NMU Conservation Crew

      We all know the horror stories of Monsanto, the killing of bees, the bankrupting of small scale farmers, the poisoning of U.S. citizens, but when we dig deeper, what more can we find?

         Monsanto is a company founded in 1901 that had a foot in the door from the get-go with their contract signed with major soda company, coca-cola. They sold the company Saccharine an artificial sweetener that also doubles as an environmental contaminant. From the first contracts with coca-cola to now, Monsanto has had billions of dollars worth of lawsuits for cancers, poisons, land degradation and so much more. But what’s worse is that they are realistically a mom and pop business that has over $55 billion to their name, even with all the lawsuits. That’s basically Jeff Bezos but much worse because they got caught for all the stuff they did, and still bit the bullet because they still make more off of corrupt processes than it is worth trying to make good products and keep citizens safe. After deciding that they were not making enough money off of selling saccharine to coca-cola (1) in the 1920’s they expanded into industrial chemicals and drugs… This is where it gets really messy.  At this time, the company started producing aspirin, acetylsalicylic acid, and PCB’s (polychlorinated biphenyls). Moving forward too fast, in the 1930’s Monsanto was already onto the next project, creating hybrid corn seeds and expanding into household chemicals and cleaning agents. By the 1940’s the company was moving on to researching uranium and making of the first few atomic bombs that would later be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki -which almost every human in the world is still affected by to this day. Oh, and not to mention, they also started working on producing DDT with 15 other companies (which was basically the component that catapulted the environmental movement into gear, thanks to Rachel Carson). Continuing on their involvement in wars, the company worked on creating Zyklon-B gas to be used in WW2 and then the 1960’s brought about Monsanto’s collaboration with DOW Chemicals to create Agent Orange for use in the Vietnam invasion. Now throughout this time, Monsanto has already been sued millions of times, great… right? Well, not exactly because the company spent almost as much money settling lawsuits as they did to avoid them from the get-go, again because it was cheaper. The FDA was consistently pushing for Monsanto to be sued and held accountable for the degradation of the world around them, but what good does that do when the man in charge of the FDA is purposely fired for speaking out. Yep, you read that right. A day following the election of Ronald Regan, FDA Commissioner Dr. Jere Goyan was fired and the scales were pushed in favor of the FDA allowing Monsanto to continue their crooked ways. But alas, Karma is a b*tch and Regan, a regular NutraSweet consumer, ended up getting Alzheimer's (one of the many effects of consuming aspartame and other Monsanto chemicals). I would like to address here that Monsanto chemicals are in over 5,000 products that plague the shelves of stores, “legally”. Mind you, we haven’t even gotten to Monsanto’s genetically modifying of meat… yeah that happens too. In 1994 the FDA criminally (again) approved the Synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) produced from genetically modified E. Coli bacteria, but don’t worry… it's good for you. According to the FDA. Following the year of the rBGH, Monsanto hit the ground running by creating their roundup-ready GMO-ed crops; soybeans, corn, cotton, and rapeseed (canola oil). To sell the Roundup to small farmers in order to further monopolize and control the business of food in the United States and beyond, Monsanto at this point sent sales personnel out with a bottle of roundup to drink from. This might sound very far out there, but I kid you not, it happened, better yet, the company building has a 21+ bar (at least they follow one law) that serves roundup containing alcoholic beverages. (2) Here I would like to address the association of roundup and massive colony collapse disorder in bee populations, that let's face it, every environmentalist knows about. But what you didn’t know is that in order to keep this issue under wraps for many years, Monsanto bought out Beeologics, the largest bee research firm, to hide evidence of the effects for a substantial amount of time. Not only did they buy out bee research companies, the FDA, and their way out of many many lawsuits, but Monsanto also bought out as many seed companies as possible, transitioning them into terminator seed companies so that every farmer would have limited options and it would basically eliminate organic farms. This action also pushed many small farmers into bankruptcy because in order to not get sued for using your own (organic) seeds, you needed to buy into Monsanto and once you bought the poison seeds you needed equipment to plant them (because they were too poisoned for human hands) which was too expensive for the average farmer, so they ended up taking out loans until eventually either being bought out by Monsanto, or going completely bankrupt on their own, leaving their land and resources up for grabs by the corporate giant. After all of this has happened, Monsanto still rages, working with a long list of companies such as Tyson foods, Frito Lay, Kelloggs, Morningstar, and sooo many more food conglomerates to run the food industry that resides within the World. To sum this idea up, Monsanto (since the Obama administration signed off on this) has had more power over the food industry than government itself to control food and food safety laws.  More recently, in 2018 Monsanto sold the company name to Bayer to avoid paying for 20 million or so of lawsuits on them, and also to dip under the radar for a few months. What all of this means is basically that Monsanto has gotten the name of “the most evil company in the world” for good reason, and that people, average people like us need to keep on top of these horrible things happening in the environment and to our food. Because after all, food is our first medicine, but that also means it can be our first poisoner too. So we need to take care to stop from having to pay to poison ourselves by doing the basic human actions of breathing, drinking water, and consuming food. Stay safe, speak up, and let’s work together to bring back organic farming and say NO to whatever Monsanto/Bayer is coming up with next.

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1) Monsanto made over $1,000,000 in their first 14 years as a business. 

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2) https://nwedible.com/monsanto-roundup-cocktail/