Monsanto

By now, you most likely have knowledge of the name of one of the vilest companies to come out of our modern country. There are few other corporations that have succeeded time and time again to pull their weight in such a way as to affect every aspect of our modern economy. I am talking about Monsanto. No other company has wormed its way into our lives at such a deep level. Their dealings have created consequences that have and will continue to affect our food sources for generations.

Starting in the very beginning, a man named John Francis Queeny started a company to refine beet sugar into the artificial sweetener, Saccharin at the turn of the 19th century. The company began to produce a butter substitute, MSG, and shortening soon after. Queeny named the company Monsanto after his wife Olga’s maiden name, Monsanto. Conveniently enough, Queeny was a Knight of Malta, a sect of fraternal order dating back to the Ancient Romans. This means that the company began with a privileged past, and so it is no wonder they have paraded through our lives committing crime after crime. They have poured millions of gallons of toxic waste into our water and ground. They have repeatedly settled lawsuits filed against them in order to stay out of court. Now they have destroyed a vital part of our ecosystem without batting an eye.

During WWI, they expanded to produce plastics, petrochemicals, and phosphorous. This was the ground work for future endeavors that would affect millions. During WWII Monsanto was heavily involved with the Manhattan Project, in a sector called the Dayton Project, a nuclear bomb research facility in Ohio. Shocker.

One of the more deadly chemicals they produced was known as Agent Orange, between 1964 and 1969. This was an herbicide that was used as a chemical weapon to deforest Vietnam. It created a huge number of birth defects, chemical toxicity, and nerve damage. They also introduced DDT during this era, and we know how much of a disaster that turned out to be…

Throughout the 70’s and 80’s, Monsanto led the way in the field of genetic modification of plants. They began by researching ways to improve crop yield. This, of course, meant more money to be made, and when they succeeded in implanting a gene to make a seed resistant to the chemical known as Round-Up, it was considered a breakthrough. Never mind the fact that they used the E. Coli virus to break through the cellular structure in order to implant the new gene. Pay no attention to the man under the hood.

This brings us to Round-Up. It was originally marketed at a grass fertilizer between 1974 and 1983. The sale and application of Round-Up to all of the suburban households helped to double Monsanto’s sales during this period of time. This product would eventually become the keystone of Monsanto’s dominion over the seed industries and food markets.

In 1985, Monsanto purchased G.D.Searle and Co., the producer of the artificial sweetener, Aspartame, adding to their arsenal. The company then had their fingers in almost everyone’s pie, and Searle’s then CEO Donald Rumsfeld offered his connections in Washington as an aide to Monsanto.

The first modified crop to be released was the soybean in 1996. Corn was the second crop to be modified, and was released in 1998. They were marketed as Round-Up Ready. This meant that farmers could plant their crops, and then spray them with Round-Up, which destroyed the weeds in their fields. Although the purpose of GE seeds was to increase yield, ultimately all that was accomplished was the death of unwanted weeds, and about 11,000+ patents on individually modified seeds.

Through biotechnology, Monsanto has now released several more GE seeds, including Sugar Beets, and now Alfalfa. Modern farming practices have already stripped the top layers of soil of trace minerals that are incredibly important for our nutrition. The scary part about Alfalfa now being marketed as a GE crop is that the roots of the plant grow up to 75 feet below the surface.

Another aspect of genetic modification that has far reaching consequences is cross contamination. There are many crop fields that have been impacted simply by a neighboring farmer buying into the Monsanto scheme. Perhaps a tarp blows off as farmer Dale drives by with his truckload of seed, oops, the seeds are then carried by the wind into farmer John’s fields, and then suddenly, due to the closed door policy and red tape of the corporation’s interest protection, Monsanto, by letters of their own law, have the ability to literally take farmer John’s crops away.

Bees have been a primary pollinator for millenniums. There are entire colonies raised specifically to be sold for pollination to commercial farms. Several years ago, the bees started to disappear. There were studies performed, tests run, and several false or misled conclusions produced, likely at the behest of Monsanto. This is because they already had knowledge that their products were indeed responsible for killing the bees. In order to create the Round-Up Ready seeds, they must coat them in pesticides. This then inputs those chemicals into every part of the plant, from the root to the pollen. When the bees ingest these chemicals, it is a fatal attraction. They are simply ‘doing their job’ so to speak, with unthinkable consequences.

In 2011, 12 million bees were reported dead at Apiaries across Florida. This is an alarming piece of information itself. If only it were not also followed by the creation and release of robotic bees. This is yet another Monsanto contribution to the end of agricultural life as we know it. Oh, what shall we do about this pesky cross-pollination problem? I know! We’ll kill off the bees, and replace them with drone bees that we can control.

There are three main documentaries to watch on this topic: “The World According to Monsanto”, “The Future of Food”, and “Sweet Misery, A Poisoned World”.

A large portion of this information came from this site here: Monsanto’s Dark Side

This site has links to these documentaries and other information pertaining to the monster machine that is, and has been, Monsanto for 111+ years.