How Corporations Enforce their Patents
How Corporations Enforce their Patents
Fr. Seán McDonagh
May I suggest that Kevin Myers reads the very disturbing article by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele entitled, ‘Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear’ in the May 2003, edition of Vanity Fair. The subtitle outlines how Monsanto is both powerful and ruthless when it comes to dealing with various constituents. "Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics – ruthless legal battles against small farmers – is its decade-long history of toxic contamination". The article goes no to give details how Monsanto, the largest biotech company on the planet, uses a shadowy army of private agents in the American heartland to strike fear into farm country. These investigators will sometimes show a farmer a photo of himself coming out of a store to let him know he is being followed. They infiltrate community meetings and gather information about what farmers are planting. Farmers call these investigators "seed" police and use words such as "Gestapo" and "Mafia" to describe their tactics (page 114). Often these "seed police" get it wrong as in the accusations against a small store owner, Gary Rinehart. In 2002, Monsanto investigator "Jeffrey Moore, accused Rinehart of planting Roundup GM soybeans. Though Rinehart was innocent they filed a case against him and forced him to hire his own lawyer to protect his interests. Soon Monsanto realized they had the wrong person, but, did they offer an apology? There was "no letter of apology, no public concession that the company had made a mistake, no offer to pay his attorney’s fees. I don’t know how they got away with it, Reinhart said. If I tried to do something like that it would be bad news, I felt I was in another country. (page 116).
The article gives a number of examples of Monsanto’s doggy record as a chemical company, though as the authors point out, the company literature has airbrushed much of this out of its official history. Monsanto produced two of the most toxic substances every known – polychlorinated biphenyls, better known as PCBs and dioxin. (page 119). In 1949, a huge explosion at the town of Nitro, in West Virginia causing a plume of toxic smoke to drift over the factory area and the town. Court records show that 226 plant workers were affected. However, Monsanto claimed that the contamination was "fairly slow acting" and "caused only irritation of the skin". In 1981 many of Monsanto’s former workers at the Nitro plant filed a case in the federal court. They claimed that Monsanto knowingly exposed them to chemicals which caused long-term health problems, including hearth failure and a variety of cancers. (page 119). In 1988, on the eve of the trial Monsanto settled the cases by making a single payment of $1.5 million. The company also agreed to drop its claim to collect $307,000 in court costs from six former employees who had unsuccessfully charged in a separate lawsuit that Monsanto had recklessly exposed them to dioxin. (page 120).
Monsanto’s PCBs, were extremely versatile and were used in many industries as sealants, lubricants and hydraulic fluids. Unfortunately, they are toxic and can damage the neurological, immune, endocrine and reproductive systems in animals and humans. 37 years after ceasing operation Anniston, Alabama, the town in which Monsanto manufactured PCBs is still one of the most contaminated areas in the US. Monsanto has paid $550 million to the 21,000 citizens of Anniston, many of whom suffer from illnesses associated with PCBs. The article claims that the company was very slow to accept that their product was highly toxic. Rather than accept responsibility the company mounted a PR campaign to limit damage. An internal memo entitled "CONFIDENTIAL –FYI AND DESTROY" was sent out by Paul B. Hodges. It detailed the measures which were underway to limit disclosure including getting public officials to fight their case. All of this was aimed at playing down the danger even though there was enormous cause for public concern.
Currently, Monsanto are targeting dairy companies which advertise that their milk is produced by cows not treated with Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone rBGH. The article describes how Monsanto wish to stop Jeff Kleinpeter, a dairy farmer in Baton Rouge from including the phrase – "from Cows NOT Treated with rBGH. It appears that many consumers share Kleinpeter’s distaste for bovine growth hormones as milk sales soared after the notice appeared. In an attempt to stamp out this practice, Monsanto have appealed to the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the "deceptive advertising and labeling practices" of milk producers such as Kleinpeter. Monsanto argue that people like Klelinpeter are misleading consumers by "falsely claiming that there are health and safety risks associated with milk from rBST-supplemented cows.
To augument their official attach on farmers such as Kleinpeter, a Monsanto-backed farmers groups called, American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology (AFACT), has been attempting to discredit people like Kleinpeter. AFACT claims to be a "producer organization" which attacks companies which are trying to convince consumers to "shy away from foods using new technology". Interestingly, AFACT uses the same PR company as Monsanto, Osborn & Barr. Websites such as StopLabelingLies attack companies such as Kleipeter’s which allegedly make misleading claims about their milk. One of the contributors to the website is Steven Milloy, the "junk science" commentator at FoxNews.com. Earlier in his career, Milloy worked as a registered lobbyist for Monsanto.
This is not the first time that campaigns have been launched against people who challenge the claims of the biotech world. In November 2001, two scientists from the University of California at Berkeley, Ignacio Chapela and David Quist, published an article in the magazine, Nature, claiming that indigenous maize in Mexico had been contaminated by genetically engineered maize. In April 2002 in an unprecedented move Nature disowned Chapela and Quist’s findings. The case against the scientist was led by AgBioWorld which used its data base to coordinate the attacks. Inflammatory emails came from a Mary Murphy and an Andura Smetacek. The emails claimed that Dr. Chapela was politically motivated and that his research could only be understood in the light of his collusion with fear-mongering activists with whom, it was insinuated, he had designed the research.
In time, Mary Murphy’s emails were shown to have been sent from Monsanto’s PR company, Bivings, while Andura Smetacek’s emails were traced back directly to the Monsanto corporation in St. Louis. The fact that the editor of such a prestigious magazine succumbed t o this kind of pressure is very worrying indeed. In a letter to The Guardian, Chapela wrote; "perhaps the key lies in his tacit acknowledgement, albeit by dismissal, of the enormous pressure on anyone working in or around the biological sciences ever since we were set on a collision course with commercial interest. The coordinated attempt to discredit our discoveries in the public piazza sends a chilling message to those who would dare to ask important, but uncomfortable questions, and find their truthful answer. It is an assault on the very foundations of science.(i)
How does Monsanto get away with all of this? The authors tells us on page 122 that it has long been wired into Washington. This covers both the executive branch of government and the regulatory agencies. Michael R. Taylor was an executive assistant to the F.D.A. commissioner before joining a Washington law firm which worked to secure F.D.A. approval of Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone. To complete the revolving door act, Taylor returned to Monsanto in 1999 as a senior vice-president. Finally, Myers seems not to have heard of the terminator gene, which has been developed by the company Delta and Pine. This has not been acquired by Monsanto company. This technology will have a detrimental impact on subsistence farmers who have been exchanging seeds since the beginning of the agricultural revolution 11,000 years ago. Fr. Roland Lesseps, SJ, who is an agriculturalist and has worked for years at the Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre in Zambia believes that, the livelihood of farmers would be under threat if seed companies were able to use the Terminator technology.(ii)