The World According to Monsanto (US NTSC Format)

The world is considered by Monsanto a playground to spread its poisonous chemicals to make money, without taking any responsibility for the consequences, pretending as long as possible that those are harmless, until all the evidence becomes so overwhelming it's impossible to continue denying it. That is what they did with PCB's. After 50 years of making money, they settled for a few bucks to pay for some of the damage to the survivors. An internal memo revealed the company policy : "We cannot afford to lose one dollar of business". On the other hand, the world certainly could afford to lose Monsanto. It would be a better place. Now, we have PCB's all around the place. All of us - including you and me - have PCB's in our bodies. Even polar bears have PCB's in their blood !

After producing other chemicals, like Agent Orange, Monsanto began focusing on genetic manipulated seeds in the 90's. This would radically change farming. Not to our benefit, but exclusively to the benefit of Monsanto. Therefore, GM seeds only end up producing a lot of despair in farmers all around the world. This video will take you to Mexico, Paraguay and India. You will also see corn farmers in the US, not being able to save their seeds anymore, since their crops were cross-pollinated with Roundup Ready seeds from Monsanto. Monsanto now disposes of a huge force of "detectives", checking American farm ground all over the nation, trespassing private property and stealing samples of the fields in order to check if those happen to include "their patent", and then oblige farmers to settle to pay for it. In a just world, Monsanto would be prosecuted for gene pollution. But that's not the world we live in. We live in a world where corporate interests are considered by our "democratic" governments to be more important than human interests, justice and honesty.

Monsanto's aim is to monopolize the global seed production. Seeds increase tremendously in price after Monsanto gets hold of a monopoly. In India, where cotton seeds are all "Roundup Ready", cotton seed prices increased a whopping 400 % ! A lot of farmers can't cope with the debts they have to pay anymore. On the one hand, seeds cost much more, but on the other hand, harvesting is totally at their own risk, and they have to cope with the dwindling prices for their crops, if they are lucky enough to have a good harvest. Some of them get involved in a never-ending spiral of debt. In this video, you will see an Indian cotton farmer, 25 years old - dead after suicide. Every day, 2 to 3 Indian cotton farmers commit suicide. That is the world according to Monsanto : a playground where farmers are exploited at the maximum, just to make more and more dollars.

It is also important to note that poisoning the fields with Roundup is very bad for the environment and for our health. Roundup is an extremely dangerous pesticide, as confirmed by a specialist in this film.

This is the best documentary I saw on GM crops. It has no happy ending, but in order to change the world, we first have to understand it. There are ways out : buy organics, and support organic farmers close to you. They need our support very, very much.

UPDATE : At least some good news : a biodynamic counter-revolution has begun in India; watch it on the excellent documentary One Man, One Cow, One Planet.

SECOND UPDATE : A landmark lawsuit filed on March 29 2011 in US federal court seeks to invalidate Monsanto's patents on genetically modified seeds and to prohibit the company from suing those whose crops become genetically contaminated. The Public Patent Foundation filed suit on behalf of 270,000 people from sixty organic and sustainable businesses and trade associations, including thousands of certified-organic farmers. In Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, et al. v. Monsanto, et al. (U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, Case No. 11 CIV 2163), PUBPAT details the invalidity of any patent that poisons people and the environment, and that is not useful to society, two hallmarks of US patent law. "As Justice Story wrote in 1817, to be patentable, an invention must not be 'injurious to the well being, good policy, or sound morals of society,'" notes the complaint in its opening paragraphs, citing Lowell v. Lewis. The suit points to studies citing harm caused by Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, including human placental damage, lymphoma, myeloma, animal miscarriages, and other impacts on human health. Plaintiffs condemn Monsanto for prohibiting independent research on its transgenic seeds and for its successful lobby efforts to ban GM food labeling. Many raise the specter of allergic reaction to GM foods, proof of which is hidden by lack of labeling.

The suit also confronts the propaganda that transgenic seeds improve yield and reduce pesticide use, citing reports on failure to yield and increased pesticide use. The complaint mentions a 2010 lawsuit by West Virginia after several studies contradicted yield results claimed in Monsanto's ads. And, it notes the growth in glyphosate-resistant superweeds.

"Thus, since the harm of transgenic seed is known, and the promises of transgenic seed's benefits are false, transgenic seed is not useful for society."

When these seeds come home to roost - look out! Among the countless pieces of absolutely crucial information Marie-Monique Robin has assembled for her masterpiece "The World According to Monsanto," the single most crucial is the inevitable crash of Monsanto's devil spawn. It's already starting to happen, beginning with their GMO cotton in India. And I've read more recent articles which suggest Monsanto's other crops are beginning to succumb to parasites and weeds which they were not created to resist or which are developing an immunity to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.
In this connection, probably the second most crucial piece of information is at the end of the documentary and involves the nation of Paraguay, which borders Argentina - which had allowed Monsanto's GMO soybeans. The seeds have been germinating so ubiquitously among Paraguay's soybean crops that they've nearly taken over and have driven the local farmers to the point of ruin - as well as virtually forced Paraguay to accept the GMO's. In other words, if Monsanto can't get its foot through the front door, they'll simply sneak in through the back door.
Add to this Monsanto's efforts to genetically engineer even more staples of the human food chain and it's possible to extrapolate a nightmare scenario for our future - one that could bring humanity to the very brink of extinction. Eventually Monsanto's monsters will very likely overtake the entire world and will destroy or incorporate all remaining natural crops. The biggest problem is not that every living person on the planet may one day be at Monsanto's mercy - that's the least of our worries. The greatest problem is that these crops, because of the present rudimentary state of biotechnology, have in effect a doomsday mechanism built into the seeds by the very method of gene splicing - a method almost certainly destined to create unsustainable crops over time. Which means that the only food available on planet earth will simply cease to exist as a foodstuff eventually. And the human species goes extinct.

This is happening in the USA. In fact, Monsanto grew here because of the lack of government regulations, peer reviewed studies, pathways laid out at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by President Herbert Walker "George" Bush and Dan Quayle.

Herbert Walker "George" Bush visited the Monsanto lab during the Reagan Bush Administration and was taken in by the plans of this corporation to create seeds with organisms of a different species (new DNA) that would resist their best selling product, Roundup. But, Monsanto needed to be certain there were no "unnecessary" regulations that would block their path. (And, it was the plan for both the Reagan-Bush and the future Bush-Quayle Administration to de-regulate everything.) As a result, the Monsanto former lobbyist, Michael Taylor (who is now Food Czar at the US FDA) worked with the Bush-Quayle Administration to devise a plan to regulate the development of genetic engineering BEFORE the seeds or products were released into the marketplace, but DE-REGULATE once they were released into the marketplace (when they should be regulated).

Working with Vice President Dan Quayle, Monsanto received everything they wanted in the new policy at the U.S. FDA, and that policy, posted in May, 1992, still stands in the decades since, despite new studies to the contrary, which appear to be ignored by the FDA. The policy can be read at:[...]
This is an excellent video and I strongly recommend it to everyone interested in how our food and pharmaceuticals are created since coming into the marketplace in 1996, and the effort to control the world through the novelle new seeds --foods, pharmaceuticals created during this brave new world of biotechnology.