Monsanto has been voted the evilest corporation in the world several times over.
Yet, we don’t hear anything about them now. What happened? Did they complete the evil? Did they retire after all their evil wrapped up? No, not so much.
Monsanto was one of the most hated companies in the Americas. There were protests just a few years ago, attracting hundreds of thousands into the streets – which is not easy to do.
The most shocking thing was that at Monsanto’s lowest point, even the mainstream media started revealing the truth. Here’s from Reuters ten years ago:
Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds and the resulting crops have damaged public and environmental health and destroyed traditional farming communities all over the world. Its seeds have been linked to cancer and birth defects, and its array of chemicals and GMOs promotes pesticide resistance, spreads gene contaminants, pollutes soil and groundwater, and creates a global monoculture monopoly that presents a significant threat to the global food supply.”
Besides all the cancer and death Monsanto has caused with their Roundup herbicide, they have also been blamed for causing hundreds of thousands of farmer suicides in India.
Yes, 300,000 Indian farmers killed themselves over the past few decades, and whether Monsanto is the main culprit or it was in a tag-team mutually murderous relationship with extreme drought, it’s tough to say. But it doesn’t really matter. The point is Monsanto was a factor in the suicides of one Indian farmer every 47 minutes for decades.
So, Monsanto was super evil. But what happened?
Well, they were sold to Bayer Pharmaceuticals in 2018 for $63 billion. Bayer then quickly dropped the name, which had become synonymous with cancer and death.
Now that it’s been sold to Bayer, few talk about Monsanto anymore, but their crimes haven’t gone away. They don’t stop just because you drop the dirty name.
Just last month, we learned that Monsanto and Bayer led attacks on scientists and journalists.
Why was Monsanto attacking them? Because those scientists and journalists were studying and reporting on how glyphosate, Roundup herbicide, causes cancer.
Stacy Malkan reported for U.S. Right To Know:
In the lead up to [the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s] 2015 report classifying glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen, Monsanto rolled out an ‘an unprecedented and harsh strategy’ to discredit experts, as Jonathan Samet, Dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, described… Monsanto’s attacks, he said, amounted to an ‘attack on expert review’ itself. … Le Monde described Monsanto’s coordinated attack on IARC as ‘an effort to destroy the United Nations’ cancer agency by any means possible.’“
That’s horrific. What I don’t understand, though, is why they didn’t just honeypot those scientists. I mean, cancer research can’t possibly be unbuttoning a lot of trousers.
The point is, Monsanto, now Bayer, was passing out their cancer juice all over the world, then trying to destroy the people telling everyone it causes cancer.
And Bayer only stopped residential sales of Roundup this year, five years after buying Monsanto.
Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of Behind The Headlines’ new series: The Most Censored News With Lee Camp. He is a former comedy writer for the Onion and the Huffington Post and has been a touring stand-up comic for 20 years.