According to internal documents, Monsanto and Germany’s BASF knew their products would destroy farms in the United States. The firms disregarded the risks even while they planned on how to profit off farmers who would buy Monsanto’s new seeds just to avoid the damages caused by their products.
The documents (some of them date back more than a decade) have been uncovered during a recent successful $265 million lawsuit brought against both firms by a Missouri farmer. The internal documents were seen and released by the Guardian. They also revealed how Monsanto opposed some third-party product testing, in order to curtail the generation of data that might have worried regulators. In some of the internal BASF emails, employees were even joking about sharing “voodoo science“ and hoping to stay “out of jail.”
“The documents are the worst that I’ve ever seen for any case that I’ve worked on,” said lawyer Angie Splittgerber, a former tobacco industry defense attorney who works with farmers who are suing Monsanto and BASF. “So many of them put things in writing that were just horrifying.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Monsanto has been caught trying to hide the damages that are done with their products.
BUSTED! Monsanto Caught Writing Their Own Independent Safety Reviews
Monsanto Declares a Sneaky Social Media War Against Protesters
Records showed that at private meetings dating back to 2009, agricultural experts warned that the plan to develop a dicamba-tolerant system could have catastrophic consequences. Dicamba herbicide would normally kill crops such as soybean or cotton, but Monsanto altered the genes in these crops to create genetically modified varieties that are resistant to the herbicide. This meant that farmers can spray the weedkiller directly on those soybean or cotton plants to destroy weeds but leave the crops unharmed.
The experts told Monsanto that farmers were likely to spray old volatile versions of dicamba on the new dicamba-tolerant crops. They have warned that even new versions were still likely to be volatile enough to move away from the special cotton and soybean fields on to crops growing on other farms.
What is more important, under the system designed by Monsanto and BASF, only farmers buying Monsanto’s dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybean seeds would be protected from dicamba drift damage. –RT
Monsanto Pays Out $10 Million For Spraying Toxic Chemicals on Hawaiian Crops
According to a report prepared for Monsanto back in 2009 as part of industry consultation, such an “off-target movement“ was expected. The company also expected things such as massive “crop loss”, “lawsuits” and “negative press around pesticides.” Monsanto’s own projections estimated that dicamba damage claims from farmers would total more than 10,000 cases, including 1,305 in 2016, 2,765 in 2017 and 3,259 in 2018.
Both Monsanto and BASF defended their products, claiming dicamba is safe “when used correctly,” and marketed it as an important tool for farmers. Industry estimates suggest that several million acres of crops have now been reported damaged by dicamba. More than 100 US farmers are engaged in litigation in federal court alleging Monsanto and BASF collaboration created a “defective” crop system that has damaged orchards, gardens and organic and non-organic farm fields in multiple states.
Not only that but Monsanto minimally and cosmetically alters its products and rebrands them, and was also reported selling them under another brand altogether in Europe.
The Bildeberg/Davos group are literally trying to kill us! With everything from drugs, vaccines, poluted water, unsafe food products with known toxic substances, nuclear waste releases, pyromaniac fires on oil refineries and hazardous chemical plants in Texas, pyromaniac fires in California, Wi-Fi, cell-phones, radiation treatments, and barber surgeries!
It would not surprise me if all of the world leaders decided that they are going to all launch their nuclear weapons at the same time and thought that they would just give people a few weeks off prior to doing it. The coronavirus response is a hoax as a result of financial fraud. The nuclear waste issue is far more of a threat to civilization than the coronavirus! There is no solution to it and there never will be! It is a problem without a solution!
I’m a licensed commercial applicator and have been applying agricultural pesticides for more than forty years. Dicamba, a non-selective herbicide, has been used since 1967. With out these and other products, crops yields would be substantially reduced. Every licensed applicator is thoroughly schooled in the potential for drift to off target sites and trained to mitigate these risks. If conditions favor off target site drift, it is up to the applicator to delay use of the product until conditions are more favorable for its use. Monsanto is not responsible for negligent use of its products, the applicator is. Nothing is 100% safe, not even driving. We raised the speed limit from 55mph to 70mph knowing it would cost lives, yet we did it anyway. The moral argument “If it saves just one life… it’s worth it.” is an invalid argument if saving one life causes hardship and death for thousands of others. Sometimes life forces difficult decisions. That is simply how life is sometimes, as distasteful as it is. A first year philosophy student understands this. Inciting anger against Monsanto, whose products improve crops yields and help feed tens of thousands of people, for an applicators misuse of its products is irresponsible.
Let’s hope you won’t die on cancer soon. How old are you?
I believe Dicamba is a selective herbicide.
Q — “Isn’t Dicamba a selective herbicide?”
A — “No, but you can keep changing the name, to avoid that fact that it’s a crude wrecking ball.”
“Dicamba (3,6-dichloro-2-methoxybenzoic acid) is a broad-spectrum herbicide first registered in 1967. Brand names for formulations of this herbicide include Dianat, Banvel, Diablo, Oracle and Vanquish…dicamba’s use came under significant scrutiny due to its tendency to spread from treated fields into neighboring fields, causing damage…It is also used to control brush and bracken in pastures, as well as controlling legumes and cacti…toxic to conifer species but is in general less toxic to grasses…”
The overall effect of “selective” (sic) herbicides, as I have seen it, is to kill off colorful wildflowers, in situ, and to leave behind sickly, generic landscaping, supposed to be tolerant. The landscaping ultimately dies, after a long struggle, then is quickly replaced by the (sarc) miracle of socialism aka the Broken Window Fallacy (aka makework).
“Dicamba functions by increasing plant growth rate. At sufficient concentrations, the plant outgrows its nutrient supplies and dies.”
Analogous to cancer. In controlled settings, such agrochems could also be used to create curious deformities.
Can you use it in salad dressing, with a clear conscience? The water supply?
And have you been eating the crops that you’ve sprayed for the past 40 years? Have you fed herbicide- and insecticide-laced crops to your children? Somehow, I doubt it.
Most potato farmers are required to use (toxic) ‘Sprout-Nip’ for their crops to be accepted by wholesalers….. but they often one small area totally organic; and THAT is what the farmer’s family eats.
Why is a license required?
Opinions vary……. I do agree with you that Monsanto or Bayer or any of the others are not responsible for other people’s misuse of their products. That is like Remington or Colt being sued by some idiot misusing one of their brands of firearms in a school shooting……..but that’s all I can agree with you on. And yes, I have been a farmer, farm family, and still a farmer, all my life and have cut my operation down to cattle and hay. There is absolutely no need for genetically modified organisms.That’s a farce and a Pandora’s box that we’ve only seen the lid cracked on. Wait until the lid is completely off.
Starving people is a piss poor argument when over 90% of soy and corn crops are used to feed livestock.
Reduced crop yields is another fallacy when we throw out more food than consume. Food waste from commercial farming alone could feed all the starving people in the world.
Killing off your neighbor’s farm so you can get your 30 pieces of silver isn’t sustainable nor ethical farming. Just we because we can doesn’t mean we should.
Not an endorsement. Just offered for general interest:
— Hoofs and animal poop lead to forestation:
h ttps://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertification_and_reverse_climate_change
— Giant veggies grown with compost tea:
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj4FL0u1wvg
At the risk of sounding strange, here, I would say that some chemicals have analogous effects in plants as well as animals:
— Tissue differentiation is triggered by a sort-of inflammation, and deformities can can result from common otc medicines (anti-inflammatory).
— “Bath salts” were used to stimulate plant growth.
— sex hormones
What effect do agrochems have on plant tissues?
How is it comparable to processes in the human body?
(Witnessed in a farmer, 5 blocks away from me.)
I guess Round Up was not killing us fast enough, so the elites unleashed COVID. I wonder what’s next….
Post anything about monsanto, and those whom benefited from killing the insects, polluting the earth, and crushing fair market competition come racing to the front lines.
We buy organic and if we suspect roundup or monsanto, it’s a no buy item.
The liability of these companies had to reach critical mass sometimes. Johnson and Johnson is also on the hook for talcum powder, on a similar scale as monsanto/bayer.
So rather than face up to it and let the companies fail, they promote propaganda, silence opposition, and spend more on shilling than R&D.
Yeah, you can really trust monsanto. Because; of big ag farmers whom like take precautions and such.
You can tell a big ag shill easily right off. They’re holding on to the tired and stale feed the world, could not produce this yield without the chemicals argument. That’s proven false.
Unless of course, you rely on automation and don’t have hands working the field, in that case, yes, you do need the chemicals because otherwise you’d be bailing in the weeds and the uglies with the prime stock.
I’d rather be the donkey with a yolk and a till, then eat monsanto products willingly.
The insanity of thinking you can dump tons and tons of chemicals on the soil year after year decade after decade and not create negative soil conditions, crush natural biome systems, retain mineralization of soils, and not cause major problems down stream and down the line. Complete insanity and nobody in their right mind eats Monsanto products anymore. Your days are numbered. Information is power. Disinformation is tired, stale, predictable. It’s proven, Roundup is a poison for humans, insects, soil microbes, waterfowl downstream, all the way to shrimps in the ocean.
In my experience, some of these conceited, un-fire-able, “farmers” can’t maintain tomatoes in a tree pot, while these chems are in use. Are you telling me a primary schooler couldn’t do that project, using good, clean dirt?!
They are insured against failure, so can always source more tomatoes and more landscaping, where the ground hasn’t been completely poisoned, yet — more canaries for the coal mine.
I don’t know, but I’m sure Bill Gates has a contingency…