Monsanto and its Poisoned Profits: When Big Corporation Meets Corruption
Farmers are the backbone of society; without them, we’d all lose the food we need to survive. They toil in the fields without any expectation of fame or glory, since most farmers want neither. Instead, farmers want to do their honest work and return home at the end of the day with their health and a paycheck for their efforts.
Yet, farmers are also the target of severe and life-threatening corporate corruption. Monsanto, once a leading agriculture company, has secretly been poisoning farmers with its products. The most recent scandal involving the company involves Roundup, a product the company once bragged was invaluable to farmers.
The chemical compound, glyphosate, was marketed as an effective way to kill weeds without killing crops. For a while, people were happy to use to protect their gardens and their fields. Yet, it was recently revealed that Roundup was secretly killing people.
It turns out, the weed killer is a carcinogen and caused several people’s fatal and near-fatal cancer. Now, people are fighting back against the company and web of lies and corruption. Keep reading below to learn more about Monsanto, and what you can do to stop its corrupt business practices.
Monsanto Has a Long History of Sowing Chaos
The company’s problems began almost as soon as it went into business. While it started off as a chemical company, Monsanto soon pivoted into agricultural space with a line of genetically modified products. The seeds it sold to farmers were designed to be stronger, grow faster, and produce more.
Almost as soon as its products hit the market, the public responded with concern. People wanted more investigation as to the health effects of genetically modified products. They wanted to know if it was safe to eat GMOs and wanted Monsanto to hold off on selling its products until their questions could be answered.
Monsanto refused to listen to them, and soon began a campaign of shady and illegitimate business practices. Now, they’re criticized as a lobbyist firm as much as an agriculture company. Keep reading below to learn how the company’s corruption spiraled out of control.
Somatotropin Was Just the Beginning
The first genetically modified product Monsanto sold to farmers was bovine somatotropin, sold as Posilac. It was a hormone designed to increase the production of milk in dairy cows. Farmers just had to give their cows some Posilac, and the company promised them that they would see their cows produce more.
It was approved by the FDA in 1993, and the company began selling it in 1994. Yet, the general public was not satisfied.
Most people wanted deeper investigations as to the health effects GMOs may have. People didn’t know if they could trust their own food to be safe since it was genetically modified. Since they couldn’t trust it, people simply didn’t buy it.
This led to grocery chains refusing to carry milk from certain farmers, which cut into their paychecks. In the end, Monsanto only jeopardized farmers abilities to make money instead of improving it. The company managed to anger farmers, grocery stores, consumers, and almost everyone else.
Farmers Protested Monsanto Before the Roundup Scandal
The controversy around Posilac didn’t deter Monsanto, though. The company used its background in chemical engineering to monopolize the agricultural market. The company has a 34 percent market share in the global herbicides industry, meaning farmers can essentially only ever purchase from them.
Since the company became a monopoly, it refused to cave under pressure from both consumers and farmers to stop its practices. The company continues to push GMO products to farmers, despite opposition. The last time farmers succeeded in pushing a GMO product off the market was in 2001.
A Monsanto product for a genetically engineered potato was pushed off the market by farmers when McDonald’s refused to use it for their french fries. It cut a huge hole in farmers bottom-lines, keeping them both poor and dependent on the company at the same time.
Now, as controversies around Monsanto rise again, farmers may claim another victory against the company.
Roundup Killed Butterflies Before Killing People
One of Monsanto’s products, Roundup, was recently revealed as a cause of many farmers’ cancers. As it turns out, Monsanto wasn’t just keeping farmers poor while simultaneously keeping them dependent on the company. It was killing them, too.
Roundup was designed to be a weed-killer. When paired with Monsanto’s Roundup-ready seeds, it would kill dangerous weeds while protecting crops. It was advertised as a panacea for farmers struggling to protect their crops from weeds, disease, and pests.
Yet, soon after Roundup began to be sold, it was found to contribute to butterfly deaths. While that should have been a signal that something was wrong with the chemical, Monsanto covered up the findings. By then, the company had refined its lobbying and PR efforts so that it could almost totally control information about it.
Now though, people have united against the company. People are dying because of Roundup, and farmers are done being pushed around by companies like Monsanto.
Roundup is a Carcinogen — it’s Confirmed
The first case to go trial about Roundup was in summer 2018. A man in California claimed that the weed killer caused his cancer. Jurors agreed with him and awarded him $289 million, more to punish the company than to rectify the damage done.
After all, how much money can really fix cancer?
Yet, the trial opened the floodgates for a deluge of other trials surrounding Roundup. Now, farmers are coming out with their own stories of how using the chemical caused them to get sick. And with every new farmer, the class action lawsuit against the company gets stronger.
Farmers are reaping their fair share from a company that kept them in the corner for too long. And Monsanto is expected to pay a lot for its corrupt business practices that ended up killing people.
Don’t Let the Corporations Win, Again
Farmers give everything so that the rest of society can function. Without farmers, there is nothing else. That’s one of the reasons it’s such a big deal for a company like Monsanto to literally kill them with its products.
It’s terrible when a company lies on its face about the safety of one of its products, risking people’s lives.
It’ll only be worse if Monsanto gets away with it. If you suffered an illness as a result of Roundup, contact us here. We’ll make sure you’re part of the class action lawsuit against the company so that you can get your fair share from them.