Why is Monsanto evil?

I never quite got this. I keep hearing in conversations about GMOs how evil Monsanto is. Not because they produce GMOs, mind, but as evidence that the research on GMOs cannot be trusted. So… Why are they evil? I can never seem to get a straight answer. What has Monsanto done which is so deplorable and amoral?

Monsanto has managed to patent genes for GMO corn and soybeans that are resistant to the herbicide it sells. So if you plant “their” seed—and it is legally all their seed—you can spray poison on your field to your heart’s content#151;so long as it’s RoundUp.

Now, their contract says you can’t save any of the seed your crops produce at the end of the season. You have to buy more Monsanto seed from Monsanto.

And here’s where a lot of farmers are spitting mad: If your neighbor uses Monsanto seed, it* will *pollinate your seed. So even though you never planted Monsanto seed, you can’t save any seed corn from your own non-Monsanto crop, because that seed is assumed to be legally Monsanto’s seed. It’s all Monsanto’s seed. Eventually, simple wind-pollination will spread their engineered genes (in varying proportions of incidence) throughout any continuous region of farmland, and everyone will have to buy seed from Monsanto every year until the patent falls into public domain. (And it’s not like they’re going to stop doing research and coming out with new patentable genes to use to stop farmers from saving seed.)

Monsanto wants to own everybody’s seed corn. (And beans.) It’s an awe-striking business model. Monsanto has managed to buy this privilege through political influence.

Also, the present level of RoundUp use is destroying milkweed stocks to the degree that the monarch butterfly is about to go extinct. That’s vile, too.

A lot of people weren’t enthused with Agent Orange.

Okay, gonna have to stop you right there. Citation, please? From what I’ve heard, case law on things like Monsanto vs. Schmeisser is pretty clear that accidental cross-pollination does not constitute a violation of Monsanto’s intellectual property. I’ve certainly never heard of a case where Monsanto went after a farmer for accidental cross-pollination or contamination.

Yeah… See, I don’t buy this. I’d like to see some actual evidence of both the premises and whatever led you to this bizarre conclusion.

On one hand: yeah, that sucks. On the other hand: should we just ignore milkweed? Seriously. It’s a weed. Farmers don’t want it in their fields, and it reduces crop yields. From what I can find (Monarch butterfly decline: Monsanto’s Roundup is killing milkweed.) that’s where most of this is coming from - milkweed is no longer being a pest in RoundUp-ready crop fields. What do you think the balance is here?

Not sure how this was Monsanto’s fault. They made it according to government specifications, and if they hadn’t, someone else would have.

You only have to search for “Monsanto … cross-pollination…sue” to bring up a raft of websites relating to this. It’s not hard to find, and even in that case there’s much more to it than what you say. For instance, Sourcewatch gives this:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Goliath_and_David:_Monsanto's_Legal_Battles_against_Farmers

Further along:

This site indicates thast Monsanto sued 13 farmers one year, while threatening to sue more. The farmers don’t like the intimidation, even if suits don’t actually occur:

http://www.dailytech.com/Monsanto+Defeats+Small+Farmers+in+Critical+Bioethics+Class+Action+Suit/article24118.htm

I’m not personally directly affected by this, and I haven’t been following it closely, so I can’t produce a lengthy defense, but I find it hard to believe that you haven’t heard about all this. I have, and I haven’t even been trying.

Monsanto’s own website claims that it hasn’t brought more than that one suit, and even says that “two separate courts acknowledged that Monsanto has not taken action – or even suggested taking action – against organic growers because of cross-pollination”. That’s hard to square with the above cite by a court saying that Monsanto had done it 13 times in one year, or with the general fear among organic farmers that Monsanto is threatening to go after any or all of them, which lead them to start a class-action suit. You don’t do that sort of thing lightly.

nm

I have not kept up with the cases. I don’t know where all things are now. I know that Monsanto has some pretty serious political influence in the USA.

In any case, it’s easy to characterize a corporation as evil when their business model is selling poison. :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s perhaps worth noting that the first citation mentioned on that “suing farmers who never planted their crops” thing was the Percy Schmeisser case, which leads me to believe that Sourcewatch is not a great place to go for information on this particular issue. The Schmeisser case was pretty straightforward - Schmeisser isolated a small contamination of roundup-ready crop, and specifically replanted and isolated it. His fields were tested, and the court found it unrealistic that the level present could have happened by accident. We’re not talking small amounts here. We’re talking 95-98% of the crop. That doesn’t happen by accident. Let’s take it from a slightly less biased source, eh?

Whoops. Not quite the story Sourcewatch is pushing, huh? See, this is what I was talking about. I’ve heard of these cases. In fact, a large group of organic farmers actually sued Monsanto about such cases (you speak about it below). The result:

http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/cases/show.php?db=special&id=156

On page six. Basically, the court told people making this argument, “It has never happened and if it did Monsanto would not win”. Your confusion about the 0 vs. 13 thing is because Monsanto is talking about suing organic farms (which wouldn’t have any interest in pirating the seed anyways, as it would lead to them losing organic certification) vs. suing any farms (and given the sheer number of farms Monsanto sells to, 13 is a very small number).

I can’t find any details on the Nelson case from impartial sources. What I can find from CropChoice.com indicates that they’re pulling the same crap as in Monsanto v. Bowman. Again, not a good example. These are farmers who are intentionally trying to find ways around the patent law.

Again, the problem isn’t that I haven’t heard about this. The problem is that I have, and it’s basically all crap.

:smack: Seriously? We’re going there? As far as baseless platitudes go, this one is only trumped by arcmasteiro’s. Yeah, they’re a corporation. The bottom line is the bottom line. Things that poison pests and weeds are technically poisons. But the fact is that Monsanto’s GM crops actually have some really very positive side-effects for farmers, for health and safety (compare glyphosate to the previous industry standard herbicides, or look into how indian farmers reacted to Bt cotton), and for total output.

Perhaps you missed that the Sourcewatch page – in a part that I actually quoted – acknowlerdged that Schmeisser had done that, and wasn’t holding him up as a paragon. I’ll quote it again:

That’s not entirely their concern, however:

“biased” or not (Sourcewatch says it “does not require a neutral point of view”), the site is being honest.

It’s not my confusion – it’s Monsanto’s site parsing its statement. Anyone reading that page would , unless they read it very carefuullycome away with the impression that Monsanto wasn’t suing any farms. And there’s a world of difference between not suing any vs. suing 13.

The SourceWatch article says “Monsanto has sued many a farmer when their GM crops have turned up on the farmer’s fields even though the farmers say they never planted them (examples [1] [2]).”

Of those “examples”, the first link is dead, and the second involves the case of a North Dakota farmer who did plant a Monsanto variety and ultimately settled a suit the company brought against him for saving and replanting seed. So I’m still not seeing any evidence of Monsanto suing farmers for accidental “contamination” (“contamination” goes both ways, incidentally - a farmer’s organic crop can “contaminate” a neighbor’s GM crop field, making his harvest less valuable - but I don’t see anyone suing over that). From an article about legal battles over GM crop seed:

*"The company itself says it annually investigates about 500 “tips” that farmers are illegally using its seeds and settles many of those cases before a lawsuit is filed.

In this way, Monsanto is attempting to protect its business from pirates in much the same way the entertainment industry does when it sues underground digital distributors exploiting music, movies and video games…Many of the farmers Monsanto has sued say, as McFarling claims, that they didn’t read the company’s technology agreement close enough. Others say they never received an agreement in the first place.

The company counters that it sues only the most egregious violations and is protecting the 300,000 law-abiding U.S. farmers who annually pay a premium for its technology. Soy farmers, for instance, pay a “technology fee” of about $6.50 an acre each year.

Some 85% of the nation’s soy crop is genetically engineered to resist Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, a trait many farmers say makes it easier to weed their fields and ultimately cheaper to grow their crops.

“It’s a very efficient and cost-effective way to raise soy beans and that’s why the market has embraced it,” said Ron Heck, who grows 900 acres of genetically engineered soy beans in Perry, Iowa.

Heck, who is also chairman of the American Soybean Association, said he doesn’t mind buying new seed each year and appreciates Monsanto’s crackdown on competitors who don’t pay for their seed.

“You can save seed if you want to use the old technology,” Heck said."*

It is laughable to suggest that farmers are somehow trapped into dealing with Monsanto. If they don’t like the company’s terms, it’s easy to opt out and go with conventionally bred varieties, or with older open-pollinated varieties whose seed can be saved from year to year.

Lastly, I’m ticked off at the idea that defending the usefulness and safety of genetically modified crops means supporting Monsanto. They’re a big corporation, and like lots of big corporations and trade groups, some of their practices and products are less than wonderful. But I also don’t get the “Monsatan” crap. They’re not the embodiment of Evil, except to the conspiracy theory crowd and similar dim bulbs.

Fair enough. But beyond that, you’re getting into the nitty-gritty of patent law. It’s one thing if Monsanto sues people frivolously and gets away with it. That’s definitely wrong. But if Monsanto sues people who intentionally violate their patent and end up with more GM seed than is realistic through contamination in their fields, I have a hard time blaming Monsanto. The patent law, maybe, but I don’t really have a problem with GMO patents, because I recognize that like most technological advances, if we want major corporations (and their R&D budgets) on board, we have to find a way for them to make a profit off of it.

But look at the context you’re reading that in. In the very next paragraph, they write:

This just isn’t true, as the 2012 lawsuit made perfectly clear. The picture they’re trying to paint here is the same one foolsguinea bought into, and it’s just not even close to accurate.

But this isn’t a Monsanto problem. It’s a problem with patent law. And I don’t even think it is a problem. Biotech patents are kind of an ugly mess, but all in all the end result is looking positive. Again, it’s worth noting that the organic farmers who sued Monsanto for this could not cite a single case in the 20+ years that Monsanto has been patenting GM seeds where Monsanto had sued someone for accidental cross-pollination.

It’s not lying, but it presents a story which is somewhat misleading. It does everything it can to paint Monsanto as the bad guy, and cites extremely questionable and very biased sources.

Where on the site did you read that?

Honestly, part of the reason I started this thread is because as far as I can see, Monsanto is not exactly the bad guy. They’ve invented something that has caused quite a lot of good for farmers, increased overall food production considerably, and lowered pesticide and herbicide toxicity, which is good for everyone. And then they get painted as the villains because they try to protect their IP and because they make herbicides in the first place. Fuck that noise. It’s the same shit as with “Big Pharma”. Who cares how many lives their inventions save or improve, they did something unethical a few years back (or maybe they didn’t, because so many of these stories turn out to be total crap), so they’re evil and can’t be trusted. That bugs me.

There’s also a world of difference between suing over accidental cross-pollination and suing over deliberate infringement (i.e., Schmeiser). I haven’t seen anything yet to suggest that the 13 cases involved accidental cross-pollination.

And a lot of people were delighted with it. 2-4-D is nothing more that Ortho Weed-B-Gone and 2-3-5-T is Ortho Chickweed and Clover Killer.

Much is made of Monsanto’s contracts stifling farmer independence and the fact that the seeds are terminator seeds.

The former is overstated as I understand it. When you buy Monsanto seeds you enter into a contract. The farmer can break the terms of the contract at any point he just won’t get any support. This shouldn’t be any surprise - you don’t get any free tech support from Dell when you crack open the computer case and poke at all the bits inside. Monsanto likewise won’t support your crop when you sprayed some generic week killer that your cousin is a rep for and got a great deal on.

Terminator seeds. I don’t think Monsanto invented them and they are hardly the only company that sells them. The age of farmers saving their seeds for planting next year is long gone.

No, they’re not. The “terminator” technology is not in use (you could hardly have farmers being sued for illegally saving seed if the seeds were sterile). And as others have noted, there’s a bit of inconsistency in people having wailed about “terminator” technology, while simultaneously griping about “contamination” from GM varieties. If the crop can’t reproduce from seed, there goes a lot of “contamination” worries.

As for the monarch butterflies, it’s regrettable that having large acreage devoted to farmland means less milkweed and thus less habitat for them. But are we supposed to believe that in pre-Roundup days, farmers just let large stands of milkweed grow to maturity in their fields without the use of herbicides? I don’t think so.

It is also true that if we shifted to organic food production, we’d need lots more land in agricultural use, and that would mean even less habitat for monarchs and other creatures.

I always assumed that ‘terminator’ seeds were not 100% reliable, like old-day vasectomies.

Same thing happens with a lot of targets of crazies. Nixon was a complete asshole on every level but he wasn’t responsible for the assassination of JFK. But with many Buff’s claims you end up having to defend Tricky Dick.

Quite apart from accidental cross-pollination issues, I can’t say I’m thrilled about the whole Monsanto-owns-royalty-rights-to-my-harvest-next-year-just-because-I-saved-some-seed-from-this-year thing. According to U.S. (and international) patent law, does this condition ever expire?