herbicidal de-foliant used in the war to reveal enemy hide outs and destroy their food supplies. More than 4.8 million Vietnamese were exposed to the chemical.
Agent Orange is a toxic substance known to cause lethal diseases such as various skin diseases, assorted cancers and death. In children the effects are much more severe. Children since have been born with cleft palates, mental disabilities, deformations, hernias, blindness, paralysis, poly-dactyls, and other serious diseases due to the apparent exposure to the toxin.
Around 400.000 or so children were maimed initially to exposure, 500.0000 children were born with birth effects shortly there after, and around 2 million people have developed cancers since agent Orange was first dropped over Vietnam.
Now who engineered and put this chemical in use? “The Forbes magazine 2010 company of the year their responsible and environmentally stewardship leader … Monsanto!”
Not only has this company been tied to agent orange, aspartame, nutrasweet and the dayton project, but it has also been a target of so many lawsuits that a majority of its profits go to ensuring that they have the best for you.
The most notable lawsuit was in 1997. “Monsanto versus Percy Schmeiser”
A few Canadian farmers lived next door. One used the Monsanto round up ready canola and the other who didn’t. Allegedly when the blue Monsanto patented seeds from a neighbour yard flew to Percy Schmeiser. Without knowing Schmeiser was growing Monsanto product round up. When this was exposed Monsanto sued Schmeiser for patent infringement, asking for about 400.000 dollars.
The court decided that Monsanto’s patent was valid, but did not require Schmeiser to pay any money, because he supposedly did not profit anymore while Round Up ready Canola was in his field.
But even though he did not pay Monsanto, how was he to know that his fields were contaminated with their product? And how are they being entitled to so much money for such an insignificant issue?
Now Percy Schmeiser is still an enemy of Monsanto. Their website says that “he is not a hero He is simply a patent infringer who knows how to tell a good story.”
However he is still regarded as a hero and an icon in the anti GMO campaign or genetically modified organism, also sometimes called “Frankenfood”.
The main reason Monsanto is famous for introducing into the agricultural mainstream. Basically it involves replacing, deleting or adding of genes into strains of DNA of the produce.
This alters the chemical make-up of the food allegedly benefiting it in many ways. Food can become more visibly appealing and some even believe even more nutritous. But the bottom line is, nobody knows the real chemical make up of the food contains, apart from Monsanto experts.
[Advert: "When a herbicide is effective as ROUND UP...]
http://bytestyle.tv/content/take-replace-roundup-challenge
Round Up products made by Monsanto include V T triple Pro, Round Up Ready 2 yield, Round Up Ready Canola, Round Up Ready Suger Beet, Round Up Ready Flax Cotton, Bollgard Two, and Bollgard with Round Up Ready Flax, and Smart Stax. But Monsanto’s arguebly most succesful product remains to be the Round Up Ready Soybean.
Round Up is known chemically as glycol, a toxic used to kill weeds. The logic behind the injecting DNA into the plant, is to control weeds by not destroying the produce. Think of this as a vaccination. Except that while you eat this soy bean you are also ingesting thimerosol and mercury containing preservatives.
Another instance for eating lethal chemicals is in the case of a new released potato, which is so vile that even the fast-food giant MacDonald has banned it from its french fries. By EPA regulation this potato is considered to be a pesticide. It is even lethal to the Colorado potato beetle.
The staggering truth is that there are over a 100 million acres of cross planted genetically modified seeds in the continental United States. To put it simply, Capitalist America is obsessed with GMO cornfields.
SONG—
Worldwide the land devoted to GMO crops is gone up 5,900% in its senior period.
The impact of this planting and harvesting will not be known for generations. And the lack of research behind this technology just seems to be the excuse for Monsanto to keep taking advantage of how little interest there is in genetic modification
However, their positive eco-friendly image makes America love Monsanto even more. Nobody acknowledges their close ties with the government or where their profits go to. Everybody simply turns a blind eye to the blatant corruption conducted by this company and their deliberate exploitation of workers and farmers.
Their old image of chemical genetic engineering and science fiction like experiments, was almost unnoticeably replaced due to their control over the media and government.
From my research experience I have determined that Monsanto’s power over America’s food industry, by a lack of a better word, is ridiculous, and it can not continue.
The ethics of their company comes down to a “he said, she said” argument. They deny introducing terminator seed technology. They insist Percy Schmeiser planted their patent in his field. They claim GMOs are harmless to the environment and to the body.
Regardless, most Americans are unfamiliar with the company and those who have heard of Monsanto are unsurprised due to the power of their brainwashing propaganda.
Read a book by Michael Pollen or watch Food Inc. Take a look at their website and form your own opinion! Evil or not, the corporation with so much power over the food industry must be exposed. The uneducated simply must be informed. The Word must be spread!
To start:
We must buy all organic non GMO products.
We must demand accountability for Monsanto’s irresponsible spreading of GMOs into the supermarkets of America with insufficient testing on the impact to consumers and into the environment.
Please go to Byte style and sign the online petition.
Pledge not to buy any roundup ready products.
Write your congressional representatives about the outrages Monsanto continues to commit every day.
Write the editors of Forbes magazine and ask them what in the world were they thinking.
Get involved!
We can save the planet and keep it safe for future generations
HERE IS THE VIDEO. GOD BLESS THIS LITTLE GIRL!
What will you do to expose this evil company!
Here’s the “Replace Roundup” challenge Amelia referred to in her video.
I have a feeling this isn’t the last we’ll be hearing from Amelia
* * * * * *
I’ve gotten some heat lately about my personal antipathy for Monsanto, since I’m a libertarian and all. Here are just a few of the reasons I choose not to support them:
* They work hand-in-glove with the government to create policies that make it difficult for new competitors to enter the market
* They give the Free Market a bad name: They spent $8 million lobbying last year — what small farmer could possibly compete with that?
Sure, as a corporation they have a right to spend their money however they please, but when our political system is so obviously influenced by whomever spends the most money, companies like Monsanto end up buying a competitive advantage. This is NOT the Free Market, but the Free Market gets blamed when companies like Monsanto take advantage of a failed government system to create policies that increase their profits and prevent competition.
* I personally don’t like their ethics, or the way they do business. I think Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) have not been properly researched, and that our ecosystem has been irreparably altered (in known and unknown ways) by their widespread release.
* As a libertarian, if I don’t like the company, all I can do about it is 1) choose not to support them and avoid consuming their products; and 2) let other people know why I don’t support them.
If you agree, please join me in using alternatives to Monsanto products! If not, you are quite free to continue using them.
Learn more about Monsanto, GMOs and the struggle of small farms HERE.
Also Monsanto is creating havoc allover the world in Third World countries like India, where they introduced a new GMO cotton seed. When the poor farmers were talked into useing it, they discovered that the produce needed more water and pesticides, for which they didn’t have the money. Thousands of the farmers committed suicide, as they were unable to feed their families and face the ruin of their already simple farms.
SOURCE: http://bytestyle.tv/content/10th-grader-asks-monsanto-evil
http://powerpointparadise.com/blog/2010/05/is-monsanto-evil-young-10th-grader-investigates/
